Park Perspectives: Bringing a vision to life

Gary Randorf

By TOM WOODMAN

When you see Gary Randorf, you might get the wrong impression at first. He’s slight of build and even in mild weather wears fleece because Parkinson’s makes him sensitive to the cool air of the Adirondacks. The Parkinson’s also makes his hand tremble some until the medicine kicks in.

But any sense of frailty evaporates quickly. His eyes radiate strength as they look with affection on the landscape—a country that he saw for so many years through the viewfinder of a camera. Those eyes and that camera did much to shape the character of the Adirondack Park by bringing its beauty to a wide audience, including those who were deciding its fate in the halls of political power.

When you talk with him, abandon any sense of solicitousness or reverence you are tempted to feel. It is bound to collapse in the face of his sense of humor. He misses no chance to remind you that the conservationists that tramped through the hills in the seventies were having a rollicking good time even as they laid the groundwork for historic protections. Recognize the importance of the work, but please don’t get all high-church about it.

Gary doesn’t get to the Adirondacks much these days. He has resided in the Philippines for four years and before that lived in New Zealand, drawn by wanderlust, by an affordable lifestyle in beautiful areas, and by marriage.

His irreverence and humility didn’t prevent folks from gathering around when he returned to the mountains this summer. He has many admirers for his work as a naturalist and photographer in getting the Adirondack Park Agency off the ground in the 1970s and, after leaving state service, in establishing the
Adirondack Council as a strong voice when the Park sorely needed one.

Stories spilled out about his work in some of the greatest jobs he could imagine finding. (The first time he realized his amazing good fortune, he was spending a day in wetlands with his friend and colleague Greenie Chase, counting migrating birds and lunching on Molson’s Ale.)

He and Greenie and Clarence Petty surveyed more than 1,200 miles of rivers for the APA to determine whether they should be included in the state’s Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers system. He surveyed land to see what sort of protection would be appropriate, using his camera as a research tool as well as a form of fine art. If you knew how to look, he says, the land would tell you what level of use it could sustain.

And he did this work in a physical and political climate that was not for the weak of body or will.

The folks that have a chance to talk with him learn a lot about how the current Park with its mosaic of land-use protections came to be. And they get a good dose of self-effacing humor in the process. One story:
Gary and Clarence were set to embark on a spring river survey when Clarence decided their expedition deserved a higher-level vessel than the usual canoes.
So using scrap lumber and found objects, they pieced together a raft, which the pair launched on the Saranac River below Bloomingdale. They soon discovered their paddles had no power to steer the clumsy craft. They were at the mercy of the current, which soon carried them into a large boulder. The shipwreck left Gary under the raft in the icy stream. Not liking that situation, he managed to surface and swim to shore. From there, he saw Clarence swimming downstream, determined to save the raft. A coworker waiting at their takeout point eventually spotted first one paddle, then a second float by, then a pack. As he was wondering what he ought to do, the raft and Clarence hove into view. Though they were able to salvage the vessel, it saw adaptive reuse as a doghouse for an agency staffer. The surveyors returned to paddling canoes.

Of all the ways that Gary contributed to the Park, the one that resonates the most is the artistry with which his photography captured Adirondack splendor. His photos captured, in turn, the appreciation and support of people across the state.

His exhibits could sway opinion. He remembers in particular a show in the state Capitol. After the presentation, a lawmaker from New York City approached to say, “I’m wid youse on dis.”

His exhibits and book, The Adirondacks: Wild Island of Hope, established a standard for Adirondack photography. And his designs of the two Adirondack Park Visitor Interpretive Centers were important contributions toward a goal that runs through his career: making the Adirondack Park more park-like.

“Having a park without interpreting it for people is like inviting someone to your home, then closing the door in their face,” he says, quoting educator William H. Carr.

Returning to the Adirondacks from across the planet, Gary had many impressions, most of them positive. The Park’s stewards have done well. But one he mentioned to me first and with the most passion was how thrilled he is by the Wild Center, the Natural History Museum of the Adirondacks, in Tupper Lake. Seeing families absorbed by exhibits and immersed in the natural setting, he felt that here the Adirondack hosts had thrown open their doors to visitors and were making lifelong friends.

When I pressed him to take some credit for the shape of the Park and the hope for its future he was proud to do so, if a bit understated:

“I think I made a contribution that was good.”