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I saw a friend at the farmer’s market the other day who asked if we still paddled. “Sure, three of us went out Friday,” I said. She remembered that I wrote about hiring guides to help our group of aging canoe buddies continue to enjoy the waters of the Adirondacks. Sometimes younger friends come with us to help schlep our boats.
When we are without such help, we select trips that have shallow beaches to launch our solo canoes, do not require carries from one pond to the next, and lack beaver dams and other obstructions we have to maneuver over and around.
Not this time, though.
We are blessed to have quality news outlets in the Adirondacks – local newspapers and magazines, social media, and including, of course, the Adirondack Almanack and Explorer. These resources are place-based and provide us with the current news and events. They also serve as archival records for future generations.
Since Peter Hornbeck died on December 26 social media has been flooded with remembrances, including the 
Our Covid-19 socially distanced excursion last week took us to the Debar Tract on NYS Route 30, north of Paul Smith’s College and south of Malone. I wanted to see this area for myself after reading about 
How to celebrate a birthday on a chilly, rainy, late autumn day during Covid-19? Visit the waterfalls on the Grass River in the Tooley Pond Tract, of course.
I have such gratitude for the Adirondack woods and waters during this Covid-19 pandemic. Paddling my solo canoe is the best. When I’m with friends, we easily keep our social distance as we float on the open waters and maneuver up a stream bed. 
“I’m from Canajoharie, the others from Albany and Catskill,” a women said when I saw her with two friends on Boreas Ponds last week.
As an advocate for quiet waters, on August 18, 2018, I joined with 36 canoes and guide boats on a Canoe-In to Weller Pond and Little Weller Pond to lobby for no motors on these pristine bodies of water (cul-de-sacs of the Saranac Chain of Lakes.) As we paddled toward the channel to Weller Pond nine powerboats lined the shore of nearby Hungry Bay. We chanted “All we want is 2%: You have 98,” referencing the amount of the waters open to motors on these lakes. The entire 17.5- mile route from Lower Saranac to Upper Saranac Lake allows for the unlimited use of motorboats.
We paddlers are impatient to be on the water now that the lakes, ponds, and rivers are becoming free of ice. One paddling enthusiast recently shared photos of his kayak in the snow in Lake Placid, on the path from Averyville Road to the Chubb River, with a view of the open waters of the Chubb.
“Couldn’t the Adirondack Park be considered an Intentional Community?” I asked Ma’ikwe Ludwig at her presentation November 1st at the Paul Smith’s College Visitor Interpretive Center. She said she did not know enough about the Park to address the possibility, but a few of the 40 students, professors, and community attendees thought the idea was intriguing. “Many of us live in our communities ‘intentionally’,” said a woman from Saranac Lake. “I try to live cooperatively with my neighbors, look out for our joint welfare, and live responsibly for the planet by keeping my carbon footprint at a minimum.”
“We just completed our nature therapy training in May,” Helene Gibbons said when I met her last week at Origin Coffee in Saranac Lake. “We learned how to guide people to open their senses to the forest, to become immersed in the sights, smells, sounds and textures of the natural world.” As Helene is a yoga teacher, I saw how she could apply similar principles to meandering through the woods. She’s been guiding students through yoga poses and leading them into meditation for years.
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