December 2022

Hanukkah Latkes How-to

The traditional Hanukkah latke is made with white potatoes—the most inexpensive food common in central and eastern Europe, where most Ashkenazi Jews made their home for centuries—and a minimal amount of matzo meal or flour added.

Wayne Failing: Master of Fun

Solidly built and shrouded by bushy hair, beard and dark sunglasses, Wayne Failing looked like a modern mountain man. He pulled a whitewater raft behind his pickup truck, with supplies for three days on the upper Hudson, and efficiently outfitted and loaded the boat and us, his two passengers.

Service Stations: American Legions in the Adirondacks

My earliest memories of the local American Legion—Post 1619 in West Plattsburgh, less than a mile from our house—were of watching slow-pitch softball under bug-swarmed lights on muggy summer nights.

From Cold River to the North Pole

For 33 years Noah John Rondeau, the best-known Adirondack hermit of the 20th century, lived in a crude cluster of huts and shanties along the Cold River northeast of Long Lake.

Yvona Fast’s Hanukkah Latkes

As a young Jewish girl in Poland, Dana Fast’s non-religious, thoroughly assimilated family didn’t celebrate Hanukkah, even before Germany invaded the country in 1939. Still, they were forced into the horrid conditions of the Warsaw ghetto, as she recounts in her memoir, My Nine Lives, cowritten with her daughter, Yvona, and rereleased earlier this year as Good in the Midst of Evil.

Photographer Pamela Underhill Karaz Captures the Wonders of Wildlife

Just after Christmas some years ago, a coyote emerged from a stand of evergreens on Pamela Underhill Karaz’s property near Barneveld. Wildlife sightings on Karaz’s 40 acres in the southwestern Adirondacks were nothing new, but she grabbed her camera and watched as the animal approached a stuffed toy her golden retrievers had left in the driveway.

Wild Turkey: Dannemora’s Thanksgiving Tradition

Planning a table-groaning Thanksgiving meal for an army—while working around any number of schedules and eating habits—sometimes feels like a losing game of 3D chess.

Butternut Squash and Leek Gratin

Tired of the same old Thanksgiving side dishes? Mix it up with this staff favorite from food writer Patsy Jamieson, who created a farm-to-table feast for our November/December 2007 issue.

Late-Season Riding at the Ausable Chasm Bike Trails

And then there are the mountain-bike trails he has spent more than a decade creating near Ausable Chasm, all bearing the names of classic heavy-metal bands and tunes. “That’s what I grew up with,” he explained after we took a ride on Blackened. “I was a kid in New Jersey in the ’80s. I was a huge metal-head.”

On Sale Now

December 2025

Pulling back the curtain on the rough-and-tumble world of backcountry guides, plus Old Forge’s beloved Strand Theatre, the life of a master woodworker, Santas on the slopes and more!