Forever Wild... or Temporarily Different?

After reading Bill McKibben’s Wandering Home, there was one quote that, for me, embodied the importance of studying the Adirondacks.  McKibben states, “’Forever wild,’ as the New York constitution puts it, even if ‘wild’ means a little less than it used to, and if ‘forever’ seems somewhat shorter” (McKibben, 104).  The term “forever wild,” both a commonly used term in Adirondack readings, and the namesake for this blog, comes from Article 14 of the New York State Constitution, which states, “The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands.”

McKibben’s aforementioned statement alludes to a struggle that both he and many other Adirondack authors have attempted to answer, which made me begin to wonder: what exactly does it mean to be “forever wild”?  Can it have the same meaning since it was enacted 120 years ago?  As both McKibben and many of the other authors have explained, and I have come to realize, this question is anything but simple.  Jerry Jenkins, author of The Adirondack Atlas provides an insight into one of the major complexities regarding this question.  Jenkins states, “...the park now has three constituencies - those who see it as a home, as a playground, and as a wilderness - and each has a vision of the future that to some extent threatens and excludes the others” (Jenkins, 2).  Jenkins’ example addresses McKibben’s question of how long this ambiguous “forever” will last, as proclaimed by the New York State Constitution.

Even though Jenkins and McKibben suggest, through these two quotes, a more pessimistic opinion on what “forever” might mean, there is no real clarity for what it means to be “wild.”  However, I think that this ambiguity is fitting, not only for the law, but also for students, visitors, and residents of the Adirondack Park.  On my Pre-Orientation trip in the Adirondacks, I went canoeing on the St. Regis Lake.  This trip was my first time to the Adirondacks.  On our first day of paddling, it dawned on me that there was something intrinsically different about this place.  I cannot specify exactly what this “difference” is, as I was only there for four days, though even in that time, I was able to identify the uniqueness of the park, which McKibben along with so many others to write, revisit, and love this special park.

I am excited to delve deeper into these concepts throughout this semester, and hope that by the end of the semester, I will have formulated my own opinion of what it means to be “forever wild,” and to identify what exactly is so enchanting about this park.

Sources:

New York State Constitution Article 14: http://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/55849.html

McKibben, Bill. Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America's Most Hopeful Landscape. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2014. 104. Print.

Jenkins, Jerry, and Andy Keal. The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2004. 2. Print.

The Unspoken Declining Population in the Adirondacks

With an expanding ecotourism industry and desire to own woodland property, one would expect to find an expanding, thriving population in the Adirondacks. However, the opposite is proving true. According to the 2010 United States Census results, the Adirondack population has decreased by 1.3% since 2000. A 1.3% or 1,000 person loss may seem insignificant but to a population of approximately 130,000, that is a serious decline in population.

Not only has the population declined between 2000 and 2010, but also we expect to see a continued decline in the near future. Researchers at Cornell estimate a population loss of over 5,000 people in the Adirondack Park by the year 2020 and a continued population decline in the year 2030 and beyond.

Throughout history, the Adirondack region has been ignored and avoided as a region to settle down in for its infertile soil, subzero winter temperatures, and unmapped topography. That mindset changed when logging and waterpower became primary resources for the American industrial revolutions in the 19^th century. Since then, a steadily growing population has grown in the region, making a living from trapping, maintaining the park, logging, farming, and other similar jobs. A strong and continually growing ecotourism industry also employs many locals.

Why, then, has the table turned and the population started to decline? Are people abandoning the way of life in the Adirondacks in favor of other jobs? Is the land too expensive to maintain in current economic conditions? I wonder who will live in the Adirondack Park in 50 years and what their life will look like compared to today.

2000-2012 Census Data and Article Analysis

http://www.protectadks.org/2013/03/what-the-2012-us-census-estimates-tell-us-about-the-adirondack-parks-population-and-the-state-of-rural-america/

Cornell Research Article on Predicted Population in the Year 2020

http://dosen.narotama.ac.id/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/2020-Adirondack-Park-population-by-age-and-sex-using-the-Hamilton-Perry-method.pdf

Dams in the Adirondacks

While reading Wandering Home, I was drawn to McKibben’s description of the environmental group Earth First! and their many radical pursuits. McKibben recounts the group’s first ceremony on top of Glen Canyon Dam where they unroll a black plastic crack down the side of the dam. After reading this passage I immediately thought of Patagonia’s Damnation, which examines the negative ecological and economic effects that dams can pose. In Damnation, activists have followed the actions of Earth First! and have painted large, black cracks on the side of multiple dams.   With the help of this film there has been a growing consensus on the ecological disturbances created by dams and raises the question of whether obsolete dams or dams located in protected areas should be removed.

