Category: The North Country

Author’s Note: I penned the first drafts of this story as a poem in the summer of 1983, while working out of Lake Colden’s Interior Headquarters as a trail hand on the NYSDEC trail crew, during one the two summers I served as assistant to Lake Colden’s caretaker. I...

I’ve got some nutty 2025 news thatI have not previously shared. My 15 year wildlife food source tree diversification program has finally, this year, produced its 1st tangible results. In the form of my 1st ever hazelnut crop! When Robin & I 1st purchased our home over three decades...

A Whitetail Deer Hunter’s Tale It was finally here. The day I’d been waiting for. Opening day of 2025’s Southern zone rifle season. When I was a boy growing up in Saranac Lake, the Southern Tier was shotgun only. They had no rifle hunting season. As a result, two...

Little did I know that what began as a three hour tour would end up as an epic adventure, leaving me stranded on… It all began innocently enough, taking advantage of summer 2025’s dry weather to reconstruct my Swamp Pond’s beaver blown outlet channel & dam with one sunny...

One Man’s Journey Backward Through Time Who else besides me grew up watching the morning cartoon “Jonny Quest”? Dr. Quest, Race Bannon, Jonny himself, Hadji, and of course, their dog Bandit. From remote jungle to sea floor, spanning the globe on one peril filled adventure of discovery after another....

With a month long string of record breaking temperatures, low water extremes, droughtlike conditions, and a fire hazard driven state wide burn ban, as I climbed from my old friend the Saranac River’s waters after an unseasonably warm October afternoon bottle dive, I couldn’t help but wonder. Was this...

Fall Foliage, BBQ Chicken, Broken Bridges & an Ampersand SOS My wife Robin & I celebrated our 35th wedding anniverary in our traditional way, with a day trip to take in the fall foliage in and around my heart’s home of Saranac Lake. Due to life circumstances beyond our...

Climate Change, Chainsaws & a Camping Chronology This piece begins with a question: How many folks out there have spent ten days or more at a single stretch with family in a remotely pitched ADK camp? I’m not talking about “going into camp”, sitting in hunting camp playing cards...

Congratulations! And welcome. You have now hereby officially entered my completely unauthorized Adirondack Outlaw writer’s social experiment. As you will quite soon discover, this story has absolutely nothing to do with barenaked ladies, bananas, or ice cream. No, this story instead actually chronicles my ongoing efforts to bolster the...

Living the Wildlife ********** The prologue to this story is actually the epilogue to another. It was fall 2024, mid-October. I had just returned home from my annual Southern Tier crossbow deer hunting trip with my son. I’d expended all of my time, money & energy through 2024’s spring...