Wild Goose Chase

by Dick Monroe | April 2018

Illustration by Annie Carbonneau-Leclerc

A memorable rescue—or robbery?—on Middle Saranac

First light in camp is my favorite awakening. Zipper alarm clocks: my son R. J.’s sleeping bag, then the tent flap, twice. A yawn, a stretch, one half-open eye, breathing the morning from snuggled half-sleep. Snapping twigs, the strike of a match, a crackling fire. Coolers opening, that Coleman stove hiss. R. J. rummaging in the food bag, laying claim, no doubt, to the last powdered donut on his way down to shore. The rhythm and creak as oars splash—then silence once more. I smile. What was once me is now him. A young man alone with his thoughts, off to fish the lake’s early calm.

My morning begins as each morning does, with this prayer: “Thank you, Lord, for yesterday, today, and each and every day of life. Amen.” Then I unzip my bag, don camp shoes and hoodie, and exit our tent to shake off the chill by the fire.

Cancer is humbling. With R. J. off fishing, and the coffee now perked, I make preparations to take on the day—no easy task. No tongue, half a jaw, I barely recognize what remains of the face in the mirror. I’ve seen death’s doorstep. Twice. I eat through a tube in my stomach. I haven’t tasted human food in nearly nine years. Breathing and swallowing are primary concerns. But I am here. In this moment.

Simple things allow me these nights in camp. A reclining chair so I don’t choke in my sleep. Gravity feeding bags to tree-branch hang my homemade concoction of prescription formula, fortified with a generous dose of java and sugar. Camp coffee may not be prescribed, but it connects me to life, to something human that was. My docs were all brilliant. They kept me alive. Now it’s my job to live.

On this particular trip, as usual, my brother Ray had ferried me to our Middle Saranac campsite on Dad’s old Starcraft. During the trip upriver, we passed a man and his wife in kayaks. The man’s kayak was set up to accommodate his wheelchair. When I see others who overcome, I’m inspired. I’m not alone on these waters.

While I finish my coffee concoction by the fire, Ray rustles up breakfast and R. J. returns to regale us with fish tales. Then we tidy up camp and head off to gather more wood. By the time we finish replenishing the woodpile, noon is upon us.

Ray has errands in town. After we run him to the Ampersand walk-in, R. J. and I find ourselves with the Starcraft, an afternoon, and no chores. We go fishing.

There are a lot of good spots to fish on Middle Saranac, but our favorite is on the river above the locks. I drive and troll while R. J. casts with poppers along the weed beds. We meander slowly downstream.

As we near our destination, I cut the engine so we can drift. Several cedar spurs jut out from the shoreline above and below water. Framed by lily pads, with overhanging maples, it’s a great spot to pick up a nice bass or pike.

On this day, however, there’s a commotion ahead. A mother Can-ada goose and three goslings are raising a ruckus near shore, foiling our planned casts. As they honk and flap their wings, we speculate that momma is teaching her kids how to fly.

But something is not quite right. The mother and two of the goslings splash their way through the weeds, but one poor gosling is getting left behind. It appears to be stuck, honking and flapping to no avail.

“Hey, R. J.! That one’s leg must be caught in some fishing line or something,” I say. “I’ll bring the boat around towards shore and we’ll see if we can’t get that poor bird untangled. Grab a canoe paddle and watch out for logs.”

We ground the boat in the shallows and disembark. Armed with a paddle and a boathook, we begin gently probing around the desperate gosling, trying to catch the invisible fishing line.

While momma and siblings watch from the far shore, I approach the halfling goose. It’s clearly exhausted now, lying with its wings half-spread on the water, giving an occasional tug, flap or weak honk.

I stab the boathook into the water right under the bird’s leg and tug, hoping to catch the line from underneath. Unexpectedly, my boathook grabs something heavy.

“I don’t think it’s fishing line. I think she’s somehow got her leg caught in a log,” I say. Just then, I feel something give way. “Wait a minute—HOLY CRAP!” At that moment, the whole bottom seems to rise from the swirling mud in front of me and I suddenly understand. It isn’t a log or fishing line, but a giant snapping turtle. It has the gosling’s leg in its jaws, my boathook around its neck, and my bare feet beneath it.

Unhappy with the sudden turn of events, the snapper releases the gosling and disappears in the murk. Fearing imminent turtle counterattack, R. J. and I skedaddle back to the relative safety of the boat.

Free at last, the gosling makes for the far side of the river, but momma and siblings have already fled. Somewhat stunned, R. J. and I sit there for a moment, collecting our thoughts. The gosling seems OK—alive, at least, and mobile. We have all toes intact. The prehistorically huge turtle is nowhere to be seen. We shove back from the mud and head for camp.

On the way upstream, we encounter momma and siblings. In a show of international goodwill, I point downstream and address Madame Goose in my best classroom French: “Pardon, Madame, mais votre enfant est là!” My instincts are right—it’s a French-Canadian goose family. They turn and head back downstream.

