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Categories Results:
By breviews
July 1, 2007
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…
By breviews
May 1, 2007
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…
By breviews
May 1, 2007
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…
By breviews
March 1, 2007
As the owner of several CD collections of bird songs, I have tried, tediously often, and with negative results, to sharpen my birding-by-ear skills sufficiently to identify the most common birds in my backyard. The scenario unfolds the same way every time: After getting frustrated by spending 40 minutes trying to see an embarrassingly common…
By breviews
March 1, 2007
Afew years ago, a friend and I made the long carry from Lows Lake to the upper reaches of the Oswegatchie River. Neither of us had hiked the trail before, so we had no idea how long it would take. Humping our dry bags and my big fiberglass canoe through endless blowdown, witchhobble and slash,…
By breviews
January 1, 2007
On the bookcases in my study, I have three shelves of books on the Adirondacks. The bulk of the volumes came from the library of Barney Fowler. Barney was the author of three volumes of the Adirondack Album compilation and a columnist at the Times Union. It was my good fortune that Barney, in all…
By breviews
November 1, 2006
The literature of nature—of being in nature, of contemplating its marvels with an educated and sensitive eye and writing about it with insight and skill— is one of the world’s great genres. Our country’s first great nature writer was William Bartram, who in 1791 described with exquisite detail his peregrinations through the Southeast. Many students…
By breviews
November 1, 2006
Like Mozart in music and Keats in poetry, Bob Marshall packed an astonishing quantity of experience and accomplishment into a short life and has been elevated to near mythic status by generations of followers. We have the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana and a proposal for a 409,000- acre Bob Marshall Great Wilderness (“the Bob”…
May 1, 2006
Want proof that Peter O’Shea is a serious naturalist? Pay close attention to the section titled “Wildlife and Changes Around a Homestead” in his new book The Great South Woods II. The homestead is O’Shea’s “own humble abode” in the northwest Adirondacks hamlet of Fine. He acquired it in 1973, moved in shortly after, and…
March 1, 2006
When I finished the three-page introduction to The Ardent Birder I concluded, with a yawn, that while very sweet and even tender the book seemed far too basic for an experienced birder like myself. But I found the bordering-on-theprecious tone disarmingly honest and refreshing, and the arrangement of material suggested by the contents meticulously sensible,…