Reading Season

     Seasons come, seasons go.
     In my world haying season seems to go on forever but I think 'forever' is about to end. I have one field of clover that was green, then white with snow and has now melted out to a bedraggled brown. But the cows still seem to like it so I'll feed them their daily freeze dried salad for a few more days. Then haying is done for the year. 
     Gwenne and I finished up paddling season with a couple of nice trips to Vermont when the fall foliage was at its peak. Grout Pond and Lake Hortonia were both scenic spots that we enjoyed. Now our merry little flotilla of canoes and kayaks sit in hibernation awaiting spring.

Paddling season finale - Grout Pond

     My swimming season ended with a last splash in the Battenkill months ago. But I do have to tell you about a surreal swimming experience Gwenne witnessed recently. On November 15th she and Louise Rourke watched as Bridget Simpson waded into Lake George up by Tioga Beach in far northern Washington County. Bridget first checked the water temperature with a thermometer. It was 45 degrees. Darn! Not cold enough! But it would have to do, so she proceeded to dive in and swim for fifteen or twenty minutes. This at a time when many small ponds are already frozen solid, snow was on the ground and a brisk, cold wind whipped the surface of the lake. No wetsuit...just her summer swimsuit. 

Gwenne's photos of Bridget 'brrrr' Simpson enjoying a Lake George swim on November 15

     Simpson is training for something called an 'Ice Mile'. It's actually an internationally popular thing, with an association, lists and records. The goal is to swim a mile in water that's 41 degrees or less with nothing other than your regular suit, cap and goggles (presumably to keep your eyelids from freezing shut). You need at least one witness...otherwise who would believe you? It seems to take either side of thirty minutes for most of the people who do it. As I was saying, my (and most others) swimming season is over. But not everyones.
     With warm weather seasonally activities coming to a close, it's time for their winter replacements. For this farmer that would be things like 'thawing frozen water pipe season' and 'starting gelled diesel engine season'. Which could be kind of disheartening except that it's also my reading season. Short days and long nights mean more time to spend with good books. In this post I'll share my list for the upcoming months. These aren't reviews, really not even recommendations - just some reading that looks interesting to me. And hopefully, to you too.

     Let's begin with two books that have a surficial connection, in that their subject matter meets at the surface of the Earth. Underland: A Deep Time Journey is by Robert Macfarlane, an English author with several other well regarded titles to his credit. It tells of his explorations below ground - in caves, catacombs and subterranean rivers - a realm fraught with the baggage of superstition and spookiness, a place where our imaginations conjure things that should never see the light of day. Another book that seems ready made to temper this darkness is Heaven's Breath - A Natural History of the Wind by Lyall Watson. Originally published in 1984, there's a new edition out this summer with an introduction by Nick Hunt. Here we're above ground and immersed in the movement of air all the way up to the stratosphere and beyond. You're probably wondering...is there really that much to say about something you can't even see? When, as Watson does, you look at the wind's role not just in meteorology, but in history, art, psychology and even philosophy, the answer is a resounding 'Yes'.

     Earlier this fall Ken Ilgunas spoke at Skidmore College in Saratoga. A few weeks later there was a Conference on Private Property Rights in Latham just twenty miles away. Whew! that was a close call. I have a sense that the Conference attendees might not care for Ilgunas's This Land is Our Land - How we lost the right to Roam and how to take it back. Besides, they're probably too busy tacking up POSTED signs to have time to read anyway. Around here, as in many rural parts of the country, owning land and doing what you want with it is right up there with God and guns as something not to be messed with. Which, of course, makes me want to read This Land is Our Land for its courage to look at our property laws in the context of history and tradition in the rest of the world. 

Look what Ken Ilgunas found while roaming - web image

     'The right to roam' reminds me of when I was a kid. I had a horse, a strikingly marked pinto named Flicka. Used to ride that mare everywhere, sometimes going from Gansevoort up towards South Glens Falls and other times down almost into Saratoga. Of course, that was before every dirt road was 'improved' to high speed pavement and every woodsy path became a cul-de-sac in a ritzy development of executive estates. Our area still has many people who love horses, people who want to go beyond circles in an indoor arena to trail rides across open country. I've heard of a group hoping to create an equestrian trail system in Washington County. God bless them and good luck but they'd better move quickly before the hand of progress that ruined the quiet trails of my youth steals their dream as well. 
     Ok, that's my rant for this post but it does lead me to a remarkable woman and her new book. Lady Long Rider is Bernice Ende's tale of over 29,000 miles in the saddle. It chronicles a series of horseback adventures across the U.S. and Canada. In our area she became well known and much loved when she spent the winter of 2014-2015 in Fort Edward. We visited Bernice and her two Fjords, Essie Pearl and Montana Spirit, several times during those long, cold months. Reading Lady Long Rider will be like catching up with an old friend. 

Bernice and...

