Adirondack

Edward Kanze

Description

Winner of the 2015 Adirondack Literary Award for Best Memoir presented by the Adirondack Center for Writing

Born just north of New York City, Edward Kanze traveled as far as the wilds of Australia and New Zealand, working as a naturalist, park ranger, and nature writer, before finally settling in New York's Adirondacks for the riskiest of all life's adventures: marriage and children. Adirondack tells the story of how he and his wife, Debbie, bought a tumbledown house, rescued it from ruin, started a family, and planted themselves deep in Adirondack soil. Along the way, he brings the unique history of this area to life by sharing stories of his ancestors, who have lived there for generations, and by offering captivating descriptions of the world around him. A keen observer, Kanze will charm readers with his tales of bears, birds, and fluorescent mice.
Prologue

1. Why

2. We Arrive

3. The House

4. One Plus One Equals Four

5. The Lawn

6. The River

7. The Woods

8. Home Economics

9. Neighbors

10. Summer Journal

11. Fall Journal

12. Winter Journal

13. Spring Journal

14. Into the Future

Acknowledgments

Sujets

• Local history
• Memoir
• Region
• History of the Americas
• Regional

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438454153
• Langue: English

Extrait

Praise for Books by Edward Kanze
Over the Mountain and Home Again: Journeys of an Adirondack Naturalist
“Ed Kanze has emerged as a fresh and joyful voice of the Adirondacks, with a merry eye, a sharp mind, a deep heart.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home
“Kanze has a vast knowledge of the natural world, and he complements it with a fine writing style, a sense of humor, and a joyful exuberance. His essays sparkle while they inform … We are lucky to have Edward Kanze as a resident writer-naturalist in northern New York. His pedigree is long and his writing precise. But more than that, Kanze brings a tremendous enthusiasm and delight to his descriptions of everything he observes around him.”
—Betsy Kepes, book reviewer, North Country Public Radio
“In sharing these Adirondack adventures Ed Kanze reminds us to cherish the natural world we have today, all around us. Over the Mountain and Home Again is a delight for those of us who also cherish time spent afield with a kindred spirit.”
—Bill Thompson III, editor, Bird Watcher’s Digest
Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey
“This deliberate odyssey is a beautifully written narrative, rich in natural history observation, woven into a marvelous story fresh off Penelope’s loom.”
—Ann Zwinger
“Ed Kanze is the John Burroughs of the twenty-first century—except that Mr. Kanze is a better writer … What an amazing continent and what a grand book about it!”
—Jack Sanders, author of Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles: The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers
“An extremely satisfying look at a land most of us know little about.”
— Booklist
Wild Life: The Remarkable Lives of Ordinary Animals
“Kanze speaks with several voices: that of the professional naturalist full of accurate information and scientific observations; the skilled writer with a grand sense of humor; the storyteller with a sense of drama; and the adult who has the capacity to view the world through the eyes of a curious child.”
—Charlotte Seidenberg, New Orleans Times-Picayune
“The material is offered in lighthearted fashion and should be especially appealing to young readers with an interest in wildlife.”
— Publishers Weekly
The World of John Burroughs
“[A] richly illustrated biography … the real essence of [Kanze’s] subject is captured in a wealth of marvelous photographs.”
— Publishers Weekly
Notes from New Zealand: A Book of Travel and Natural History
“Kanze takes us on an entertaining, adventurous tour of New Zealand’s forests, parks and beaches and on a grueling three-day hike on the famed Milford Track.”
— Publishers Weekly
“[An] insightful commentary on the congenial inhabitants, both human and animal, which first lured the author to this magnificent land.”
— Booklist
ADIRONDACK
ADIRONDACK
Life and Wildlife in the Wild, Wild East
Edward Kanze
Cover photo by Edward Kanze
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 Edward Kanze All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu
Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kanze, Edward. Adirondack : life and wildlife in the wild, wild East / Edward Kanze. pages cm. — (Excelsior editions) ISBN 978-1-4384-5414-6 (paperback : alkaline paper) 1. Kanze, Edward—Homes and haunts—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains. 2. Kanze, Edward—Diaries. 3. Mountain life—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains. 4. Country life—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains. 5. Natural history—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains. 6. Seasons—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains. 7. Naturalists—New York (State)—Adirondack Mountains—Biography. 8. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)—Social life and customs. 9. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)—Biography. 10. Adirondack Park (N.Y.)—Biography. I. Title. F127.A2K36 2014 974.7 5—dc23
