Posts Tagged ‘Lake Champlain-Champlain Valley’

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Fort Ticonderoga’s Garden and Landscape Symposium

nardozzi-0016aThe King’s Garden at Fort Ticonderoga is presenting its second Garden and Landscape Symposium: “Enhancing Life through Gardening” on Saturday, April 13. The day-long symposium, geared for both beginning and experienced gardeners, provides insights from garden experts who live and garden in upstate New York and Vermont. This springtime event takes place in the Deborah Clarke Mars Education Center and is open by pre-registration only.

The walled King’s Garden was originally designed in 1921 by leading landscape architect Marian Coffin. The formal elements – a reflecting pool, manicured lawn and hedges, and brick walls and walkways – are softened by a profusion of annuals and perennials, carefully arranged by color and form. Heirloom flowers and modern cultivars are used to recreate the historic planting scheme. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, January 26, 2013

Lost Brook Dispatches: Surveying the Unknown

TheodoliteHow does a surveyor traipse into the woods and come out with accurate heights, positions, distances and property lines for artifacts in the middle of nowhere?  It’s magic, of course, but it is mathematical magic that has been well understood for a good two-thousand years.  In last week’s Dispatch I covered the core of that mathematics, which is the simple but incredible marriage between proportions and triangles.

I finished  by presenting  a fact little understood by the typical person: because of this mathematics you can measure the distance to anything in the world by simply pointing to it.  No direct measurement is needed.  This week in my continuing series on the magic of surveying I’m going to show how it is done, finishing with an Adirondack example of note. » Continue Reading.


Sunday, January 20, 2013

In The Champlain Valley, A Brawl of Birders

common pochardNoting the long line of cars parked on the shoulder of the road in front of DAR Park in Addison, Vermont, I decided to pull onto the opposite shoulder, only to discover, too late, that said shoulder consisted of a five-foot-deep snowbank into which the right side of  my car promptly sank.  I tensed up expecting the car to roll onto its passenger side but, mirabile dictu, it stayed on its tires albeit at a forty-five-degree angle. I got out to investigate, sunk in up to my waist and then struggled back onto the road, my jacket now festooned with a phalanx of burrs the size of Concorde grapes.

The dashboard thermometer read minus three degrees. I pulled my wife out of the car, and we simultaneously concluded that we needed to get towed out of this mess and that we might as well go and try to see the bird before starting in with AAA and waiting for a tow truck.  So what I drove the car into a ditch. » Continue Reading.


Thursday, January 10, 2013

CATS Protects 319 Acres in Willsboro

The owners of 319 acres of farmland and woods in the Champlain Valley have taken steps to protect the property in perpetuity and open it to the public for hiking and cross-country skiing.

Dick and Leanna DeNeale donated a conservation easement on their property to Champlain Area Trails (CATS), a nonprofit organization that has created twenty-three miles of hiking trails in the Champlain Valley since 2009. » Continue Reading.


Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Emancipation Anniversary: A Local Grassroots Victory

What follows is a guest essay by Peter Slocum, a volunteer and board member with the North Country Underground Railroad Historical Association, based in Ausable Chasm.

Almost lost in the recent “Fiscal Cliff” spectacle was the anniversary marking one of the major positive milestones of our history — President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

On January 1, 1863, some 3 million people held as slaves in the Confederate states were declared to be “forever free.” Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Most of those 3 million people were still subjugated until the Union Army swept away the final Confederate opposition more than two years later. And slavery was not abolished in the entire United States until after the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution passed in 1865.
» Continue Reading.


Saturday, December 15, 2012

Great Gifts: Kayaker’s Guide to Lake Champlain

A Kayaker’s Guide to Lake Champlain: Exploring the New York, Vermont, and Quebec Shores (Blackdome Press, 2009) is an authoritative effort by Catherine Frank and Margaret Holden. The guide includes detailed directions, information on launch sites, 54 maps, GPS coordinates, 93 photographs, safety and comfort tips, a wealth of historical and geological information, and directories of paddling outfitters, organizations and clubs.

50 different watery paths of adventure divided into eight sections covering the Champlain Islands, the Inland Sea, Missisquoi Bay, Broad Lake North, Malletts Bay, Broad Lake East, Broad Lake West, and South Bay, provide an intimate, cove by cove, island by island exploration of America’s other great lake, celebrating the 400th anniversary of Samuel de Champlain’s epochal journey of discovery in 1609. » Continue Reading.


Monday, December 3, 2012

Pearl Harbor and the Battle of Plattsburgh

The anniversary of the Battle of Plattsburgh passed recently (it was fought September 11, 1814), and this week, the anniversary of another famous American battle is noted: the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. Within the military, both battles are held in the highest regard as critical moments in American history, and oddly enough, the two have an unusual link of sorts.

I discovered this several years ago while working on one of my earlier publications, The Battle of Plattsburgh Question & Answer Book. It’s not earth-shattering stuff, but instead more of an “I’ll be darned!” moment that happened during research.

The book’s unusual format led me to several similar discoveries. I wanted to cover the entire story of Plattsburgh’s famous battle, but in a way that might be enjoyed by children as well as adults. When my children were young, I often made a game of things to keep their minds active and teach them when they didn’t realize they were being taught. » Continue Reading.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

“The Noble Train Begins” at Fort Ticonderoga

Discover the story of Henry Knox’s noble train of artillery at Fort Ticonderoga’s upcoming living history event, Saturday, December 1, from 10 am – 4 pm.  The event will feature a program highlighting Henry Knox’s arrival to Fort Ticonderoga and recreate the beginning of the epic feat that ultimately forced the British evacuation from Boston on March 17, 1776.