            There are about 50 dams within the Adirondack Park. Most of these dams were created on land once privately owned by logging companies. While many are small, they still can have a pronounced affect on the surrounding landscape. They can alter the path and intensity of rivers as well as disrupt the routes of migrating fish. There are six dams located in designated Wilderness Areas. These Wilderness Areas are defined as a place where man is only a visitor and does not leave a noticeable mark. Given this definition the presence of dams is a direct contradiction to these Wilderness Areas and the term “Forever Wild.”  

As we try to keep these lands protected and unaltered, how do we address the presence of a dam? Should the dams be removed to restore the ecosystem, or should they be left alone to fall in their own time? There is also the question of whether we continue to maintain the dams and disregard the fact that they have affected the local ecosystem. But if we make an exception for dams, what else can we make an exception for? Where do we draw the line in our definition of a Wilderness Area?

Wandering Home, Bill McKibben

Dams and Wilderness, Adirondack Explorer
         http://www.adirondackexplorer.org/stories/dams-and-wilderness
Damnation http://damnationfilm.com/

A Sentence Unspoken is an Expectation Maintained

We were staying at Fairview Lake and the cabin was on a hill that ran green without brush or bramble straight down to the water. We could see the other houses across the lake over the slanted lawn and would walk down to the water at some time nearly every day and stand at the long dock which included itself in the lake’s image. The dock was built by her great-grandfather before anyone else had come to this lake, she would tell me later.  In the evenings and the mornings when there was an action in bugs, lake fish would come close to it and we would see them jumping high to overtake the gnats and watch the swelling bulge of water.

One morning I went out onto the oval lake and from its center observed long stretches of turf surrounding the blue and pleasant water, each with their own cabin perched high on an overlooking hill with only a thin tree line designating one glistening lawn from another. This was not wilderness to me and it was hardly isolated. Being raised on Eastern Long Island among wide farms and infinite sand, I looked down on this “cookie-cutter” partitioning of lake-view. 

Before coming to Hamilton I had no understanding of the Adirondack Park apart from what it looked like on Google Maps, which is green. At one point or another in my use of the free service I had mistaken “green” for “park” for “no people.” In this way I did not see the lies a map might tell, as warned by The Adirondack Atlas, and assumed that my only company would be the stray wanderer. Spurred on by an immature and underdeveloped longing for purity or exclusivity or maybe just privacy, I drove on a hazy Sunday into that great green unknown.

Fishing pole in hand, what I found was not at all unlike what I experienced on Fairview Lake in New Jersey as summer homes stifled each lake within my reach. It was the natural extension of the resort and recreation systems, the genesis of which is summarized by Phillip G. Terrie as “the nature to which middle and upper-class gentlemen from outside the region repaired to recapture the vigor of body and soul.” Yet I was much more comfortable with a place like Fairview Lake being used to its utmost capacity. In my mind, it was New Jersey and of course a lake there would be overused and spoilt. It bothered me on another level that The Adirondacks could be no different. I still don’t know much about the Adirondacks but I do know that this Seasonal-Sprawl is not the whole story (and have since found much better places for fishing) -I need only to go to more places I wouldn't want to be to find what I want.

Jenkins, Jerry 2004. The Adirondack Atlas: A Geographic Portrait of the Adirondack Park. Syracuse University Press / Adirondack Museum.

Terrie, Philip G. 2008. Contested Terrain: A New History of Nature and People in the Adirondacks. Second Editon. The Adirondack Museum/Syracuse Univ. Press.

Reflections from the 46 High Peaks and Gore Mountain

I, like a fair number of other students at Hamilton College, am not a New York native. Growing up in Michigan, I hadn’t even heard of the Adirondack Park before making the twelve-hour (plus) journey to Hamilton for my college years. The vast nature of the park and the wilderness it contains never fails to pleasantly surprise me when I find myself within the blue lines. However, after considering my own experiences in the park, it saddens me to realize I would probably be classified as a typical tourist.

On my way back to school after winter break, my father and I stayed in Lake George for a few days so that we could ski at Gore Mountain. Before this, my experiences in the park have been limited to hiking a handful of the 46 high peaks. Like Bill McKibben, the mountains have cast their spell on me, but considering how I’ve utilized the park to my own benefit, do my actions reflect my passionate views as an environmentalist? If not, do I need to reconsider my use of the park? In class, we discussed the tourism industry and how outsiders have often romanticized the Adirondacks. Maybe I’m also guilty of romanticizing the mountains, but I prefer to believe I have a deeper understanding of and greater respect for the environment than most tourists. But, in the end, does my awareness of issues surrounding the park and my respect for the wilderness even matter if my actions reflect those of a simple tourist?

