Toughing It

Throughout the Adirondacks, economically depressed communities often need to improvise tools and solutions based on the materials at hand. Although this behavior reflects one’s economic status, it also perpetuates a cultural identity based on “toughing it.”

Documentation of toughing it reaches as far back as 1790, originating from false advertising (Schneider 98). Many businessmen pitched the Adirondacks as a utopia, complete with rich soil and livestock. Buyers soon realized that the businessmen’s image of the Adirondacks painted a different picture than their reality. The author of The Adirondacks, Paul Schneider, remarks, “It was a difficult life of dirt floors and greased paper windows and nearly constant labor. For homesteaders who had nothing to sell, nothing could be bought… It was called ‘toughing it’” (Schneider 99). Schneider goes as far to say that these conditions lead to, “…colorful, freedom-loving, manly American men of the type that wilderness is supposed to create” (Schneider 77). Out of tradition and necessity, inhabitants lived in such a way that molded a prototypical identity for Adirondack inhabitants.

This cultural identity still persists in the Adirondacks. Inhabitants continue to live resourcefully, in many ways emulating traditional Adirondack life. Some live this way out of necessity, while others conform to this Adirondack identity for conservation and tradition. In Wandering Home, Bill McKibben marvels over the lifestyle of his friend, John:

“John Davis may think a little differently than he did at twenty-two. But he doesn’t live much differently. His cabin is one room, in a dark hemlock grove above a beaver flow. It’s off the grid, as we say these days. But there’s no solar power—there’s no power at all. Just a woodstove and some oil lamps. No running water, just a privy. No phone line. No driveway, and nothing to put in it” (McKibben 91).

        

            McKibben clearly admires John’s conservation and minimalistic lifestyle. Of course, other Adirondackers pursue such a life, though not always as extremely as John. Nonetheless, “toughing it” has become not only a culturally respecting life, but also an envied one. In fact, millions of people flock to the Adirondacks to camp, hike, and explore without many of the privileges otherwise enjoyed in our day-to-day lives. Many landowners advertise their camps as an opportunity to disconnect and return to nature. A simple Google search reveals many such camps, such as Camp Crane (pictured below).

Source:

McKibben, Bill. Wandering Home. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2005. Print.

Schneider, Paul. The Adirondacks. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC 1997. Print.

https://www.vrbo.com/590288