The Adirondacks will have a starring role on the afternoon of April 8, 2024, when the new moon threads between the Earth and its closest star, totally blocking out the sun. Most of the park will fall within the “path of totality,” the only zone to experience the full effect of this once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event.
“Every day Uma would slowly move around the property,” says Joanne. So she’d strap on snowshoes and follow the moose at a safe distance. “You could hear the sound of her big teeth chewing balsam and birch branches. She was just so sweet and her mane was so pretty and I would just stare at her and think, I can’t believe I’m looking at a moose.”
I recently bought some land in the Adirondacks. Who didn’t? Or at least who didn’t think of doing such a thing during these last few years of pandemic and catastrophe?
What if you encounter a bear on the trail? What if Yogi’s using your bird feeder as a snack bar? Now there’s a clearinghouse for all things black bear.
When you’re 1,200 pounds with a set of horns fit for an oilman’s Cadillac, temperament is everything.
The spring thaw also brings warmer waters, which happen to be the preferred habitat of an invasive aquatic species that’s sparked a vigorous debate on Lake George. It’s pitted lake protection organizations against one another and fueled a lawsuit against the state-appointed Adirondack Park Agency (APA) over how to handle it.
Yellow-green sparks shimmer among shadowy pines overlooking my backyard on the outskirts of Saranac Lake. It is a warm June evening, and the humid air hangs heavy with the fragrance of mountain maple blossoms and last year’s fallen pine needles. More such flashes beckon from the quiet tree-lined road that circles Moody Pond, and I follow.
Why should you care about bats? “Besides the fact they’re cute,” says bat researcher Vanessa Rojas, assistant professor at SUNY-ESF Ranger School, based in Wanakena, “the ecosystem services they provide are critical. Bats eat forest defoliators and other pests. I can’t imagine what our forests would be like without them.”
Some night this summer when the sky is clear, pick up a pair of binoculars, step away from the fire pit and open your mind to celestial high-drama echoing down to us from the Babylonians, the Greeks, and from the phantasmic beginning of life and time itself.
I learned to skate on thin ice with my grandfather. “Tickly bender ice,” he called it.
I know I’m not the only one who took on chickens as a pandemic project. Tomatoes and raspberries too. But the big one, for me, was making my own maple syrup.
North Country weather has always been a wild ride of ups and downs, and climate change hasn’t made it any easier to predict—just ask the loons.
Lost hikers, splintered bones and wildfires—a forest ranger reflects on more than two decades of coming to the rescue. Plus the oldest tavern in the Adirondacks, a trip through James Bond’s Lake George, and new energy in Schroon Lake.
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