Category: Nature

A Hunting Heritage Story ********** September 27, 2026 Opening morning of New York State’s northern zone bow hunting season. It all began with a father/son email: “Hey, Opening morning of bow season here. This guy showed up for the 1st time on lower main field at 3:30 am. I think he’s...

New York State’s New 2026 “Earn a 2nd Buck” System An Advanced Placement Math Test ********** Now I know why I was forced to struggle with all of those math word problem test questions when I was in school. Remember those? “An eastbound train leaves the station in Seattle...

Windblown trees, ducklings, bear dances & a local author fireside book review. A quiet week of reflection in camp on a remote mountain lake. Just sitting. Doing nothing. It’s not something I’m particularly good at. As anyone who knows me will attest, I’m a busy guy, always on the...

A Tornado-like wind event tears through Middle Saranac Lake Saturday, June 20th: My brother Ray watching from a safe distance as the DEC crew clears blowdown from Middle Saranac Lake’s site 63 after Ray rode out Thursday’s extreme wind event alone with his dog Pepper in the Bull Rush...

Giant Bullfrogs Trigger Memories of St. Regis Pond I was out in my Monroe Wildlife Area for my mid morning walk when a creature lurking in one of my ponds made me stop in my tracks. It was a gigantic bullfrog, at least five inches long. As it sat...

Exploring the uncharted high peaks wilderness terrain of AI. Yes, I know. A crusty old Adirondack Outlaw hack of a writer is the last person that anyone, myself included, would ever in a million millenniums expect to find penning a piece about artificial intelligence. And yet here I am....

It all began with a question from my daughter Abby last summer shortly after she purchased her new home. “Dad, do you think at some point you might be able to dig me a pond?” She’d finally closed on her new home and begun the moving in process by...

A Trail Camera Chronology Maybe it’s their rugged beauty. It might be their elusive mystique. Perhaps it’s that distinctively short bobbed cat tail. It could simply be their spots. Whatever the case, whenever a new image graces our Monroe Wildlife Area’s trail camera array, we feel blessed. There’s just...

My 2026 Arbor Day Story It’s become a Monroe Wildlife Area tradition. Each spring the month of April is tree planting season. 2026, however, I vowed would in one key way be different. With three decades of past years’ plantings established in ground, I was going to significantly cut...

Well, that’s it. Seven cedar post mounted signs installed in seven days. Now the Monroe Wildlife Area’s National Wildlife Federation “Certified Wildlife Habitat” status is official. It only took 35 years! Thirty five years spent clearing miles of tangled barbed wire and long since abandoned rusted farm debris remnants....