Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (46 page)

W
E TOOK HIGHWAY 28 NORTH
into the Adirondack Mountains. Above Woodgate, the roundness of the foothills turned into steep slopes with huge boulders and rugged crags. All around us were monumental rock formations interspersed with the green of towering pines and tamaracks. It was as if all of nature aspired to soar there. The scenery was majestic. The traffic non-stop.

Adirondack Park was established in 1892, making it one of the oldest parks in America. Yellowstone and Yosemite are older, but at six million acres, Adirondack Park is bigger than the two of them–plus Glacier and Grand Canyon National Parks
combined
. At 5,433 feet, Mount Marcy is the highest in the Adirondacks. The park has forty-five other peaks that are over 4,000 feet.

The first white men to exploit the Adirondacks were trappers and loggers. In those days, hemlock bark was used to tan leather, and the forest was full of it. Around 1810, tanneries began to spring up throughout the mountains. In just eighty years, so much hemlock had been stripped from the forest that the tanning industry collapsed.

The headwaters for five major rivers–including the Hudson–are in the Adirondacks. With more than 30,000 miles of streams and rivers, getting timber out of the mountains to markets in the east was no problem. Furniture factories opened all over the Adirondacks. At one time, Ethan Allen had a dozen factories in the area. Now there’s only the one in Boonville.

“And it’s barely running.”

He was a retired logger who had worked in the woods all his life. As a young man, he skidded logs with mules–he had to stop and see Della. While he was petting her with a hand that was missing the last two fingers, he said, “The problem with the furniture industry ain’t that there’s no wood.” He toddled a bit when he turned around and gestured toward the tree-covered slope behind me. “Just look around you, there’s timber everywhere! What the factories around here ain’t got, is workers. Everybody around here has priced themselves out of a job.”

In the 1830’s, a famous geologist by the name of Ebenezer Emmons explored the area and wrote extensively about the beauty of the mountains. His published stories sparked the beginning of the Adirondacks tourist industry. In the 1850s, so many people were visiting the mountains that railroads were built to bring them. Luxurious hotels and resorts sprang up everywhere. People like the Vanderbilts, Morgans and Carnegies bought vast tracks of wilderness and built palatial vacation homes called “Great Camps.”

By the 1870s, exploitation of the Adirondacks was so out of control that conservationists, journalists and politicians began to lobby the state to save them. In 1892 the New York State Legislature created Adirondack Park.

Even so, when we were there, more than half of the six million acres in the park was private property. So you can’t set up camp just anywhere. As we got further into the park, we were astounded by the increase of “No Trespassing” signs. At one point, Patricia said, “I think it was easier to find a place to camp in Buffalo than it is here.”

One of the major tourist destinations in the park was the hamlet of Old Forge. It’s on the west end of First Lake in the Fulton Chain of Lakes. Tuesday, when we arrived, the lake was covered with boats, and the town jammed with tourists.

Tourism was a year-round industry. Some winters, Old Forge gets over 300 inches of snow. Nearby McCauley Mountain had twenty-one ski trails on it, but the big winter draw were the hundreds of miles of snowmobile trails. Old Forge touts itself as “The Snowmobile Capital of the East”.

The biggest tourist season of the year, however, was summer. Besides all the lakes and streams, Old Forge also had the largest water theme park in New York. “Enchanted Forest Water Safari” had over fifty rides, and averaged 3,000 visitors a day. And Old Forge had lots of shopping. Five miles of Highway 28 was lined with restaurants, hotels and shops. Most of the shops were in old houses whose locations were too valuable to be lived in. They sold everything a tourist would want. The more stately homes, those with verandas and bay windows, were mostly high-end antique shops. While the smaller houses had whirly-gigs spinning in their front yards, with racks of tee-shirts on their porches.

