Adirondack Country. Wm. C. White

Adirondack Country
William Chapman White
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954/1980.

Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the seasons.

“In the early morning the lake lies quiet without a ripple; a noon breeze starts it shimmering; a full southwest wind in the afternoon sends little waves tumbling against the rocky shores; at twilight the water is quiet again.”

“…another October can be added to the tens, the hundreds, the millions of Octobers that have gone before over the Adirondack country.”

Peaks are rounded. Lakes, not valleys, often between two mountains. 1,345 named lakes and more are nameless. Lake George is the largest (30 miles long) followed by Long Lake and Indian Lake. Quarter of a billion trees. Chief nuisance is the black fly in mid-May, the “flaw” in an Adirondack spring.

Thought one range of mountains had gold as in Peru, the South American country.

“Adirondacks” is a derisive name the Iroquois gave to the Algonquins who ate tree buds and bark in severe winters. Kayederosseras means lake country. Ticonderoga means where the waters meet. Schroon River means large lake. Saranac: does it mean lake of fallen stars? Bogus. It means entrance of a river into a lake. Mt. Marcy was named for a NY governor. CF Hoffman suggested the Indian epithet “Tahawus,” meaning “He split the sky.”

The Iroquois sided with the British during the American Revolution; had to sell their lands for $1600.

Fire had to be kept going; no matches until 1827.

“Camp” means more things than a porcupine has quills.

Guides worked one small portion of the territory; knew every inch of their territory.

Saranac Lake: no lawyers or editors to keep people in an uproar. Free of front page headlines.

Tuberculosis sanatorium meant medical quackery.

Idea that woods had value in natural state was new.

Lumberjacks are fewer, but the work is just as dangerous.

The cracking and booming of the ice in the lake in the winter.

March—an ornery month.

The lore of maple tapping: usually over by March 20.

Best sentence: “As a man tramps the woods to the lake…he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1854, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come.”