“Miss Perkins, can I get seconds?” asked the kindergartner, raising her hand.
June 2020
Seeing Clearly
Ten o’clock on a Friday night we rode the escalator up, out of Pennsylvania Station in New York City. We’d made the two and a half–hour drive from our home in the Adirondacks to the Amtrak station outside of Albany, then another two-plus hours into Manhattan. We’d hurried from our train, packs on our backs, my daughter clutching my arm as we wove through the crush of people, many of them hockey fans in their teams’ jerseys, amped up after a game in Madison Square Garden.
This trip was part of an early birthday celebration—Big Apple–style—for my nine-year-old. We were on our way to a friend’s apartment, our weekend base camp for excursions around the city.
Cast in Iron?
There are two historical markers outside the Six Nations Indian Museum, in Onchiota, in Franklin County. Both engrave the importance of the Haudenosaunee to the history of this area in rock, and were erected by the Akwesasne Mohawk Counselor Organization.
Fast Times on the Hudson
Our raft left the Indian River behind and entered the Hudson three miles below the Lake Abanakee Dam, outside Indian Lake, and I reflected on how deeply you can absorb a landscape, especially if you traverse it repeatedly for years.
Freedom Summer
The son of an Adirondack pack peddler once told me his father knew the woods by memories of kindness, or its absence. From this farmhouse the young immigrant could hope for a seat at a kitchen table, maybe a plate of something warm.
The Property
Down a half-mile dirt road sits our 1.1 acre of semi-tamed wilderness. Thirteen years ago, before the chainsaw and wood splitter began their work, our lot on Little Clear Pond was a poplar and pine jungle of scraggly trees.













