There was one line in the Schneider reading that really caught my interest: "'If the state believed in the Adirondacks the state would do more than throw in here a rinky dink little agency with an immense mandate'" (306). I appreciate what Bob Glennon is saying hearing here--the APA can't be expected to do their job perfectly when they're so few in numbers--but I also think that the phrase "believed in the Adirondacks" is a particularly interesting one. To me, that phrase harkens back to the idea that the Adirondacks are whatever people want them to be and do--essentially, the Adirondacks are whatever you believe them to be. For many people, that belief is that the Adirondacks are meant to be developed with second homes and bustling tourist towns and economic/recreational hotspots. For others, they believe the Adirondacks should be treated more in the way of conservation while still others maintain a nearly unlimited number of other conceptions of the Park. What Glennon is (obliquely) getting at with this phrase is perhaps the bedrock of all other conflict and tension surrounding the park. That is, the fact that Glennon can so easily cast off the state as not believing in the park just because they (here meaning the governor and his Adirondack commissioners) do not subscribe to the same belief in the Park that Glennon does, does not mean that they don't believe in the Park at all. It seems that the governor and his lackeys just believe in the Adirondacks in a different way. Perhaps those higher-ups invest more in the "development" aspect of the Land Use Management and Development Plan while Glennon cares more about the "land use" part. It seems to me that as long as these different understandings of the Adirondack Park exist, then the tensions between development and conservation or maintaining wilderness and attracting tourists are going to exist. It looks like these tensions just come with the territory (literally)--because the Adirondacks have the unique quality of being a patchwork of public/private land, it remains impossible to align a single belief or understanding of the what the Adirondack Park should be and do. People who own private land are more often than not going to want different things than what the state or the APA or the DEC are going to want to do with the public land. There are always going to be people who view the land as a home, or a playground, or a wilderness, and maybe some people who view it as all three. The Adirondacks are many things, and precisely what those things are varies depending on who is looking at them. While Glennon's disappointment in the state's apparent disregard of the Park manifests itself in insinuations of not believing in the Adirondacks, I can't help but disagree. Of course I really understand where Glennon is coming from and I do wish that his and the state's plans for the land aligned a bit better (specifically swayed in Glennon's favor), but I do think that the state believes in the Adirondacks; it just seems that they believe in it for its economic and recreational value rather than the wilderness aesthetic and the life-fulfilling scenery that the romantics believe(d?) in.
I think this sentiment shows itself most clearly when Glennon goes on to talk about North Elba and laments that the APA "'should have had the will to drive out there and say, This is gorgeous, it's wonderful, it's an asset'" in order to stop furthering its development (310). I believe that pro-developers, and perhaps even the state, would say the exact same thing. It just happens that they would mean it in a very different way. People like Glennon and people who want to see the land built up will always disagree on how to use these natural, wonderful "asset[s]" and I really don't think that this is a conflict that will be resolved any time soon. It seems to me that the best we can hope for is more people like Glennon or Phil Terrie who make it hard for those assets to be replaced with concrete and electrical wires. As Glennon says, we might not ever know how much better the land is because the APA and advocacy groups are there, but I definitely believe that (according to my own views of what the Park should be and do) the Adirondacks would be much worse off without them.
I often feel as though I try to have as much faith as possible in people who care deeply about the environment. I always have a burst of hope when I hear of someone doing serious work for causes like the ones advocated by the APA. I only hope that as Terrie said, those characters will continue to 'tie', instead of giving in the forces against them.
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