Tag: Outdoors

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...

Everything Was Going According To Plan Until the Moment We Walked Into a Pickle ********** With six adult & two grandchild appetites gracing our camp’s picnic table, a two week family camping trip in a boat access only remote leanto site is no joke. Especially when it comes to...

Camping With Grandkids A Blue Ribbon Experience ********** On behalf of those who have, and for those who have not yet had the privilege, I can confidently on good authority say, being a grandparent & camping with grandkids is an absolute HOOT! Non-stop, filled with questions, adventures, discoveries, boundary...

Just Another Day in Camp Life on Middle Saranac Lake Canoed back into Bull Rush Bay late Sunday afternoon after the windstorm. I rowed my Zen boat down from South Creek to spend a couple more days in camp with my brother. The weather was calm, muggy and warm...

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...