Doctors of Philosophy Camp at Lake Lila

One of the interesting episodes in the history of the Adirondacks took place at Follensby Pond in 1858. There Philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, Biologist Louis Agassiz and eight other artists and scholars participated in what has come to be known as the Philosopher's Camp. On it's 150th anniversary there is little on record about this event except for a few pages in some comprehensive histories of the region (see, for example, Frank Graham's 1978 book The Adirondack Park pp.20-22) and a lengthy poem by Emerson that can be found at: http://wildernessandwaterslides.blogspot.com/2008/10/adirondacs-this-poem-in-its-entirity.html

It might seem a tad self-inflated to call the recent camping trip Steve and I took to Lake Lila a modern-day version of the Philosophers Camp, but both of us have Ph. D's and that at least allows us to claim a similar title for our experience. We did not dissect any animals as they did at the original Philosopher's Camp (although Steve did sacrifice some mushrooms to make "sporecasts"), and we did not hunt, fish, or shoot at targets with rifles as they did. We drank our "foaming ale" from not from "hunter's pans" but from plastic cups, and at times our laughter "echoed through the woods" as theirs did 150 years earlier. We ate processed food we brought with us in a smooth plastic anti-bear canister rather than feasting on "wild game and fresh baked bread." When we weren't pumping our drinking water through a micro-filter, gathering "dead and down" firewood to get us through chilly nights and mornings when temperatures dipped into the 30's, washing our dishes and ourselves with biodegradable "camp soap" made from hemp oil, or taking care of other camp chores, we explored Lake Lila in the same manner that the Philosophers explored Follensby Pond, by canoe and on foot. After two days we returned to soft beds and "the fires of home" and were greeted by news of collapsing financial markets that history may someday judge as significant as the laying of the Trans-Atlantic cable.

At about the midpoint of our stay we began to focus our explorations and discussions on two questions: What makes camping at Lake Lila special, and what circumstances and policies make or help keep it that way? One of the first things we noticed about Lake Lila was how quiet it was. So quiet, in fact, that during our stay we noticed at times that our ears "ringing" in response to the lack of background noise. Much of that quiet is due to the fact that motorized boats and vehicles, generators, and chainsaws are prohibited. The nights were clear, and that made us aware of the fact that there is almost no light pollution, which made the night sky a much more crowded and interesting place then the night sky in Cortland (it actually made some of the familiar objects we looked for to help us find our way around the night sky unfamiliar). Isolation from other campers contributed to the quiet and our sense of solitude. A quick check of the register at the parking area revealed that there were probably fewer than 30 other campers occupying the 1400 acre lake and shoreline during our stay, and the only other voices we heard aside from our own were from two or three boats that passed by during the 48 hours we spent at our island campsite.

Another special things about Lake Lila were water that is probably clean enough to drink without filtering if it weren't for the omnipresent backwoods threat of Giardia contamination. We saw no litter on land or water except for a few small scraps right near our campsite and a helium-filled mylar balloon that had blown in from somewhere (Ohio? Michigan? California? China?). With the exception of a two foot tall box privy DEC had placed near our campsite and the railroad tracks we crossed over on our hike to the summit of Mt. Frederica, no man-made structure was visible anywhere on the lake, and Steve noted the welcome absence of invasive species such as purple loosestrife and zebra mussels.

We decided that the spacing of the campsites was one of the things that made our experience at Lake Lila special. With three exceptions, the twenty-four designated shoreline and island campsites are strategically placed to minimize contact with each other. The most desirable campsites (and we concluded this was probably somewhat a matter of personal preference) regularly become available to newly arriving campers due to a regulation that limits stays at a specific campsite to three days unless prior permission for a longer stay is granted by a forest ranger assigned to the area. A provision that allows camping anywhere in the area outside of 150 feet of lakes, ponds, streams, trails, or roads insures that no one will spend a lot of effort only to be completely denied the experience of camping at Lake Lila, and the fact that there is no fee means people are less likely to feel cheated if they must camp at one of the less-desirable sites. Lake Lila's location near the center of the park, far from the popular tourist and commercial centers such as Old Forge, Lake George, Lake Placid/Saranac Lake, and Tupper Lake that dot it's edges keeps visitors down, which contributes to the sense of isolation and solitude. It also means that people who wish to camp must plan there visit carefully since there are no stores, restaurants or motels nearby, and we concluded that such people are likely to be better neighbors when it comes to camping in a natural setting.

Despite the its isolation, Lake Lila provides a relatively safe and comfortable camping experience from July through October. The lake can be choppy, but it is relatively narrow and the water is warm if the waves cause paddlers to tip. The Adirondacks are generally free of dangerous flora and fauna (especially compared to, say, tropical rain forest). There are no poisonous plants or snakes. There are no grizzly bears, only relatively unaggressive and (thanks to Lake Lila's widely spaced campsites and generally well-equipped and well-educated campers that frequent them) wary of humans black bears. The largest predator in the Adirondacks is the coyote, and we know of no instance of coyotes attacking humans.

