Commentary

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The Adirondack landscape of Lueza Thirkield Gelb’s memoir, Schroon Lake, is not the stuff of High Peaks travelogues and dark Romantic vistas. It’s well-groomed and meticulous, a place where homes have names—like Almanole, or The Big Place—and long, curling driveways. Where deviled eggs are cooled on lake ice and sofas swing on the porch. Boathouses,…

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People in Lake Placid knew that their longtime village and town historian, Mary MacKenzie, had written on local history for many years. But hardly anyone knew how prolifically, or how diversely, or what a dogged and accomplished researcher she was. “I don’t think most people had any sense of the real magnitude of the work…

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In her new book of essays, At the End of the Road, Ruth Mary Lamb reflects on her experiences living in a remote valley west of Lake George. In 1990 she and her husband, Sandy, left their busy life in Boston to live in a ramshackle farmhouse they dubbed Journey’s End. Ours was a reverse…

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This past fall, Adirondack lakes and ponds got some much-needed good news. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, eight states and a host of environmental organizations reached a settlement in a suit filed in 1999 against American Electric Power (AEP), an Ohio-based power company with coal-burning plants in five states. To cut back the sulfur and…

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Larry Weill has been many things in his life: financial planner, technical writer, trainer, Naval officer. He’s also been a wilderness ranger in the Adirondacks, and that led to another item on his resume—storyteller. Weill shares his experiences from his three years as a ranger in the West Canada Lakes Wilderness Area, in the late…

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Larry Weill has been many things in his life: financial planner, technical writer, trainer, Naval officer. He’s also been a wilderness ranger in the Adirondacks, and that led to another item on his resume—storyteller. Weill shares his experiences from his three years as a ranger in the West Canada Lakes Wilderness Area, in the late…

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What do Andrew Carnegie, Benjamin Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek have in common? They all spent time around Raquette Lake for one reason or another. Who knew such a seemingly unprepossessing spot on the Adirondack map could have played host to such luminaries?…

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Anyone who thinks the world’s going to hell in a hand basket can take heart. Nancy G. Slack and Allison W. Bell’s Adirondack Alpine Summits: An Ecological Field Guide, recently published by the Adirondack Mountain Club, demonstrates that some things are getting better, and even excellence can be improved upon. This handy and remarkably thorough…

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The crowded field of Adirondack photography is filled with magnificent vistas and stunning details of the natural world. In a way, that’s the problem. Any fool with a disposable point-and-shoot can’t help but return from an outing to the old North Woods with some fetching images. I’ve done it, and there’s the proof. The professionals…

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If you’ve ever stood on an Adirondack summit on a clear day and gazed eastward, you’ve seen the ghostly shapes of Vermont’s Green Mountains haunting the far horizon. Beyond them, hidden from view, lie New Hampshire’s higher and more rugged White Mountains, “white” because they hold snow much of the year. Those ranges and the…