...book. 

web images

     I have some other old friends that are a bit more sedentary than Bernice Ende. Scattered across Washington County are rock outcrops that I like to visit now and again. Exposures whose fossils, intrusions and twisted layers tell a good story. Russell Dunn seems to be a kindred spirit in his love of geologic oddities. His latest book is Boulders Beyond Belief, a guide to Adirondack behemoths waiting to amaze you. 

       Dunn and his wife, Barbara Delaney, are a well-oiled publishing machine with dozens of books between them. Notable are waterfall guides to much of the Northeast and a Trails with Tales series. Slowing down, taking the time to discover the stories, the hidden treasures, the uniqueness of a place is what appeals to me about the Dunn/Delaney oeuvre. It's a little like what I try to do in this blog. Which gets me thinking...how about a Trees Totally Terrific post? I could feature that amazing sycamore down by the Hoosic River and those towering white pines up on Shelving Rock and... 
  
ATLAS on a roll...

     Some time ago I did a post on the Northern Forest Atlas.  Since then Jerry Jenkins and colleagues  have been busy developing a series of charts, photographic guides, digital atlases and field guides. Sedges of the Northern Forest and Woody Plants of the Northern Forest are two guides that combine Jenkins deep botanical knowledge presented in his inimitable style with state of the art photography. I believe a volume on mosses is coming soon. Great stuff but I still long for a return of the White Creek Field School. There's just nothing like spending time out in the woods botanizing with Jerry.        

Does this guy ever sleep?

     Last month the Battenkill Conservancy hosted a program featuring John Bowermaster and a screening of his documentary film A Living River. I couldn't make it, the cows had other plans for me, but I was intrigued by the man and the movie so I checked out his website. He lives in the Hudson Valley but adventures around the world. He's host of a radio show/podcast, has created more than thirty films and authored eleven books. Oceans have been a long time focus but recently he's produced a series of Hudson River Stories. I love the Hudson and spending time paddling it so I think that's where I'll start in sampling Bowermaster's work.

Looking out on the Hudson

     

     
Finally...

     The September/October issue of Archaeology magazine had an article by Jason Urbanus entitled 'Exploring the Great Warpath'. It covered some of David Starbuck's digs around Fort Edward which was home base for soldiers preparing to fight to the north. This was in the 1754-1763 pre-Revolutionary French and Indian wars. The magazine is available in the local library system where you can also find books by both Starbuck and Russell Bellico that go much deeper into the history of that period.

     There's my list. It should keep me occupied thru the winter and maybe beyond. Don't be alarmed if, come next spring, you see some oddball in a canoe focused more on the book in his hand than the water around him. That will be me and you'll know that I didn't finish my reading season list by the time a new paddling season began. 

Fire on the Mountain

     "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."

- Charles Dickens

     While the opening line of A Tale of Two Cities is certainly amongst the most memorable in all of literature, this seemed an odd place for it to pop into my head. I was on Pilot Knob Mountain, overlooking Lake George. In upstate New York, a long way from London or Paris.

     I had just reached the top, coming from the Inman Pond trailhead to the east. Part marked path, part bushwhack. Not particularly hard but not a walk in the park either. A little sweaty, a little chilled on this early winter day, I fumbled with my camera to get a shot of the piled stones that marked the 2163 foot summit. That's when it occurred to me: my hike's theme was "a tale of two monuments", one standing for the best of times and the other for the worst of times.

Pilot Knob summit cairn

     Here in the Adirondacks, as in ranges around the world, climbing mountains is a shared passion. And why not? It's a deeply satisfying way to feel fully alive. We are meant to move, to explore. All the petty hassles and frustrations of day to day living seem to slide off the sides of mountains and you're left with simple, elemental challenges: weather, terrain and the limits of your strength and will. Can there be any other human endeavor where the goal, hard as it may be, is so clear? Reach the spot where the only thing above you is sky and you can take a deep breath of success.

     Pilot Knob is no Everest. Nor is it in the same league as Mt. Marcy and the other High Peaks. It's not even as lofty as several of its neighboring Lake George mountains. But you can't order its summit gift wrapped from Amazon. It's all uphill and steep uphill in places. There are rock-hopping stream crossings, blowdown from the Halloween storm and beaver-flooded sections of trail. And for half the climb there's no trail at all. What looks on a topo to be a smooth, steady slope turns out to be a confusing maze of small drainages with intervening ledge-y ridges. You start to wonder if your headed in the right direction. And with no trail there are few, if any, other hikers. On my trip I met just one guy who was deer hunting and he was just a short distance from the parking lot.

Blowdown and beaver flooding

     I spent a few minutes beside 'the best of times' summit cairn, celebrating my ascent with peanut buttered crackers and cold water. A few moments of 'life is good' euphoria that comes with crossing a finish line. I'ld been here several times before, on skies or during long backcountry runs, but that was when I was younger, when gravity wasn't as strong. Today, just a slow, uneventful walk was enough to kindle the warm glow of accomplishment.