“Visitors to the ‘The Noble Train Begins’ living history event will meet Henry Knox, the unassuming Boston book seller whose physical and mental might was first tested with the epic feat of moving more than 14 mortars, 43 cannon, and other artillery to Boston in the winter of 1776,” said Stuart Lilie, Fort Ticonderoga’s Director of Interpretation. “See man and horse power in action as the artillery is selected for the journey. Meet the soldiers left to guard this frontier outpost as the first winter of the Revolutionary War takes hold.”
» Continue Reading.


Saturday, November 10, 2012

Lost Brook Dispatches: Three More Economic Strategies

I have been in the middle of a series of arguments for building the Adirondack economy by promoting the region as a premier wilderness destination, something it is not widely known as now.  A wild Adirondack Image will resonate in a much different way than current conceptions of the region bring to mind.  It will become more unique, more valuable and more appropriate for answering the large and growing national demand for wild places.

The first two strategies of my five point economic proposal argued that a wild Adirondack Image can be a powerful tool in promoting wilderness tourism and recreation.  Now I will move onto three additional strategies for leveraging a wild Adirondacks

» Continue Reading.


Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Dave Gibson: Iroquois Peace And Defending The Law

Recently I was asked to present a talk about the life and careers of Paul Schaefer, the 20th century Adirondack conservation coalition leader. The location for my talk was Niskayuna, where beginning in the late 1920s into the early 1980s Paul built and restored hundreds of homes, including his own, out of natural, recycled materials – stone, slate and timbers from old buildings then facing the wrecking ball. The host for the lecture was the Niskayuna Town Historian, fitting because Paul was also intensely interested by American history.

A healthy collection of American Heritage can be found on the shelves of his Adirondack cabin. During my talk I mentioned that Paul and his siblings, growing up after 1910, were constantly outside, and among their outdoor pursuits were days exploring for arrowheads and other implements of the Mohawk, a member of the Great League of the Haudenosaunee. I then described the outlines of Paul’s remarkably successful career defending and extending the wilderness of the Adirondacks, from its wild rivers, to its highest peaks and the wildlife rich valleys threatened from inundation by large dams. Some of this history is found in Paul’s first book, Defending the Wilderness (1989, Syracuse University Press). » Continue Reading.


Wednesday, October 10, 2012

APA: Land Classification, Mirror Lake, GIS, Invasives

The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) will hold its regularly scheduled monthly meeting at its Headquarters in Ray Brook, NY on Thursday, October 11 and Friday, October 12, 2012. Included on the agenda are set-back and height variances for a project on Mirror Lake, an extension of the Barton Mine wind power tower weather monitoring stations in Johnsburg, an update on the status of Asian clam eradication permits, a discussion of the vulnerability of at-risk species to climate change, and informational presentations on the state land classification process, the use of GIS for recording public trail use data, and invasive species in Lake George and Lake Champlain.
» Continue Reading.


Saturday, September 29, 2012

Battle of Plattsburgh: Victory in the North Country

This week we finish the tale started two weeks ago, the story of when the North Country saved the Republic.  Like all great stories of war this one has its heroes.  The naval exploits of one of them, Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough, are fairly well known, credited among students of war if not the general public.

The story of another, Brigadier General Alexander Macomb, is all but unknown.  In this final installment I will introduce you to a third gentleman, a lesser player in the story to be sure, but one who happens to be one of the most iconic characters in Adirondack lore and who represents the gallantry of all the militia, the citizen-soldiers who helped turn the tide. » Continue Reading.


Sunday, September 23, 2012

Cabin Life: A View of Vermont

I’m a traitor.  I went to Vermont to go hiking this week.  A friend and I hiked Elmore Mountain to an old fire tower.  The fire tower was open to the public even though it was decommissioned, which is a big change from New York.  Most of the fire towers here have had their first two flights of stairs removed, with the small, obligatory “Warning” sign attached somewhere.

When I went over Sunday afternoon on the Port Kent ferry, the overwhelming view of both Vermont and the Adirondacks was still green.  The shoreline of Lake Champlain on both sides of the lake showed little sign of the cooling temperatures of mid-September. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, September 22, 2012

Battle of Plattsburgh: Alexander Macomb

Last week I wrote about the significance of September 11th, being a date that illustrates the surprising, narrow and often untold margins by which history unfolds.  I wrote of two fateful events that occurred on that date: the terrorist attacks of eleven years ago and the Battle of Plattsburgh in 1814.  I left that tale unfinished.

When last we left the story the fate of the nation lay in the hands of a passel of barely trained regulars, invalids, soldiers unfit due to dysentery and typhoid, teenagers and sporadic militia, many of whom didn’t arrive in time for the battle and many of whom changed their minds as things got dicey.  This less-than-glamorous force faced upwards of ten-thousand battle-hardened British troops poised to invade from Canada.  It should have been hopeless for the Americans: there was not a chance that the British force could have been defeated had Sir George Prevost, the Military Commander for North America, prosecuted his invasion without letup or hesitation. » Continue Reading.


Saturday, September 15, 2012

Battle of Plattsburgh:
When the North Country Saved the Republic

This week is the anniversary of a horrible attack upon the United States.  At the time it occurred I was working in a field related to policing and intelligence.  As I watched the agonizing drama unfold along with so many riveted Americans I could not have foreseen how much my world, how much everyone’s world, would change, how much was truly at stake.  I have many ties to New York City and at the time almost all of my closest family lived in Manhattan.   In November of that year I went to the city and was pulled to the raw, still-smoldering ruins of ground zero.  I’ll never forget it. » Continue Reading.



Wait! Before you go:

Catch up on all your Adirondack
news, delivered weekly to your inbox