The Adirondack Almanack publishes occasional guest essays from Adirondack residents, visitors, and those with an interest in the Adirondack Park. Submissions should be directed to Almanack editor Melissa Hart at editor@adirondackalmanack.com
By Jason Thurston
Over the course of 13 years I owned a total of four vans that were able to accommodate my power wheelchair. One of these vans was outfitted for me to drive. I purchased it with an inheritance from my grandmother in 2016. It took some time to get it on the road, for me to get my learners permit, and to be evaluated to determine whether my level of function as a quadriplegic was enough to safely drive.
By Holly Wolff
It is difficult to communicate to a non-singer what the first concert after 2 years of Covid means. In those years, our community has enjoyed the blessing of riding out the pandemic in a beautiful area, and the pain of losing family and friends.
Northern Lights Choir’s final rehearsal before the pandemic was on March 9, 2020- the same week a choir in Skagit County, Washington, while following all known cautions at the time, had a rehearsal that became one of the best-known super-spreader events in the choral world, with 52 of 61 choristers sickened and two deaths from the coronavirus1. As recently as May of 2022 in Boston, a performance of Britten’s War Requiem by the Boston Symphony and Tanglewood Chorus, with performers having negative tests but unmasked, caused 30 cases.4
By Steve Hoepfl
I came to the (Webb) town board in 2018 after seeing a news story and interview with a local resident of Cooperstown on the STR law they passed. In the interview they said it was a good law that it would help keep their community a place where people could and wanted to live. Since then we have had several residents served eviction notices so properties could be used as STR and locals are being out bid by as much as $70,000 for a house and when the new owner takes it over they turn it into a STR. So that covers the could part of the interview and the want part is also coming about. I have talked with many people that are rethinking their plans on retiring and staying in Old Forge and one person is to the point that they put road cones on the property line when the houses next to them are rented.
Because they are tired of the guests parking in his yard.
By Aaron Mair
It is indeed an honor to represent the Adirondack Council and region at the most significant global discussions on climate known as the 27th Conference of the Parties to the 27th Conference of Parties United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – COP27. Climate change is the most significant threat to humanity and global biodiversity.
As recent studies indicate, temperatures are rising at unsustainable rates due to humanity’s inability to control carbon and methane emission rates. It isn’t because we lack the capacity, resources, or technology. It now comes down to the 193 nations and states to act.
Hard to get there. Harder to leave. It’s how we describe Hague, located on northern Lake George. Second-home owners abound during the warm summer months, heading back to their ‘real life’ around Labor Day. After that, Hague shuts down. That’s when the only thing you can buy in town is a stamp or a house. We can get groceries in Ticonderoga, which is about 12 miles away. That’s also where the kids go to school, ever since Hague Central School shut down in 1979.
Pictured here are two photos looking north on Mountain Spring Lake, our camp near Pottersville. It looks the same my entire life and before that. Though we are on a dirt road 1/2 mile off Route 9, it is an intensely peaceful place that has the feeling of Adirondack seclusion; a cocoon of continuity and stability buffering us from the outside world. We know the reality, but the FEELING of peace is real. — Bob Meyer
Editor’s note: Share what you love about your part of the Adirondacks. What makes it special? Send your “The Place I Live” commentary to Melissa Hart: editor@adirondackalmanack.com.
by Bibi Wein
We’d been walking since dawn. The midday sun was hot, but the night we’d spent in the forest under a makeshift shelter of hemlock boughs had been cold and long. It was our second summer here. My husband and I had stepped out of our cabin for a short walk before dinner, lost our way. Sixteen hours later, we were still lost in the woods. We’d trudged uphill and down, slogged through swamps, followed old logging roads that led nowhere. Now we were on yet another narrow, winding track, dense with shrubs and wildflowers. Suddenly: a power pole. We were home! Or very nearly so.Until that moment, we hadn’t realized our own road was as wild as the forest around it.
by Judy Thomson of the Garnet Lake Conservation Association
Garnet Lake, its north end in Johnsburg and its south in Thurman, is not one of the larger Adirondack lakes nor is it one of the best known. With three-quarters of the lake surrounded by “Forever Wild” state land, fewer than 50 families live on and around it, though visitors stop by for kayaking and canoeing.
In her new book, A Gem of the Adirondacks: Garnet Lake, author Candace O’Connor—whose family is one of those 50— makes the case that this lake is one of the loveliest, with its undeveloped shoreline and its view of the majestic Crane Mountain. And in his foreword, environmentalist Bill McKibben echoes that view, calling it: “Not the biggest, not the deepest, not the clearest lake that ever was. But the sweetest.”
As an advocate for our public lands, mainly managed by the US Park Service, I wholeheartedly agree with David Treuer in giving Indigenous peoples enhanced rights and management of their lands (“Return the National Parks to the Tribes” the Atlantic, May 2021). However, I was disappointed to see the lack of coverage of this in the Adirondack Almanack, and hope to create heightened awareness, especially following Indigenous People’s Day this week, and given the significance National Parks have in many residents’ lives in the Adirondack area. Native people should be given much more responsibility, management, and profit from National Parks, and as such, I call on the National Parks Service to put this control into the hands of Indigenous peoples, and you, as readers, to contact NPS and push them to do so.
Latest News Headlines
Latest News Headlines
The Adirondack Almanack is a public forum dedicated to promoting and discussing current events, history, arts, nature and outdoor recreation and other topics of interest to the Adirondacks and its communities
We publish commentary and opinion pieces from voluntary contributors, as well as news updates and event notices from area organizations. Contributors include veteran local writers, historians, naturalists, and outdoor enthusiasts from around the Adirondack region. The information, views and opinions expressed by these various authors are not necessarily those of the Adirondack Almanack or its publisher, the Adirondack Explorer.
General inquiries about the Adirondack Almanack should be directed to editor Melissa Hart.
To advertise on the Adirondack Almanack, or to receive information on rates and design, please click here.
Catch up on all your Adirondack
news, delivered weekly to your inbox
Help us keep bringing you the Adirondack information you value.
Email
Twitter
RSS
Facebook
The power of giving
By Rich Kroes
Giving back to the people and places we love is one of the most sustainable and reliable ways we can strengthen communities in the Adirondack region. When we support our friends and neighbors through generosity, we can leverage opportunities to improve quality of life and create resiliency that helps us get through the hard times.
Adirondack Foundation is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, and it embodies that spirit of giving back. From providing emergency relief to investing in long-term strategies, the Foundation has worked tirelessly to become a lasting source of philanthropy for our region.
Over the last decade, I’ve had the privilege to serve our communities on Adirondack Foundation’s Board of Trustees, including five years as its chair. It seems like yesterday that I was sitting in one of the locker rooms at the 1980 Olympic Rink with former Trustee Vinny McClelland when he encouraged me to join. He told me then that he thought I would like it, and he was right — I have loved it.
» Continue Reading.