Almanack Contributor Cathy Pedler

Cathy Pedler is the Adirondack Mountain Club's Director of Government Relations and Conservation. Cathy has a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh, studied sustainability at Slippery Rock University, and received a M.S. in Applied Intelligence from the Institute for Intelligence Studies at Mercyhurst University. Cathy has been a board member and employee for environmental organizations and forest protection groups including, most recently, Heartwood and the Allegheny Defense Project.


Wednesday, December 2, 2015

A Return To The Pharaoh Lake Wilderness

Cathy Pedler's family on the summit of Pharoah Mountain around 1900Although I’ve been working in Albany with the Adirondack Mountain Club over the past two years, the Adirondack Park is relatively new to me.  It’s not new to my family. I am beginning to discover a long familial history with the Adirondacks.

My father recently found an old photo album documenting trips from Philadelphia in 1900 and 1903 when my great-grandmother visited Schroon Lake and hiked Pharaoh Mountain with her family. They traveled to NYC and then made their way north on the Hudson by riverboat.

This summer I traveled back to the area my family visited 115 years ago. I walked to the shore of Schroon Lake for the first time and paddled Lost and Berrymill Ponds in the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

Imagine The Adirondacks Without Hemlocks

Hemlock CathySometime after four am I woke up and left the tent. Stepping into the beams of the full moon, I walked to the shore of Polliwog Pond. Dawn was just breaking above an old hemlock stand, mist swirled above still water, and the loons began to call their old, melancholic song. In those few moments in the light of the moon and the dawn and sound of the loons I was transported to an ancient place.

The day before, I had walked from the site where I was camped with colleagues and friends on a week-long Leave No Trace course, to an an old growth forest on a height of land. Most of the trees there, and at our campsite on the shore below, were hemlock. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, November 29, 2014

Remembering Peace and Friendship

cathyblog1November 11, 2014 marked the 220th year of the Canandaigua Treaty, which was signed in 1794 by United States representative Colonel Timothy Pickering, and leaders of the Haudenosaunee Nations: the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora. The Canandaigua Treaty established peace, friendship, and respect between the Nations and the United States.

Each year leaders of these Sovereign Nations and others remembering and honoring the treaty meet at the original site of the treaty’s signing, a place called Council Rock.  Council Rock sits on the front lawn of the Ontario County Courthouse on Main Street in Canandaigua, NY. » Continue Reading.



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