When my brother Ray returns to camp with my nephew Forrest in tow, we relate our adventure over hunter’s stew. A lively fireside debate ensues. Were we heroes or villains? R. J. and I put forth our defense. Forrest vigorously argues the snapping turtle’s case. In the minds of some campfire jurists, R. J. and I are now felons who owe one turtle a foie gras buffet.

Regardless, that rescue (sorry Forrest) is a shared moment with my son. It’s ours now, to keep.

That night, as I retire to my reclining camp chair, I once again recite my prayer: “Thank you, Lord, for yesterday, today, and each and every day of life. Amen.”

And to those who battle with cancer, those in wheelchair kayaks, those who struggle to find a reason to face the day, I say stay strong, keep the faith, live in the moment.

You just never know, you may someday be called upon to rescue a gosling from a snapping turtle.

A version of this article originally appeared in the April 2018 issue of Adirondack Life. Subscribe now to receive eight issues per year.

Every weekend they stream north from the interstate, the adventurers and explorers of the Adirondacks, their vessels piled with skis and snowboards, kayaks and bikes. Off Exit 23 they’ll stand impatiently at the traffic lights in Warrensburg, and make pit stops for gas and supplies, before turning onto Route 28, full speed ahead.

Twenty miles later, at 60 miles per hour, they’ll enter the bypass that slices past North Creek. Down the long hill to the valley below, their hopes fixed on the waiting lakes and trails ahead, few will notice the two signs pointing to the Business District, or the shadowed steeples of Main Street mixed behind the maples and birches.

Fewer still might see the small entrance on the left, or the only sign marking it, a cairn of granite with a brown and blue plaque above, Ski Bowl Park. A high dune juts up against the entrance, the north edge of the Bowl, and runs along the bypass, cutting off any view of the base.

Before Gore and Whiteface, before the bypass and the interstate, the North Creek Ski Bowl was one of the preeminent ski areas in the country. By the mid-1930s, thousands were arriving every weekend, not by car, but on snow trains, the Friday overnight from Grand Central. It was the site of the first ski tow in the state, the first ski patrol in the country. And even after the war, when the snow trains stopped unloading, it was still the best town park a kid could want, with skating and toboggan slides, and an overhead lift that topped the ridge.

In 1964, when the Gore Mountain Ski Center opened on the other side of the next ridge, the business owners imagined a windfall rushing down to the village. In that first year the skiers still had to drive into North Creek and circle by the old Bowl before climbing the access road to Gore. But the bypass cut through in ’65, whisking the skiers up without a hint of the history below. It sealed the town from the summer crowds as well, slowly suffocating the small shops, restaurants and hotels.

It also laid down a 30-foot wall of asphalt between the villagers and their Bowl, suffering it a long and quiet death. By the turn of this century the lift had been torn down and the historic trails overgrown. That year the old ski hut, built by the WPA in 1936, burned to the ground. The Ski Bowl’s primary value to its townspeople was as a sand mine for the highway department, and the road that took you to the dump.

It appeared as if much of the town’s park would disappear into the six-million-acre state park surrounding her, the trails fading into the ridge, one more in a wilderness of ridges. But the best story here is how that decline has been arrested, and then reversed. You can’t see much from the bypass, but those in the know are now slowing down and making that left turn.

They’re coming to ski those trails of history, as well as some of the most challenging new terrain at Gore Mountain. And they’re coming for the new Nordic Skiing Center, which in three years has evolved from a high-school practice track to the site this March of the U16 New England Championships. When the snow melts, they’re here for the expanding network of mountain-bike trails, designed by the former ranger in these parts, Steve Ovitt, and maintained by the new nonprofit Upper Hudson Trails Alliance. The Bowl is back, a partnership of state and local resources, bound by the tireless efforts of those who never left it.

Time of the Tick

Late last fall I was sick in bed, so feverish my skin hurt. It wasn’t influenza, my doctor had assured me, but another respiratory virus that, with time, would run its course. I have two young kids; for several days my husband assumed all childcare responsibilities, which included some kind of daily adventure. During my sickest, I heard my phone ping. I reached for it on the bedside table and studied the photograph my husband had texted me: my kids in smiles and with walking sticks and driftwood trophies they must have found along the Ausable River. I recognized the swampy meadow and the mountain silhouette—they were downriver from the Jay covered bridge, likely following herd paths marched flat by local deer.

I felt a wave of worry.

Ticks.

Salt of the Earth

Ask any chef the most essential weapon in their culinary arsenal and they’ll likely mention salt. Though rarely the star ingredient, it has the power to make or break a dish.

When Andrea Lautenschuetz chose Salt of the Earth as the name of her Lake Placid restaurant, which opened last March in a renovated house on Sentinel Avenue, it was partly in tribute to that workhorse of the spice rack. But it was also representative of the Buffalo native’s blue-collar background—her father was an electrician, her mother taught typing—and her conviction that good food shouldn’t be reserved for the elite.

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