Curiously Adirondack (Season 1)
Produced with my friend, neighbor, Adirondack guide and author Ed Kanze.
The Adirondack Park is a wondrous and unique place -- three times the size of Yellowstone and the largest park in the Lower 48. On the private lands in the park live about 100,000 year-round residents, all of them hardy and a great many quirky and ferociously independent. To live in the midst of the most extensive temperate deciduous forest on the planet, they endure long cold winters, swarms of biting insects, and a rugged, rocky, frost-haunted landscape that defies inhabitants of all species to eke out their livings.
Curiously Adirondack showcases life, both human and wild, inside the Adirondack Park. The aim of this series is to do this place and its singular people justice, bringing Adirondack Mountain life alive for all the poor souls who don't share the pleasure and pain of living here.
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Fifty Beds, Two Lakes, And An Otter: Bartlett's Hotel In Its Heyday, 1854-1884
The late nineteenth century might be called the Golden Age of Adirondack Hotels. Among the humble and the grand, one establishment stands out above all the others for its character and for its characters: Virgil and Caroline Bartlett's Sportsmen's Home, which had its heyday from 1854 to 1884. "Bartlett's," as the place was often called, stood at the downstream end of the Bartlett Carry between the Upper and Middle Saranac Lakes. Fran Yardley, a professional storyteller and author, has lived near the remote site of the hotel for more than forty years. She's our guide as Curiously Adirondack takes a look at a place renowned for its warm welcomes, delicious meals, cozy rooms, and pet otter.
Asleep Beneath The Sod: Saranac Lake's Historic Pine Ridge Cemetery
Saranac Lake's Pine Ridge Cemetery sprawls over a sandy hillside in the heart of the village. In it lie the last remains of the village's first settlers, along with hundreds of others, some well known, some not, who followed them across the great divide. Join Curiously Adirondack in a ramble through the cemetery with the best of all possible guides: Natalie Leduc, one of the village's grand dames, a former Winter Carnival queen who looks after the cemetery and, when her rich and adventurous life is done, aims to be buried there someday.
The Adirondack Mountain Village of Saranac Lake Remembers Its Curative Past
Most of us have heard William Faulkner's famous line about the past not being dead. His wisdom is nowhere more apparent than in the Adirondack Mountain village of Saranac Lake. Here, from the 1880s to the 1950s and a little bit beyond, tuberculosis patients arrived from near and far to rest on porches, breathe crisp pine-scented mountain air, and get well or die trying. Antibiotic therapy eventually put the village's sanitariums and cure cottages out of business. Still, in architecture, memory, story, and a heart-breaking poem penned by a brilliant young woman who didn't get well, the village's rich past remains vibrant and alive.
Dirt, Food, and Friends: Fledging Crow Farm Celebrates The Harvest
In Keeseville, on the eastern edge of upstate New York's Adirondack Mountains, a new-fangled subscription farm called Fledging Crow grows food the old fashioned way: with lots of elbow grease, lots of help from neighbors, and no artificial fertilizers or pesticides. Every year, the farmers celebrate their harvest and the community of life that made it possible by throwing a giant party, a sort of mini-Woodstock in the fields. It's called CrowFest. Join Curiously Adirondack as we mix and mingle with a curious cast of characters who tell the story of Fledging Crow Farm and who and what make it work.
Catch Our Drift: Why Adirondackers Love Winter, Sort Of
Do we in the Adirondacks love snow and cold? Do we hate them? Hear dyed-in-the-wool locals speak their minds about our long, cold, crystalline season of white.
Adirondack Exercise Club | CURIOUSLY ADIRONDACK
Hardy Adirondack Mountain folk chant 1-2-3-4 as we prepare to stay warm during cold, snowy winters that can last half the year or more. It's all about firewood: felling it, sawing it to length, hauling it out of the woods, splitting it, moving it, stacking it, moving it again a time or two, and finally feeding it to hungry woodstoves. Yes, an unlucky few of us twirl thermostats, summon central heat, and hand over hard-earned cash to the oil and gas industry, but the rest of us maintain our trim figures, keep strong, and get free cardiovascular exercise as we work out at the most popular exercise club in the region.
What Does The Moose Say?
There are spelling bees. There are trivia contests. There are athletic games and lumberjack competitions. But have you ever seen and heard a moose-calling contest? The scene is wild, competitors are fierce, and it's all in good fun. Learn more at www.indian-lake.com.
Slimed! Adirondack Kids Love Amphibians!
Adirondack kids can't resist slimy things that hop and crawl. Join three warm-blooded young naturalists as they hunt for frogs, toads, and salamanders. Don't think amphibians are cool? Maybe we can change your mind.
Intervale Lowlands: Biologist Larry Master Re-Wilds 135 Acres Near Lake Placid
In 2009, biologist Larry Master and his wife, Nancy, bought 135 acres of woods, fields, flowing water, and floodplain near Lake Placid in the Adirondack Mountains. Their mission: to make the property sing with songbirds, to convert its mowed fields to meadows full of native plants and animals, and to identify and monitor its wildlife in an era of rapid climate change. They call the place, tucked in an exquisite river valley between ranges of mountains, Intervale Lowlands. Intervale Lowlands is a private preserve.