Adirondacks as a Culture

I used to think about the Adirondack Park as a wilderness, categorized by its mountain ranges, vast forests and other topographical features. However, after starting this class I have expanded my notion of the park to include not just its geographical features, but the culture it represents. Although the park is not densely populated now, nor has it ever been, the park always seems to have its own unique culture. The people who live in the Adirondacks are in some ways typical, but in many ways they live a lifestyle of rugged individualism that I argue not even the west can capture. 

While the landscapes of most of what once was the Wild West got filled in by the steady advance of people away from the East Coast, the Adirondack state park has retained a certain wildness about it. It seems to me that at least in the past, the Adirondacks attracted two types of people: the extremely stern minded and the extremely desperate. Amongst the determined was John Brown. He used the abundance of land to try and establish a farming community of black men and gave each of them enough land so they were eligible to vote. Although he failed and although he was one of the more extreme examples of the kind of people who settled in the Adirondacks, his determination still exemplifies the kind of will necessary for someone to survive in such an un-forgiving area. He also represents the anti-slavery movement that occurred in the Adirondacks. While most of his white neighbors were unwilling to help runaway slaves, John Brown and others facilitated the development of an underground railroad through the park. The escaped slaves represented the other type of person who inhabited the park: the extremely desperate. With the strict enforcement of the fugitive slave act, slaves, although to a limited extent, sought out escape to Canada through the park because slave catchers often would not enter the Adirondacks.

Thus, the park creates a unique breed of man: one who is tough enough to survive or desperate enough to try. The Adirondacks represents the extremes of life and a culture build around it. I am starting to see that in many ways the Adirondacks are not just an area but a people. They sought to live in an area that the Native Americans avoided because the land was too harsh and from the sides of the mountains they took what they needed to survive and tried to fulfill their dreams of individualism and self reliance, that could not exist in the more crowded parts of the country.

Sources Cited:

Banks, Russell. Cloudsplitter. New York, NY: Harper Flamingo, 1998. Print.