When we got to Old Forge, Officer Brombacher arranged for us to camp in a town park adjacent to the soccer fields. On our way to the park, we were amazed at all of the deer roaming the residential areas. People in Old Forge didn’t have dogs laying in their front yards. It was all deer.

While we walked through Old Forge, Della was on constant deer-alert. She didn’t freak out or try to go to them, like she did the llamas. For her, deer were a bother. The Big Sis didn’t like having them around. If they were too close, she’d snort. By the time we got to the town park, my right arm was covered with mule snot.

We stayed for two nights. Our camp was on the side of a mountain that had been terraced to make way for athletic fields. We set up the tent and staked out Della on the second terrace. Because of all the grass on the mountainside, and down on the playing fields, it was a popular destination for hungry deer. The second sundown we were there, I watched a herd of thirty graze and poop on the soccer field below us. Earlier that afternoon it had been mowed and lined for games the next day. I tried to imagine what it would be like for some preppy-goalie diving for a save and landing in a pile of deer dung.

Della may not have cared for the deer, but they were fascinated with her. Most checked her out from a distance and then went on about their business. But there was a group of four who had to know more. They came twice during the two days we were there. We could tell it was the same group, because one of them had a limp. She was the first to approach Della.

While the other three waited below, the doe slowly made her way up onto the first terrace. Della’s ears were rigid as she stared at it. When the doe got halfway up the hill to the second terrace, Della let loose with a fierce snort, stomped her right foot and shook her head angrily.

Immediately, the doe whirled around and in gimpy leaps charged down the hill to her companions. They all ran across the soccer field where they stopped, turned and looked back at Della. Within a few minutes they were back on our side of the park, and another one made its way toward our girl. She chased that one off too–only to have them return for another try. This went on for a couple of hours before they wandered off. But the next morning I woke to Della snorting at them again.

“Yeah, the deer can be a pain, but it’s the bears you’ve got to watch out for,” said the old guy at the other end of the bar.

It was Wednesday afternoon and we had stopped at the Tow Bar Inn for a beer after doing our laundry. I had just finished telling the bartender about the deer and Della, when the man down the bar started in with bear stories.

“This morning I had to rebuild the back wall of my garage. One clawed right through it last night to get to my garbage can. Tore up the siding and broke a couple of studs just so it could get in my goddam trash.”

The bartender said, “Didn’t one tear up your garage door last spring?”

“Sure did.” The man slammed his beer mug down on the bar. “Ripped the boards right off it. So I replaced it with a steel door. Now what does he do? Son-of-a-bitch plows right through the damn wall.”

From that point on, it was bear-story-time in the Tow Bar Inn. Nearly everyone in the place had one to tell. Tales of porches demolished, kitchen doors ripped off their hinges and camps ransacked by bears on the prowl for people food.

That evening in the tent, Patricia said, “What do you think Della’s going to do if a bear comes into our camp?”

“I don’t know. These bears are vegetarians, so I don’t think we have to worry about one attacking her–especially as big as she is.”

“Maybe,” my wife said. “But what are
we
going to do if one comes to our camp?”

“Get out of its way.”

Rain had become a daily affair. They weren’t horrendous storms with vicious wind, lightning and thunder–just off-and-on showers. It seemed like every time I turned around I was wringing something out. Our morning departures were dictated by how long it took to get the tent dry enough to pack it. After several days of that, we just started packing it wet.

When showers popped up, we’d stop and put on rain gear. Then a quarter of a mile down the road we’d have to stop and take it off because the sun came out. We both tried just leaving it on, but it was like walking in a sauna-suit. The sweat made us as wet as the rain did. A couple of times I didn’t put it on and walked in the rain. But then my socks got soggy and made my boots feel like they were filled with slime. And the breeze created by the traffic that passed us chilled me. So I had to put the rain coat on, and took it off, and put it back on–on and off and on it went.

“It must rain like this around here all the time,” Patricia said.

