Adirondack Life

In the cosmos, a terrestrial truism is reversed: darkness reveals, and light obscures. The Adirondacks’ relative lack of light pollution makes it a perfect place to observe International Dark Sky Week, April 5 to 12. Go to idsw.darksky.org for night-

Hornbeck boats have been ubiquitous on Adirondack waters—and in the pages of Adirondack Life—for three decades. In January, dozens of the red-striped canoes were strapped to vehicle roofs and paraded through the central Adirondacks in tribute to Olms

Decades ago Lyon Mountain was known for producing some of the purest iron ore in the world. Now the northern Adirondack community has another claim to fame, as home to the largest birch-sap and -syrup producer in the world. And not just the largest,

It all started sometime the summer before last, when my son Nathan suggested he would come back East and we would both ski the Loppet. Held at the Nordic Center at Mount Van Hoevenberg, the Lake Placid Loppet is said to be one of the hardest distance

I hate nature.” He said it as we sat in a college classroom, our desks pushed into a circle. I had just explained that our semester would focus on reading and writing about the natural world. Nature, he said, had killed someone he knew. He immediatel

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ADIRONDACK CENTER FOR WRITING ■

In November 2007, I headed deep into the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness, using the last few hours of daylight to hunt. I’d hunted in these woods before, during the same month, only to find myself in knee-deep snow. But today it was in the mid-40s and I

Two blazes, six decades apart, helped shape the center of Westport into what we see today. Many of the town’s oldest buildings were built during the early 19th century on a bluff that rose sharply from Lake Champlain and then leveled off, allowing fo

My father’s career fashioned our lives. He was sometimes not home for months, working in places as diverse as the deserts of New Mexico or the Mount Washington Observatory, in New Hampshire. We moved at least every five years, so our surroundings wer

The scenery at Lake Lila—pristine waters and old growth forest—can take your breath away. On July 15, 1995, one of Lila’s trees nearly killed us, felled by a derecho: an intense, destructive storm of straight-line winds. I was canoe camping with two

THE LEADS HAVE ALL ENDED THE SAME—evaporating like smoke against a landscape that holds the promise of beauty and the threat of violent indifference for those who cross its threshold. Douglas Legg would be 58 years old this year. He might have had ch

Lonnie Monroe was in his early eighties and slowing down by the time he sat for these recordings. He lived out along the Saranac in a nice old clapboard house surrounded by piles of salvaged metal roofing, barn siding, two-by-fours and random boards,

It was not until I moved to Huletts Landing in 2016 and started exploring beyond my sweet little hamlet that I came to love driving Route 9. The highway twists and turns and shows the evolution of tourism. What was once the main thoroughfare through

WINNERS OF OUR ANNUAL PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST Tony Oehler snapped this grand-prize winner at one of his favorite places, the Moose Pond lean-to at the northern end of the Northville–Lake Placid Trail. He visits often—for both pleasure and as a caretaker

I got into backwoods trout fishing decades ago, after reading an article in a national outdoors magazine about a couple of state biologists who hiked into a remote pond in what is now the Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. The author told of map-and-comp

Rob Picotte, of Diamond Point, was stunned when he saw this stump by a pond in the town of Bolton. Picotte is a skier, hiker and long-distance runner who is often in the woods—beaver lodges and the surrounding tree carnage are a common sight along th