“Adirondack Timber Cruising” reads like gabbing with old loggers The contents of William O'Hern's “Adirondack Timber Cruising” are a treasure, the packaging not so much. Plagued by many of the problems of self-published books taken to press … [Read more...] about Park logging lore
History & Culture
Radio Free Vermont
On the third page of Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben’s first novel, a Coors beer truck follows detour signs as it enters Vermont from the Crown Point Bridge. At the end of a long dirt road the driver is presented with a bag lunch (made with Vermont … [Read more...] about Radio Free Vermont
Seeing the Forest: Reviews, Musings, and Opinions from an Adirondack Historian
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 … [Read more...] about Seeing the Forest: Reviews, Musings, and Opinions from an Adirondack Historian
Blacks in the Adirondacks: A History
The history of the Adirondacks, as it’s usually presented, is blindingly white. Nearly all of our stories—logging, tourism, the Saranac Lake TB nexus, you name it—have familiar iterations, and they seem to involve only white people. Reading, or … [Read more...] about Blacks in the Adirondacks: A History
Escape from Dannemora
In the summer of 2015, while driving my beat-up Toyota truck through the back roads of northern Clinton and Franklin counties documenting the Great Dannemora Prison Break, I kept thinking that I had been swallowed whole by a tabloid news story, or … [Read more...] about Escape from Dannemora
Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering
In 1642, Darby Field, a resident of what is now New Hampshire, climbed White Hill, known by local Indians as Agiocochook and by moderns as Mount Washington, the highest mountain in New England. Others in the Massachusetts Bay Colony thought Field … [Read more...] about Continental Divide: A History of American Mountaineering