Paddling through joy and grief on a stream beloved by the Hornbeck family

Leigh Hornbeck reflects on parents’ legacy following loss of mother to cancer

By Zachary Matson

It can be hard (nay impossible) to suppress a smile while attempting to paddle over a beaver dam. I can almost feel the rush of excitement as your canoe pauses for a moment before tipping toward the water just by writing this—though not quite. 

You get to feel that rush a lot on Minerva Stream. A short, windy route from the town transfer station to a canoe launch—where Route 30 passes over the Olmstedville Pond Dam—crosses a half dozen or more of the blockades.  

Even amid the hardest grief, paddling always brings joy. Even when it rains, paddling always brings light.  

I grew up in suburban Kansas City and didn’t step foot in the Adirondack Park until I was 25. So when I started this column, Leigh Hornbeck, a fellow journalist, came to mind as someone with the opposite background in Adirondack paddling as me. The only child of boatmaker Peter Hornbeck, who died in 2020, Leigh has explored Adirondack waterways since she was a baby and grew up with a boat shop in her backyard. Her husband now runs the family business. 

When I reached out, Leigh was open to a paddle and suggested Minerva Stream as one beloved by her family, but she warned that her availability was uncertain. Her mom, Ann Hornbeck, was ailing. 

We launched at a gravel put-in near the Minerva transfer station on one of the rainiest days of the summer. Leigh brought her two sons, Rushton and Devlin, and a pair of adventure-minded friends from the Capital Region. A Hornbeck Boats employee had dropped a small flotilla of canoes used for demos at the company’s store, and Leigh dragged them out of their wooded hiding spot as the rest of the party prepped their gear.  

“No tandem canoes allowed in the Hornbeck family,” I joked. Her dad’s boats are paddled like kayaks and scant few of the models he designed over decades are built for two. 

We paused under a bridge just after launching to see if the rain would pass but decided to head off into the downpour after a few minutes. Though not as remote as other paddles, Minerva Stream feels remote and is shrouded from the surrounding communities by wetlands and alders and a dense buffer of trees.

As we approached one of the beaver dams, I thought now was my chance to get an answer to a question I’ve long pondered: Is there a best way to run a beaver dam? Surely, there is some right method, I said, turning to Leigh for her expertise. 

“It’s never graceful,” she said. A few minutes later, Leigh was dumping water from her boat after taking a misstep while balancing on a jumble of twigs and logs. 

The sun eventually emerged, warming our drenched bodies and brightening views of Moxham Mountain and other highlands. After a shuttle back to my car, I headed north and Leigh headed back to her childhood home to care for her mom.

Less than two weeks later, as I was working on writing this column, Ann died at her Olmstedville home with her dogs and family by her side. She was 77. Peter Hornbeck will go down in the Great Man histories of the Adirondacks as a pioneering boatmaker who opened the backcountry to countless paddlers with his lightweight canoes. But Ann Hornbeck was the quiet force, and diligent bookkeeper, who helped keep the business afloat over the years. As a social studies teacher of more than 30 years in Minerva, she also introduced young Adirondackers to a world beyond the Blue Line.  

“She made sure the bills got paid, she made sure they got through the winter,” Leigh said of her mom. “She was really the unsung hero of it all. My father gets a lot of credit as the boat designer and founder, but this business would have gone belly up early on without my mother’s constant attention.” 

Until her mom’s passing, I had, myopically, mostly asked Leigh about her dad. 

“My father didn’t like crowds,” she told me. Leigh didn’t start working on her 46 High Peaks until she reached her 40s. Her dad wasn’t interested in climbing them.

“Those places are too busy, I don’t want to do that,” she remembered him saying. 

Together, Ann and Peter Hornbeck advocated for quiet waters on which future generations of Adirondack paddlers could seek solace, peace and connection to nature.

“None of this was her idea,” Leigh said. “For a woman who didn’t choose any of this, who was on the ride, she really embraced it and loved it and was a big advocate for motorless lakes and quiet places.”

Ann suggested the iconic red stripe on the boats, to contrast the urine-color of Hornbeck’s original boats, Leigh said. I see those red stripes daily as I drive around the park during the summer. Ann taught social studies, grades 7-12, for 32 years, carrying the burden of healthcare after Peter retired from his own teaching career and struck out in the boat making industry. Leigh transferred and graduated from Johnsburg, where her dad taught. All parties thought it prudent daughter didn’t learn from mother for five straight years.

When my family and I went to pick up my boat from the Olmstedville store two summers ago, we saw Ann out for one of her regular walks on the family’s 147-acre property. Ann for decades maintained a network of walking and skiing trails throughout the property. She was still using her little chainsaw up until April.

When Leigh and I talked after her mom’s death, I noted the joy and happiness among the group paddling on Minerva Stream that rainy day—the laughs and the smiles. Ann was just a few miles away, too ill to join. Leigh said her mom subscribed to the idea that nature is healing.  

“She healed herself through some brutal treatments and grief by just being out in the woods,” Leigh said. “Go out in the woods, go outside, get in a boat, go paddle. My parents were real believers in the healing power of being outside.”