We were on Highway 28, beside a swamp, somewhere between Inlet and Raquette Lake. It was Friday afternoon. The rain was light and the traffic heavy. Most of it was motor homes. We had only gone ten miles that day, but both of us were worn out. Walking in the rain was a lot of work, and we were ready to call it quits for the day. But we hadn’t seen a dry spot that wasn’t posted. Even some of the wetlands had no trespassing signs.

The hamlet of Raquette Lake was about a mile off the highway. But we figured if the place had buildings, there had to be some dry land. The swamps, bogs and marshes were beautiful. All the ferns, rushes, and larch looked exotic in the silver fog that the afternoon showers had created. It was all lovely, but what we needed was a dry spot to pitch our tent and stake out Della for the night.

“How about across the street,” said Jimmy. “You could camp on the common.”

He owned Raquette Lake Supply Company. It was in a large two story brick and stucco building that housed a general store, grocery, hotel, café, liquor store, the Tap Room and a laundry. Jimmy was also the unofficial mayor.

Of the 2,800 lakes and ponds in the Adirondacks, Raquette Lake was one of the largest. Its shoreline and islands were dotted with permanent camps. Places that, in many cases, had been a family retreat for generations. The only access to most of them was by boat or sea plane. So the hamlet of Raquette Lake had a business called, “Camps Services Company.” They maintained camps, ferried families out to them and brought them supplies while they were there. The only other business in town was a tour boat.

Jimmy asked, “How is your mule with bears?”

We had just pitched the tent on the Raquette Lake common, when Jimmy pulled up in his car. I told him, “I don’t know. We haven’t seen one yet.”

“Well, you’re about to. When I said you could camp here, I didn’t think about the bear. We have one that comes through every afternoon on his way to my dumpster. I just saw it up on the mountain headed this way. Thought I’d better warn you.”

When Jimmy drove off, Patricia said, “What are we going to do?”

“Wait and see. What else can we do?”

I did have a plan. Every night, since we left home, I kept the ax next to my bed. If a bear, or anything else, tried to harm Della, I would defend her, and us, with it. I figured a whack or two would probably do the trick. I’m a big guy. It was a big ax.

I leaned it against the front tire of the cart. If this bear messed with Della, I wanted it handy. Then we pulled out our chairs, sat down and waited for it. We could hear dogs barking up the mountain and at one point, a dog nearby went crazy for a few minutes. But we never saw the bear.

Around sundown, we decided it wasn’t coming. So I got the stove out and Patricia fixed rice and vegetables. After dinner, we decided to go across the street to the Tap Room for a night cap. My wife said, “I’ll throw our trash in Jimmy’s dumpster.”

When we walked behind the building, two waitresses were at the kitchen door smoking cigarettes. One of them said, “You aren’t going to throw that bag in the dumpster, are you?”

Patricia said, “Jimmy told us we could.”

“You might not want to right now. The bear is in it. He comes every night.”

The next morning Jimmy said, “That bear always walks right through where you were camped. He must have detoured to avoid your mule.”

All across the Adirondacks, it seemed like every local person we met had a bear story. We heard horrendous tales of the sides of barns clawed open, sheds destroyed, and it seemed like back porches were the bear’s favorite targets.

“And it’s getting worse,” said a woman who’d lived in the Adirondacks all her life. “It’s because the tourists feed them.”

When I told Ken in Blue Mountain Lake what she said, he laughed. “You mean the tourons? That’s what we call tourists in this neck of the woods. Well, I think that’s one you can’t blame on tourons. The problem is, they closed all the landfills around here. Used to be if you wanted to see a bear, you went to the dump. For generations, that’s where they ate. Then they closed all the dumps and filled them in. So now they come to town to eat.”

Ken and his wife Nancy had invited us to stay at their place on the edge of the village of Blue Mountain Lake. They had an apartment above their garage and we were welcome to use it. Nancy had four horses, a barn, a paddock and a huge back yard that needed mowing. Della was welcome to graze on it.