The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By Explorer archives
April 1, 2018
A resident or seasonal explorer of the Adirondacks, you may believe that our cool, northern landscapes are devoid of venomous animals. Sure, rattlesnakes inhabit a smattering of sun-warmed spots along the shores of Lake George and Lake Champlain, but that’s all, isn’t it? You might fall off a cliff here, or die of hypothermia, or…
By Explorer archives
March 1, 2018
Fish, being creatures of habit, usually return to the same hole. Anglers, being creatures of habit, do too. Yet the Adirondacks has in the neighborhood of thirty thousand miles of rivers and streams, and three thousand ponds and lakes, so men and women who like to fish hardly have an excuse for not exploring some…
By Explorer archives
January 15, 2018
I first met Phil Terrie many years ago, when he invited me to his cabin on Long Lake, partway down from Long Lake village toward the outlet. At the time, he was acting as a consultant for a Mountain Lake PBS documentary on Adirondack history, so producers, cameramen, and so on were hovering around.…
By Explorer archives
January 1, 2018
You don’t need a magnifying glass, a deerstalker cap, and a Dr. Watson to track the mammals you suspect to be traversing your favorite pieces of Adirondack real estate. What are required most of all are curiosity and a willingness to invest the considerable time and energy it takes to study footprints, partially eaten food…
By Explorer archives
December 1, 2017
Two things can be said for Adirondack architecture. It’s eclectic, to put it mildly. And there is no distinctly Adirondack style. Oh, we talk about rustic, but that’s as much a décor and an invention of modern real-estate agents, curators, and retailers. Those are some of the conclusions that can be drawn from two new…
By Explorer archives
October 9, 2017
Adirondack camp owners and bushwhackers will love this book. And so will people interested in the meaning of extreme solitude—who can tolerate it, who can’t. I’m not talking about the sort of solitude we all appreciate when we have an afternoon or maybe even a couple of days entirely to ourselves. This book is about…
By Explorer archives
October 1, 2017
Once I had the pleasure of meeting Al Breisch, then New York State DEC’s de facto Herpetologist-in-Chief, at a lecture he gave for the Wild Center before it had even been built. Breisch impressed me. He was precise and as armed with accurate information about “herps” (a catch-all nickname for reptiles and amphibians) as a…
By Explorer archives
September 1, 2017
The mission of John Davis is not entirely dissimilar to that of the biblical Noah. Davis is out to protect a broad platform of species in an unconventional way that faces both long odds and more than a few arched eyebrows. The central idea is that up and down the lands that parallel the Eastern…
By Explorer archives
August 15, 2017
I read with interest the letter in the March/April issue requesting the Department of Environmental Conservation to place a moratorium on all trapping and hunting of red and gray fox. The intent is to increase the fox populations, which feed on white-footed mice. White-footed mice are a vector species for the bacteria (Lyme disease) transmitted…
By Explorer archives
August 1, 2017
The photo with “Why I Miss Richard Nixon” shows my uncle Russell Train, who went on to become administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Nixon and Ford. Nixon gave him wide authority in the early 1970s to usher in such landmark legislation as the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, Superfund, the…