book review

By breviews

March 1, 2003

One day early in the summer of 1942, Bill Touhey, on duty in the Salmon Lake Mountain fire tower in Whitney Park west of Long Lake, took a phone call from the observer on Mount Electra, not far away in Nehasane Park. A stereotype of the gruff old Adirondacker, he was perhaps a bit more…

By breviews

January 1, 2003

There is not much humor in Half the Way Home. In its 236 pages, not one anecdote directly involving the author elicits laughter. Whereas Lewis Spence describes a loving if fundamentally Victorian relationship between a boy and his grandfather, Half the Way Home is a search for understanding of a father-son relationship where love was…

By breviews

January 1, 2003

Sooner or later, we all come home—if not literally, then spiritually, emotionally or psychologically to a place that had a role in shaping us. One day, without realizing it, we are there. And we confront the forces that made us what we have become. We complete a circle. The Adirondacks are an arc of that…

By breviews

January 1, 2003

Not every classic stands the test of time—not when the public’s tastes keep changing. For nearly a decade, cross-country enthusiasts have relied on Tony Goodwin’s Classic Adirondack Ski Tours for advice on where to ski in the Adirondack Park. The book is a minor classic in itself, with its spare descriptions of the author’s favorite…

By breviews

November 1, 2002

It was a Saturday in November 1994 that I met Victoria Rinehart to take her and a group of her nursing students on a walking tour of the cure cottages of Saranac Lake. As we tramped the streets, I told her what I could about Saranac Lake’s history as America’s pioneer health resort for the…

By breviews

September 1, 2002

Barbara McMartin is an Ivy League-educated mathematician. I recall her mentioning once that she began hiking the Adirondacks systematically and obsessively as relief from preparing for doctoral orals at Columbia. I raise this not so much to assert how smart she is as to suggest that it is in her nature to seek a closed…

By breviews

July 1, 2002

How can one man do so much in just 97 years? Clarence Petty is of one of the most interesting and important people ever to carry a canoe, bushwhack through the backcountry, or dedicate his life to protecting the Adirondack wilderness. And he has lived through a period of high drama in Adirondack affairs. As…

By breviews

May 1, 2002

My first view from an Adirondack summit was at the tower on Goodnow Mountain near Newcomb, and I can still recall the thrill. I was 11 or 12, and some friends and I were staying at a summer camp on Long Lake. The tower, maintained by the state College of Environmental Science and Forestry, offers…

By breviews

March 1, 2002

Adirondack outdoor types tend to be sort of gear crazy. An avid hiker might own two or three pairs of boots, for use on different kinds of trail. No garage is complete without a kayak and a canoe. It’s not uncommon for snow mavens to own three sets of skis, with a pair of snowshoes…

By breviews

March 1, 2002

To broaden one’s horizons, try the Quiet Water Canoe Guide: New York. Here everything is our oyster—literally, from the oyster beds of Long Island to Coles Creek on the St. Lawrence River, from East Bay on Lake Ontario to the Erie Canal and onto Lake George. Here is complete how-to and where-to information for over…