ADIRONDACK IMAGES AND TALES; The High Peaks

Tags

Adirondack Guide, Adirondack Hotels, Adirondack Mountains, Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Alfred Donaldson, Alvah Dunning, artists, Ausable, Blast Furnace, Blue Mountain Lake, Boreal Swamp, brook trout, Calamity Brook, canoe, Charles Hallock, chasm, Chateaugay, Daniel Craig McCallum, Dr. Joseph Stickler, Dr. Trudeau, Durant, E.R.Wallace, Eagle Lake, Edward Bierstadt, fly fishing, Fred, French Louis Seymour, geese, George Washington Sears, Herr Jagger, Indian Pass, Indian Pass Brook, J.T. Headley, Jay Gould, John Brown, John Leaf, Lean to, Leon Czolgosz, loggers, Marion River, McIntyre Iron Mine, Mission of the Transfiguration, Mitchell Sabattis, Monsieur LaPineaux, Moose River, Nessmuk, Nobleboro, Old Mountain Phelps, Old Ralph, Opalescent, Owls Head, Percy Bridge, Powerscourt Bridge, Railroads, Raquette Lake, Raquette River, Rushton Canoe, S.H.Hammond, Sabattis, saranac, Seneca Ray Stoddard, Tahawus, Teddy Roosevelt, Thomas Tahauwas, Utowana Lake, Vanderwacker, Wallface, West Canada Creek, William Henry Harrison Murray, Woodcock, Zadock Pratt

These are the mountains that I roamed in as a young man.

I moved away to find work around Blue Mountain and Raquette Lakes.

Old Phelps stayed in these mountains. He mapped them. He cataloged them. He loved them. He wrote poems about them. He brought strangers to them. He was sorry he did.

Can you believe that they are digging for iron just on the other side of that lake? And they are building a big blast furnace to cook it down.

That is one of the reasons that I left this area. It was getting a little too busy for me.

But I cannot get away from this “progress.” It seems to have established itself everywhere.

When I was a boy my father and I hunted bear and mountain lions in those high mountains. The moose liked to stay in the valleys. We saw fishers and lynx and wolf and all sorts of animals in those high mountains.

There is one place where a mountain is split in half. Honest. It is just split in half. One half makes a big cliff and the other half lays in a jumble within the deep valley below.

There are little lakes caught in between the mountains. There are long lakes that rest in the passes. And there are swamps here and there. It is the country were God first started his work.

I should have stayed there with Old Phelps. It would not have made a difference because it is all gone now.

On the other hand I would have enjoyed it for a few more years.