On the other hand, the often early onset of harsh winter weather and Lake Lila's cool and buggy (e.g. black flies) springs keeps most campers away for seven months, and this reduces human impact on the ecosystem. So does the fact that it takes 1/2 an hour to cover the last 8 miles of bumpy dirt road to the parking lot, after which campers face a 1/3 mile portage for boats or a 3 mile hike. This makes most campers reasonable well-equipped, educated (e.g. about bears, camp soap, burning only dead and down wood, etc.), and respectful of others' camping experience, although the physical demands of camping at Lake Lila are not such that only a tiny percentage of people may reasonably participate.

In some ways, Lake Lila has changed considerably since I last camped there in the mid 1990's. Where before it was a thin strip of state-owned land surrounded by large tracts of private forest products land, it is now part of a large new wilderness area in the Adirondack Forest Preserve that was created in March 2000 by the purchase of 15,000 acres of land from the Whitney family using money from the Environmental Protection Fund and the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act (need links). The William C. Whitney Wilderness that resulted form this purchase embodies a pragmatic view of nature in several important respects.

The William C. Whitney Map and Guide published by DEC states that the "former road system of the Whitney purchase is quickly being overtaken by vegetation (and gradually taking on) the character of a wilderness." At the same time, a well-maintained combination of a paved and dirt road provides relatively easy travel to designated parking areas, which greatly increases access to the interior of the wilderness. A road around the north edge of Lake Lila is closed to motor vehicles and bicycles, but owners of private land bordering the wilderness retain a legal right to use the road. Other roads at the headquarters area of the wilderness are closed to public motor vehicle use but open to "people with mobility impairments who utilize mechanized aids (i.e., non-motorized or motorized wheelchairs or other similar devices), and there is a privately-owned inholding of several hundred acres adjacent to the headquarters. Finally, the Remsen-Lake Placid Travel Corridor, which allows public use of snowmobiles and ATV's borders the wilderness on the west, but riders and their machines are not legally allowed into the wilderness itself.

In the end, it may be that Lake Lila provides an outstanding camping experience to those who for whom outstanding camping requires a healthy dose of nature because its design and regulation allow it to function as a "public good" whose use in this context by one does not significantly diminish its use by others. At the same time, it is accessible to a relatively wide range of individuals who are seeking a natural camping experience. This arrangement is appropriate given that it is collectively-owned by the citizens of the State of New York.

Since we got home we've begun to explore the idea that Lake Lila "works" because it is rooted in a pragmatic concept of nature. As Louis Menand explains in his 2001 book The Metaphysical Club for a pragmatist ideas are "tools people devise to cope with the world", and ideas work best when they are adaptable. this means, Menand tells us, that ideas "should never become ideologies -either justifying the status quo or dictating some transcendent imperative for renouncing it." In a sense the entire Adirondack Park embodies a pragmatic concept of nature that is adaptable enough to balance the diverse and sometimes competing values (spiritual, recreational, ecological, utilitarian) that humans impose on the landscape. Lake Lila illustrates on how this concept can work to protect nature on a smaller scale. This is, in turn, provides a model for our research and writing about the Adirondack Park where we seek to examine various aspects of the park with an eye toward devising tools that can help us protect nature in our industrialized, mass-society, world.

Bicknell's Thrush and the Adirondack Park: Historical Context

Our pursuit of Bicknell's Thrush started with a three hour car trip from Cortland to the Adirondack Park. We traveled north on Rte 81 to Syracuse through U-shaped valleys carved out by glaciers, then headed east on the New York State Thruway across the plain created after the last ice age when ancient Lake Iroquois drained to leave behind modern Great Lake Ontario. We exited the Thruway at Rome, and took Rte 365 northeast to Rte. 28 on the last leg of our journey. Soon we started to see sandy soil and rolling hills dotted with glacial erratics, telltale signs that we were nearing the Adirondacks. Eventually the perfume of balsam fir in the air and frequent sightings of some of the more than 3,000 Adirondack lakes and ponds announced that we had reached our destination.

Despite the fact that the landscape was shouting "Adirondacks" at us, it was not easy to determine when we actually entered the park. The entrance was marked only by a surprisingly unobtrusive brown and yellow wooden sign that was visible through our car windows for perhaps 10 seconds. There was no kiosk, no stop sign, no entrance fee, no posted regulations, no map and no pamphlets. As we continued driving we saw stretches of road lined with homes and businesses alternating with stretches of road lined with forest. If we had missed the entrance sign, and it seems reasonable to assume that many travelers do, there was nothing to distinguish the landscape inside the park from the landscape outside the park.

