Great Camp Santanoni

I chose to present on great camp Santanoni for class last week, I was amazed at the debate around preserving the 45 buildings, built in 1893, that are now owned by the state. Here are some of the main pros and cons surrounding this debate, let me know what you think!
Pros:

• Great Camp Santanoni is built almost entirely out of native trees, the great lodge alone boasts 15,000 trees (most of which are used in either full log or half log construction). This makes the camp uniquely rustic and full of Adirondack character.
• The Great Camp is Historically significant; the owners and founders of Great Camp Santanoni once hosted Teddy Roosevelt. Also, the Santanoni farm was the largest great camp farm on record, it used to export milk, meet, and cheese to Albany and the surrounding areas in NY. You can still find citizens with Santanoni milk containers in the surrounding counties.
•  Great Camp Santanoni is a tourist attraction. The camp borders the town of Newcomb, which desperately need the money from tourists interested in visiting the camp.

Cons:

• The cost of preserving all 45 buildings, mostly made of wood and other decomposable materials, is extremely high. AARCH has fundraised over 1 million dollars for past repairs and restorations of the property. However, there is more work to be done.
• Visiting is difficult, the Great Camp borders Newcomb, just south of the high peaks and visitors have to park their cars and walk, bike, horseback ride, or ski the rest of the 5 mile trail through the camp's main property (there and back).
• Continued upkeep is necessary. The camp is constantly exposed to the elements and the buildings are over 120 years old. There will always be rotting wood and caving roofs on property that is so old.

What do you think? Does the state have anything to gain from preserving Great Camp Santanoni?
 

Great Camp Guilt

Reflecting on last class, I can't help feeling guilty about the exorbitant amount of resources that I planned to use in the design for my great camp. All semester we've studied how human beings have taken advantage of Adirondack land and altered the wilderness, and yet my ideal Adirondack camp is a multistory treehouse that would destroy much of the ecosystem around it. I am ashamed, both of the damage that my great camp would cause to Adirondack land and of my need for modern amenities. It is hugely ironic that I would recommend existing great camps be left to rot for their negative impact on nature and yet design a vision of "wilderness" that includes all the luxuries of a modern home.

Looking over my group's design drawing, I found that almost every aspect of our camp had potential negative impacts on the land around it.  The foundation of our camp, consisting of houses supported by two separate trees, would greatly alter habitats for many Adirondack species and put a huge strain on the trees themselves. The house would likely produce a lot of waste that, if not properly disposed of, could poison the land around the trees and make it uninhabitable. The river passing by the two trees would be interrupted by the water wheel that we optimistically designed for renewable energy, possibly altering the migration patterns of spawning fish. The chair lift to the front door is an unnecessary waste of fuel and would require the clearing of a path through the trees in order to function. The chair lift also features windmills on top of each chair that would likely produce little energy being below the treeline and shielded from the wind, but might be hazardous for passing birds. Overall, I can imagine the camp being very comfortable for humans but an enormous strain on the environment.

I am also ashamed of the principle set by my camp that modern luxuries are needed to enjoy the wilderness. I like to believe that I share Bill McKibben's romantic view of nature as something that should be respected and kept separate from society, but my ideal great camp design challenges this belief. With all of its comforts and features, the treehouse would hugely impact the land and would inject suburban living into what was previously wild. If my great camp was built, the land around it could no longer be considered "wilderness", and I hope that any design similar to mine will never be given a permit to be built.

Music, and its Cultural Significance to the North Country

Music often carries great cultural significance, so it is no surprise that the Adirondacks have their own rich and educational music history. Just like the slaves who used music as an escape after a long day of working in the fields, Adirondack folk music was born from loggers, singing and dancing after a day of work in the woods. These folk songs provided entertainment for the loggers and were mediums for them to express their emotion. As explained in the Lynn Woods article, the Adirondack folk songs of yesteryears provide a window into the past that is still very valuable today.

The loggers' songs often told tragic tales of the many dangers they faced. Folk ballads were most popular, long rambling stories accompanied by music. They recounted universal themes such as love, while also delving into Adirondack-specific details like log-jams. The songs are often long and unpredictable, just like the lives of the people who wrote them. Loggers did not know if they would come back safely at the end of the day, and this was reflected in their music. The Adirondack-brand of folk music is still practiced today. I attached a link to a performance by Chris Shaw that epitomizes the lively storytelling typical of Adirondack folk music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpaD2Eb0qLY

Red Rose Around the Briar

The Adirondack Life article makes frequent use of the fact that one of the most important forms of music in the Adirondacks is the ballad.  Essentially, the ballad is one of the most narrative types of music.   Generally it involves a rather simplistic plot line as some sort of character discovers something, in a very emotional form instead of a summary. It's normally a very evocative and sentimental song, which fits in well with the tradition of spoken narrative in the Adirondacks.

