The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
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When botanists speak of a woody plant, they describe its “growth habit”: the way a particular species sprawls like trailing arbutus, climbs like Virginia creeper, grows upright in a shrubby sort of way like highbush cranberry, or reaches skyward in the form we call a tree. Trees—red spruce, white pine, sugar maple, American beech—are the…
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Go for a hike or a drive almost anywhere in the Adirondacks, and you might come upon a stand of trees, probably red or white pines, of uniform size and age, evenly spaced in straight rows a consistent distance apart. “That’s not natural,” you might think, and you’d be right. You’ve most likely come upon…
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This book is called A Coming of Winter in the Adirondacks. It’s really good!!! My favorite part of the book was the pictures. The first time I opened the book my first word was “Whoa!’’ All the pictures were … awesome!!! The rabbit and the mouse looked SO realistic I wanted to pet them! They…
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Great Camp—the term stirs impressions of a style, an era, a way of life that passed quickly across the Adirondack stage but left a lasting impression. It conjures images of fabulous wealth, of excess, of changes in the Adirondack social order. And did we mention fabulous wealth? A few Great Camps survive today, under various…
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Is there a thrill in birdwatching— and for that matter in hiking and mountaineering— half as electrifying as standing atop a rocky summit on a crisp fall day, watching a hawk, falcon, or eagle shoot low over your head? You peer into the raptor’s keen eyes with awe and a touch of fear. Fear—because you…
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What’s a mountain climber to do once he or she has summited the Adirondack Forty-Six, the Catskill Thirty-Five, and the Northeast 115? Create a new list, of course. And so we have the Adirondack Hundred Highest—the obsession of hard-core hikers who don’t mind surrendering a few pints of blood in their quest to stand atop…
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The library at the Adirondack Museum houses thousands of rare and valuable items, from historic maps and the business records of long-defunct logging companies to the personal papers of major Adirondack personalities and hard-to-find government reports. Among the most fascinating of the many treasures are diaries, handwritten day-to-day accounts of life in bygone times. Some…
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ARCADIA PUBLISHING puts out so many Adirondack books in its Images of America series that it’s hard to keep track of them, but one that crossed my desk in recent weeks caught my eye: Old Forge and the Fulton Chain of Lakes. One of the largest hamlets in the Adirondack Park, Old Forge has a…
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EARLY IN 1838, geologist Ebenezer Emmons, part of a team of scientists assessing New York’s natural resources, submitted a report to the state Assembly. In it he described his fieldwork of the previous summer. Among other things, he had led the first recorded ascent of the state’s highest peak, which he named Mount Marcy, for…
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Saranac Lake native Lisa Densmore has just published her second Adirondack guidebook within the past year: Best Easy Day Hikes: Adirondacks, a selection of twenty-two hikes, most of them under four miles. Densmore chose the hikes from her longer book, Adirondack Hiking, reviewed in the Explorer last fall. The descriptions have been condensed and the…