Looking forward, I can only hope to utilize the park in a more sustainable way. Even though I enjoy hiking the 46 high peaks, it wouldn’t hurt—and it might even be more satisfying—to explore some of the other, less traveled mountains. I don’t have to participate in the busiest hikes or most noteworthy activities to experience the area because the park holds so much more than the tourism industry advertises. If I can find a way to minimize my impact within the blue lines, will I be able to justify the hours of pleasure I seek within the park’s borders? How do I set myself apart from the general tourist while still spending time in the Adirondacks, and arguably exploiting the wilderness? These are the questions I must ask myself as I move forward, and the ones I will consider as I continue to spend time within the Adirondack Park.

Utilitarian Park?

The Adirondack Park has captured the hearts and imaginations of residents and visitors for over 100 years. The great natural beauty and extreme protection the park enjoys lends itself to the preservationist philosophy we as a modern society are so fond of. But what about the people who founded the park? Were they so taken by the beauty that they took the land and locked it away to be viewed like some exhibit in a museum?

One of the driving forces behind the creation of the Adirondack Park was a man named Verplanck Colvin, who was involved in a state survey of the area in the 1870’s. Colvin recognized that the logging practices at the time were unsustainable and that the effects were far greater than just loss of forest cover. He realized that the forests protect the small streams and springs which eventually make their way through the Hudson all the way to the ocean. By removing the trees he argued that you negatively impacted the waterways which were the lifeblood of the New York economy.

Colvin’s goal wasn’t simply to preserve the forests and waterways just because they’re there. He believed that by preserving them we could develop a sustainable way to use the resources that would last for generations. His utilitarian mindset was shared by many people at the time but with the adoption of the Forever Wild clause the park began along the path to preservation.

Today the idea of logging in the Adirondacks brings a shudder to most people who live in the North-East. This was pretty obvious when we discussed the uses of the park in class, but we forgot that there is still some industrial activity in the park. There are a number of active mines and even more scars left on the land from those that have closed down. The idea that activities like mining are still somewhat allowed yet sustainable logging practices like those mentioned in Wandering Home are not is interesting. Maybe our priorities are a little mixed up, or maybe it’s time to accept that ecotourism and adventure are the new utilitarian uses of the park to be preserved for future generations.

Wandering Home- Bill McKibben

Park History

http://www.adirondack-park.net/history/political/pre-const.html

http://apa.ny.gov/about_park/history.htm

Why we Need Wolves

          Wolves are no strangers to the Adirondacks. This may come as a surprise to many of you due to their non-existence in the Park for the last 100 years, but wolves need to make a comeback. Humans do not hunt many species the wolves normally hold in check; those they do are not hunted as efficiently as they are by wolves. Animals like beavers and deer are wreaking havoc on the Park. Beavers have changed the flow of rivers throughout the Park and pose a problem to the navigable waters. I speak from experience; this past summer I had to portage my canoe loaded with supplies over numerous beaver dams on the Marion River. Not to say beavers are inherently bad for an ecosystem, but if the population is too large they can cause problems such as erosion and water blockage.

Now the reintroduction of wolves can put people on edge; after all you are reintroducing a predator equal to man on the food chain. However, the reintroduction of wolves has already occurred in Yellowstone National Park. Since their reintroduction in 1995, Yellowstone has become much healthier. Wolves eat deer; which had no major natural predators for 70 years, and had cut the vegetation of the park down to a fraction of what it should have been. Wolves began to eat the deer, but also they began to change their behavior, forcing them to stay away from riverbanks, where the deer could easily be trapped. This in turn allowed for the quick regrowth of the plants around the rivers. As the video posted in the link below says, some trees quintupled in size. Because the plants were allowed to grow, their roots reinforced the riverbanks, which had become soft and prone to cave ins. The lack of erosion forced the rivers to flow straighter, and created a healthier flow rate of water for other organisms that rely on the rivers. Now Yellow Stone has larger game than the Adirondacks for the most part. Consequently the wolf population should not get out of control if reintroduced, because they would not have as much to feed on. Based on the model of Yellow Stone, the rivers and waterways of the Adirondacks will be healthier after just a decade with wolves back in the park.

 How Wolves Help

http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-wolves-can-save-ecosystem