The song "Barbara Allen" that was mentioned got me interested.  It's a rather slow song, chronicling a dying man as he pines over a fair lady named Barbara Allen.  Upon hearing that the man was so into her, Barbara is so overwhelmed with grief that she resolves to die for him the next day.  (The mother dies the next day out of love for both of them)  A little melodramatic, yes, but very indicative of a romantic sentiment that continues in folk tradition to this day.  A lot of these songs were passed alongside immigrants (the song in question originated in England, the lyrics website suggests the song has a large Southern presence as well) in logging camps, specifically when the men lived in the logging camps together.  In this light, the proliferation of a story about a dying man who has a woman waiting for him in death gives a very tragic and longing perspective on their day to day lives in the camp.

http://freepages.music.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~edgmon/stbarbarallen.htm
(Lyrics are here)

We See What Matters

Looking back to the Adirondack museum and the items on display, Adirondack art consists primarily of landscape images. The dramatic High Peaks, most often Marcy, rising above the valley floor, and the many rivers which bisect the park feature most frequently in Adirondack-inspired paintings while the many crafts and goods produced within the park are earthy: made of wood and bark of different shades, as if found in nature itself. The art had relatively little historical context, lacking the strong religious images that dominate European art, or the abstract, modern art seen elsewhere; the land was pictured as it was (and is). In this sense, Adirondack art represents what is truly paramount within the Blue Line: the landscape. It is the landscape that dictates where humans settle and how they fare; and how and where plants and animals could grow. There are few places in the northeast where such a distinction is still so apparent, and so humans have tried to replicate it. Crafts of the region share a similar functionality-driven inspiration. Chairs and canoes are the defining Adirondack craft, all built from wood and initially possessing an intrinsic utility. Such crafts further adhere to the paradox of the park in that they, despite their utility, are luxuries of the wealthy. Guide boats and lounge chairs were hardly necessary for survival, but they were used extensively and played a large role in the initial tourism economy of the park.  Adirondack art represents exactly what was important to those who created it, and mimics the dynamic seen in other elements of Adirondack life. 

It's refreshing to learn that the initial presence of the artists in the Adirondack Park was for practical missions. Their purpose was to create accurate maps and sketches for military and business purposes. The marriage of art and business endeavors is one that is interesting and often overlooked today. The reliance that people have on artistically gifted people is still prevalent. Ranging from aesthetic based projects to logistical needs, artists are an integral part of our society, and their activity in the Park represents that. 

Architects, for example, are necessary for residential buildings as well as massive constructions. Interior designers conjure up incredible aesthetics that make people feel certain ways when they walk into a room, which will effect their mood and ability to function at a certain level. 

Although today we don't need artists to draw out maps of the world (we have satellites), it's interesting to learn that they were once called upon to fulfill that role. 

Cultural Patchwork

Reading about the music of the Adirondacks gave me further evidence that the Adirondacks aren't just a place, but a real community. Loggers and settlers alike banded together in the fairly isolated northern wild to make music, tell stories, and dance, bringing with them influences from wherever they grew up or whatever job they had or whichever stories they'd heard. The impression I got from the Woods reading was that the culture of the Adirondacks (as least for the laypeople) was a rich and diverse one, but also a culture very much focused on the community. People gathered in bars or people's houses to entertain each other and share stories about the day's events. It seems to me (although I'm really only getting this from the one, biased article we read) that there was a real sense of camaraderie in these ADK logging towns that maybe wasn't as prevalent elsewhere in the country by that time. I think that because of the relative isolation of the Adirondack towns and the lack of technology (especially roads and vehicles), the people of the Adirondacks were able to focus on each other and the songs and stories that their neighbors had to tell. In a way, this seems to be one of the gifts of "wild" places like the Adirondacks: places without all the technological amenities that we're so used to nowadays make you tune into your surroundings and actually interact with and learn from the people you're around. With the philosopher's camps we've talked a lot about how people can learn from nature by immersing themselves in the natural world, but I think that something can also be said for what people can learn from other people in the landscape of the wilderness. This idea reminds me of when we talked in class about Aldo Leopold's definition of land and how that definition included not just the rocky earthen crust, but also the animals and plants and people that use that earth together in a community, interacting not just with abiotic features but with each other as well. When these elements of the land each bring to the table their own unique experiences and backgrounds, it creates an impressively diverse microcosm wherein individual differences are united under the common experience of place--of living in the Adirondacks. This is a bond that forms, on some level, in any region where its inhabitants feel a strong connection to their place/"home base," like Manhattan or the neighborhood I grew up in or even the U.S. as a whole. I think what's different about the Adirondacks, however, is that it developed so much later and in such a different place (ie. more "wild") than most other places that emanate a similarly strong sense of place, meaning that the historical, technological, and environmental forces aiding in the construction of the Adirondack culture were pretty different than those in places like New York City. In my eyes, it is this difference that gives way to the Adirondack's rich cultural experience as one that is closely linked to the particular circumstances of its founding.