     But you can't bask in that warmth for long. Not up here on a cold, wintery day. It was soon time to get moving, to visit that other monument just a short distance downhill. The one that marked 'the worst of times'.

     Fifty years ago...late fall of 1969. We'd go to the barn for morning milking and the first thing Dad did was turn the radio on. Catch up on the news. WWSC - AM out of Glens Falls with DJ Bruce Matthews, popular for his humorous banter. We listened for the weather, sports scores and the occasional story of some town official caught with his hands in the till. Then came the morning of November 20, 1969 with its 'glue your ear to the radio' NEWS: a plane had crashed into the side of a Lake George mountain, bursting into flames. Despite epic search and rescue efforts, everyone onboard had perished. For days it was all anyone in the area could talk about, locally as big a story as the 9/11 attacks would be nationally many years later.

Fairchild turboprop similar to the one that crashed

web image

     The mountain was Pilot Knob. Mohawk Airlines Flight 411 had originated in LaGuardia (New York), dropped off most of its passengers at Albany and then continued for the short hop to Warren County Airport. The weather was bad, driving rain and gusty wind. The pilot missed his first approach and was forced to circle around and try again. He never got a second chance. Looping back to the east over Lake George the plane had lost altitude. In the rain, in the dark, at 300 MPH a mountain suddenly loomed before them. Some observers think there was a desperate attempt to bring the plane's nose up that actually caused it to flip in midair and plow into the mountain upside down and backwards. Two or three hundred feet would have made the difference.

A Google Earth screen shot approximating Flight 411's location in its last seconds. Pilot Knob Mountain straight ahead with Pilot Knob Ridge to the left

      8:15 pm on Wednesday evening, November 19, 1969. People looked up thru the rain and fog to see an orange fireball near the top of Pilot Knob. Rescue operations began immediately but were hampered by the terrain, darkness and the weather as the rain turned to sleet and wet snow. By the time State Troopers and Forest Rangers reached the site the fire was mostly out and it was apparent that none of the three crew members and eleven passengers had survived. Several officers stayed at the site overnight and the following morning the grisly task of removing the bodies began.

     A few of the victims were from nearby areas: South Glens Falls, Hudson Falls and Argyle. There was also two people from Fair Haven, Vermont. And then there were three French citizens on a business trip. Serge Braschi of BAzamont, France was one of them and a year after the accident his friends placed a stone memorializing him at the crash site. I think of this as 'the worst of times' monument and that's where I headed after leaving the summit cairn.

     As the plane crash makes all too clear, things don't always go as planned in the mountains. I'ld been to the site a number of times but not recently, not in the last ten or fifteen years. Things looked a little different than I remembered. I dropped down off the ridge on the side towards the lake. There aren't great views here, just filtered glimpses of the water thru trees. On this grey November day Lake George seemed somber, empty. The upper west face of Pilot Knob is a series of vertical ledges separated by sloping benches. There was an inch or two of snow making the footing a little tricky. I checked this way and that. It was late in the afternoon of an overcast day with darkness approaching. I was by myself and (foolishly) hadn't told anyone where I was going. Maybe it was time to exercise some good judgement. Maybe it was time to head down the mountain.

Pilot Knob Ridge view from an earlier hike

     Before leaving I took one last moment to absorb the mood, the feel of the place. Today was calm, quiet. But imagine the violence of that evening fifty years ago, the sound and fury of metal into rock. The ear-splitting explosion and the acrid smell of burning fuel. From where I stood I could look across to what's sometimes called Pilot Knob Ridge. It's a football shaped spur that lies between the main peak and the lake. It has a bare bouldery crest, the result of a 1973 forest fire, and is climbed much more often than the actual summit where I was. I've been there on warm sunny days when groups of hikers are talking, snacking and enjoying the views, their kids and dogs having a grand adventure. Compare that to the nightmare of the first responders in 1969, unsure of what awaited them as they arduously slogged up the mountain, sleet stinging their faces. And sympathize with the emotions the loved ones of the victims must feel as they look up at this spot. For better or worse, this little mountain has touched many lives. 

Pilot Knob Mountain from the adjoining ridge - the crash site is below the left skyline

Final thoughts...

  

     I had hoped to bring back photos from the site. It didn't happen. In lieu, I'll offer a recollection from previous visits. From the summit cairn the site of impact is several hundred feet lower in the direction of Pilot Knob Ridge. On this trip my mistake may have been in being too far south, directly below the summit. The monument is a stone cross, probably granite, sitting on a pedestal block. It's much like what you'd see in a cemetery, very heavy with BRASCHI etched in the stone and also the date. Getting it to this inaccessible spot is a testament to the devotion his friends must have felt for Serge. There are also bits and pieces of the plane scattered about. They should be left as is, with the area being treated as an historical/archaeological site not to be disturbed. If anyone has a photo of the stone they want to forward to me I'll post it here for others to see. 

     UPDATE: Julie Braschi suggested this link to a photo of the monument.