Tag: ADK Life

When I was a young boy growing up, due to my father’s career, our family moved a great deal. The Mayflower moving van people knew us by name. By the time I began fifth grade in Saranac Lake, we had moved ten times. I’d been the new kid in...

Far More Than Wrinkled Brown Lines on a Map As I put pen to paper it pains me to know that in today’s cell phone technology driven GPS “land navigation” environment, many folks are reading the title & thinking to themselves: “Contour lines? What’s this guy yammering about now?...

A Simple Coincidence? Or a Legendary Baseball Great’s Ghostly From Beyond the Grave Greeting? ********** October, 1920 A Baseball Legend Retires After a career spanning 14 illustrious Major League seasons, 3 National League Pennants, the 1912 Chalmers Award as the Senior Circuit’s best player, the 1915 NL batting title,...

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...

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...

MIDDLE SARANAC LAKE EDITION It was an early Saturday morning in the middle of July. My brother Ray & I were camped in our usual Middle Saranac Lake Bull Rush Bay lean-to spot. I arose from lean-to embraced slumber, stretched, and went down to the lake to inhale the...

There’s a spot on the deacon’s log Near the end of the lean-to Where I like to sit Soaking in the rising sun’s first warming rays Listening to our propane fueled pot percolate As I watch morning coffee’s slow drip Contemplating today’s yesterdays and tomorrows Breathing in that fresh...

Whether folks call them jackknives, penknives or pocketknives, there was a time not too far past when any Adirondack Outlaw worth his salt didn’t consider himself fully dressed in the morning without one. How many folks out there still carry a pocketknife? I grew up with a knife in...

An Updated Look at the Adirondack Rail Trail Including a sneak peek at renovations underway inside the Rail Trail’s historic train depot! (I am, after all, still an Adirondack Outlaw. Gotta keep up my street cred.) Since I was in town for the weekend, I thought I’d trek a...

An On-Site Saranac Lake Upper Locks Construction Project Update As I packed, planned and prepped for a weekend trip to Saranac Lake to undertake some personal agenda items and attend my best friend’s father’s funeral, the word on the street was that the NYSDEC’s tentative opening of Saranac Lake’s...