Stuck in a Rut: The Debate Surrounding ATV use in Adirondack Park

Following our discussion about jet ski and ATV use in the park, I stumbled across an article on the Adirondack Almanac’s website entitled “DEC Readies ATV Use Experiment on the Kushaqua Tract.” Published earlier this year, the article announces New York State’s Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) proposed experiment to combine ATV use and natural resource management along the Kushaqua Conservation Easement tract. Just as the DEC proposed in the mid-1990s, this proposal will open a number of roads to ATVs. However, the experiment in the mid-1990s lead to extensive damage to roads, trails, and natural resources, causing the DEC to retract its decision, and close these roads to further ATV use. In Bill McKibben’s Wandering Home, he suggests that the fight against ATVs is crucial, as he explains that ATVs are to blame for the deterioration of the phrase “Forever wild.” He writes, “wild means a little less than it used to,” and “forever seems somewhat shorter” (104). Personally, I stand against the use of ATVs in the park completely. To me, the park is almost a sanctuary, a place that is pure. When you introduce large, noisy, and destructive vehicles into the park, the park somehow becomes impure. I understand the accessibility arguments surrounding the use of ATVs in that ATVs allow individuals, who would not otherwise be able to, to access, enjoy, and appreciate the park. Nonetheless, it seems to me, and McKibben, that if ATV use increases to a point where supposedly “preserved” forests are experiencing excessive damage, the park will no longer obtain its wild, natural, or pure connotations. Rather, it will be a park that sacrificed its unrefined beauty to meet the needs of humanity. As we move forward, it is interesting to think about whether or not we are going to have to continue to sacrifice the natural world to accommodate the modern world. Should we continue to acclimate the modern society?

What McKibben Left Out

While I found McKibben’s account of Vermont and New York fascinating based on living in New York and often driving to my grandparent’s house in Woodstock, VT, I thought he ignored a piece of Vermont that most people from the Tri-state area know it for: downhill skiing.

At the start of his adventure, McKibben starts out on Mt. Abe, commenting on the view. The two peaks north of Mt. Abe are Lincoln Peak and Mt. Ellen. What McKibben left out is that Sugarbush and Glen Ellen are located on these mountains and should be clearly visible from Mt. Abe. He strategically avoids mentioning ski areas along the way (including the Middlebury Ski Bowl and Gore) and only mentions the vacation homes on Whiteface in passing. But he also talks about backcountry skiing in the Adirondacks, so he can’t be opposed to skiing.

It would seem that this is further evidence of McKibben’s ability to observe the bigger picture. I have always assumed (I could be wrong) that a large portion of Vermont’s economy is tourism, and a large portion of that is from ski areas. Ski areas create a lot of jobs; some of McKibben’s friends in the Adirondacks worked at ski areas. Ski areas also allow people to enjoy the outdoors in a way, perhaps not as directly as some other outdoor activities, but it does get people outside. However, ski areas also unfailingly pick the tallest mountains around and deface them, making wide clear cuts to allow for trails and lifts. Their snowmaking also changes the winter environment by creating big clouds of ice crystals which often end up coating trees. So perhaps this is another example of how the natural world and the modern world must coexist in order to make both places liveable.

"Public Forest" vs "Private Forest?"

In class on Wednesday someone brought up the section of Wandering Home in which McKibben encounters one yellow posted sign after another. As I read over the passage, I began to reflect on the concepts of public and private property within the park. The concept of land ownership in any form has always puzzled me in some degree. I can reasonably understand claiming ownership of a house one has built and/or put money and time into or a field that one farms. However, claiming ownership of a piece of land that you do not intend to truly inhabit and then choosing to prevent people from walking through it baffles me.
Owning the right to manipulate land is a concept I understand; after all, I wouldn't want to find someone else taking resources from something I've used my own resources to gain ownership of. However, I personally don't understand the concept of owning the right to limit experience of land. My concept of nature, which I've been loosely referring to as land, is a piece of earth that is uninhabited by man. If someone owns just an acre of forest from the road to the lake I see how that gives them a right to prevent anyone from manipulating that land in any way, but I do not see the motivation behind preventing people from walking though that acre. In my utopian, and purely imagined, world there would be more welcome signs marking property lines that ask people to respect the land and it's owners while also sharing the experience of it. The concept of private property and, in a sense, owning nature prevents the love of the land that McKibben deems necessary in order to preserve and protect the park as a whole. 

This is in part a test blog. I figure since I'm assigning you to do them, I should make sure I know how to do them myself. There are three points I want to make beyond simply showing and testing.

1) You should be sure to sign up for daily updates to the Adirondack Almanack.  You can click that link to get right to the page! Click "email" in the upper right-hand corner to sign up for these daily news emails. This is a wonderful news-service/blog about the Adirondacks, and a lot of well-known writers post there (including Phil Terrie and Peter Bauer). The site features stories and news about politics in the park, the Adirondack Park Agency, various major developments, wildlife and adventure, ecology, and so on. It could be helpful in pointing you towards final project topics.

2) Lake Abanakee, which figures near the end of McKibben's book, has a special place in my heart.  This is the place where the Hudson River Rafting begins--at the dam at the north end of the lake. And the water form the lake is the immediate source of the "bubble" that he writes about. This is also where my wife and I have a "camp," or as we call it, a "cottage," or as our friends call it, a "house." We notice the lake rising and falling on the weekly schedule of bubbles, which always makes me think of the people going down the Indian and Hudson rivers.


3) Here's a link to the 90-miler that a bunch of people in the class are doing. The website needs work. I hope that those doing the race will post some pictures and stories on the blog! Good luck, and, Go Blue.

The ADK seminar at Wenonah last year. Figure out what they are spelling.

4) Extra point! The random picture above, which it took me 30 minutes to add. Plus, I just did what Madison suggested--setting up a "user" on your computer that is you on google mail, open to the blog. That way, rather than logging out of your Hamilton account, into your gmail account, opening the blog, signing into it, etc., all you have to do is change users (which in my Mac just means clicking my name on the upper right hand corner, and then entering a single password). Easy peasy.

Onno