2014002382
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my family, friends, and neighbors, human and otherwise, past, present, and future
It is through the power of observation, the gift of eye and ear, of tongue and nose and finger, that a place first rises up in our mind; afterward it is memory that carries the place, that allows it to grow in depth and complexity. For as long as our records go back, we have held these two things dear: landscape and memory.
—Barry Lopez, “About This Life”
(Copyright 1998, Barry Holstun Lopez. Used with permission.)
Contents
Prologue
1. Why
2. We Arrive
3. The House
4. One Plus One Equals Four
5. The Lawn
6. The River
photo gallery
7. The Woods
8. Home Economics
9. Neighbors
10. Summer Journal
11. Fall Journal
12. Winter Journal
13. Spring Journal
14. Into the Future
Acknowledgments
Prologue
A thousand feet above the wooded and rocky summits of New York’s Adirondack Mountains, a hermit thrush, a deep woods songbird, traces an arc across the sky. It’s the middle of a frosty autumn night.
Silver stars glitter on universal black velvet. The thrush, its breast spotted, back olive, and rump and tail a dull rusty red, keeps watch. With sharp eyes and a brain not quite the size of a table grape, the bird, about five months old, likely reads cues such as the earth’s magnetic field and star patterns to orient toward an ancestral wintering place it has never seen.
On this moonless night, the Adirondack Park, largest in the Lower 48, looms below like a sea of India ink. It’s wild country down there. Six million acres of mountains, valleys, and forest in varying degrees of preservation, of broad lakes and winding rivers, of sodden bogs thick with wild orchids and carnivorous plants, sprawl over a dome of billion-year-old bedrock. Those acres represent one of the nation’s finest sanctuaries for birds, beasts, and nature lovers. This is a state park, one with inholdings of private land. My wife and I are privileged to own such an inholding. The Adirondack Park covers more territory than Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks combined. The woods here are paradise for a hermit thrush—except during the cold, hard winter.
Down near a river whose waters reflect starshine as fine as tree pollen, a solitary glow pierces the blackness. It’s a lamp. The lamp shines in a house. The house crowns a hill of glacial sand. Inside, in pajamas, half asleep, I crouch over an aluminum container about the size of an old-fashioned pencil box. It’s a Sherman trap. Shermans are favored the world over by scientists for livetrapping shrews, voles, and other tiny mammals. Inside the trap rattles a deer mouse.
Above, the thrush pumps southward. It utters an occasional short whistle, barely audible on the ground.
I growl. The trap’s jarring snap has summoned me for the third time this night. All I can think of is getting back to bed. I work like a robot. Opening a plastic bag half filled with fluorescent yellow powder, I shake the mouse into it, zip the bag, then shake. Inside, the unhappy rodent tumbles like clothes in a dryer. With each revolution, it looks more and more like a lemon with a tail.
“What are you going to do with it?” says my wife, blinking as she pads from the bedroom.
“Let it go right here,” I say.
“ Indoors ?” Debbie is aghast. I make the case that liberating Technicolor mice outside the house, letting them mark their trails back in, has only gotten us so far. It’s time to get serious, to banish rodents from books and bedspreads once and for all. The way we’re going to accomplish this is to find the very last entry hole. Debbie is concerned about yellow stains on furniture and carpets. Yet she lets herself be persuaded. This is war.
I place the bag on the floor and open it. The mouse pokes its nose out twice, then bolts. The brown-and-white rodent is now a dazzling yellow—whiskers, tail, dainty feet, and all. Traumatized, the animal races toward the nearest wall, a contrail of yellow dust lengthening behind it. I’d laugh if I weren’t so tired. The mouse traces the room’s perimeter, reaches a bathroom, darts over the threshold, and vanishes.
I follow. A naturalist and writer, I’m beginning to doubt that life in one of the world’s great wild places is all it’s cracked up to be. I sprawl on the ice-cold floor, scrutinizing baseboards and the bottoms of cabinets. I’m tempted to abandon the entire enterprise, convince Debbie to join me, and, like the hermit thrush, head for a warmer horizon.
Yet there are compelling reasons to stay. We love the life we’re cobbling together here atop billion-year-old rock, a southern prong of a form