About twenty minutes after we entered the park we reached the hamlet of Old Forge. Only a few people were in evidence along its five-mile-long stretch of restaurants, gift shops, and tourist attractions where, later in the summer, thousands visitors often bring traffic to a near standstill. On a previous visit to Old Forge we stopped at the parking lot of its biggest tourist attraction, the Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park, and asked several patrons if they might tell us where the Adirondack Park was. They invariably told us they weren't sure where it was, even though they were many miles inside the Park's borders. Given that only one small sign out of the hundreds that lined Rte. 28 even mentioned the park it is not surprising that many visitors fail to recognize that they are actually inside the largest park in the contiguous U.S. Since Enchanted Forest was not yet open on this visit we did not repeat our experiment, but continued on to Long Lake and our appointment with Joan Collins, who conducts an annual survey of Bicknell's Thrush that is described in detail in Steve's earlier posts.

After a delightful dinner with Joan, and a somewhat less satisfactory night's sleep, we started out at 2:30AM for Blue Mountain by car. We arrived at the trailhead at 2:45 and started our hike almost immediately. There was no moon so we could see only the small area in front of us that was illuminated by our headlamps and flashlights. In our haste to reach the summit we hiked mostly in silence (except for my increasingly heavy breathing). When we stopped briefly to peel off some layers and catch our breath, I glanced at the pamphlet we had picked up at the trailhead. The first thing it described was the mixture of public and private land in the Adirondack Park, noting that the trail up Blue starts out in private land and ends on state land, but there was no mention as to where this occurred, and I wondered briefly if there would be any way to tell when this happened.

I soon forgot about looking for the dividing line between public and private land and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. In just under two hours we reached the summit. Joan quietly sat down with her legs tucked underneath her, spread her charts on the rocks in front of her, and clicked off her headlamp. Steve and I moved about 30 feet away and he quickly assembled his parabolic microphone and digital recorder. For the next twenty minutes Joan sat almost motionless, occasionally turning on her headlamp and leaning forward to make a brief note on her chart while Steve trained his microphone on the various birds that were vocalizing around us.

When her time was up Joan moved on to her next survey point and Steve moved around the summit tracking birds with his recording gear. Grateful for the chance to rest my leg muscles before we headed back down the mountain, I pulled my hat down around my ears to ward off the chill breeze and watched the sun rise over the cell tower that dominated the south side of the summit. The stark contrast between the cell tower and the surrounding spruce forest brought back to mind the public/private character of the Adirondack Park that the pamphlet now folded in my pocket had started me thinking about on our way up the mountain, and I continued thinking about the divided nature of the park as I looked down at the lights that dotted the shorelines of lakes off in the distance and the car headlights that followed the thin thread of highway that linked Raquette Lake and Blue Mountain Lake. When the sun hid behind the clouds that had rolled in just as we neared the summit, I sought shelter behind a large rock and thought about how this arrangement had come to pass.

The mixture of public and private lands found in the park has its origin in the natural history of the Adirondacks. The region's short growing season, nutrient poor and often poorly drained soil, and rugged terrain determined that Adirondack forests were not settled and cleared for agriculture as were those in much of the rest of New York. In the mid-1800's wood and timber products fueled the industrial revolution in the U.S. in much the same manner as petroleum fuels our modern economy, and loggers went to work in the Adirondack forests in earnest. The accelerated pace of logging in the Adirondacks brought about one of the first political coalitions devoted to protecting the environment. This coalition was a curious blend of early conservationists and downstate business interests who derived from George Perkin Marsh's influential 1864 book Man and Nature the idea that the destruction of the Adirondack Forests threatened the watershed upon which the Hudson River and the Erie Canal depended.

In 1872 this coalition realized their first victory when the New York Assembly appointed a commission to recommend actions for protecting the Adirondacks. In 1885 the State Legislature created the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which consisted mainly of scattered parcels of logged-over land previously acquired through non-payment of taxes totaling about 681,000 acres. Although the enabling legislation for the Adirondack Forest Preserve stated that it would "be forever kept as wild forest lands" conservationists kept pushing for stronger protection, and in 1892 the legislature drew a blue line around the scattered Adirondack Forest Preserve holdings and declared that "all lands now owned or hereafter acquired by the state" within specified Adirondack counties and towns "shall constitute the Adirondack Park." The Park's creators left the difficult task of deciding how to deal with the private land that fell within the Park's boundaries, and the people who were living on that land, to future politicians.

As we started back down the mountain I concluded that we were fortunate to have ended up with the Adirondack Park's large-scale marriage of public and private land. Steve's post on the likely extinction of Bicknell's Thrush illustrates the enormous threats facing nature today. It is obvious that nowhere in the world will we be able to protect natural ecosystems solely by using what E. O. Wilson (in his 1992 classic The Diversity of Life) called the "bunker" approach of placing large areas of land in public ownership. Instead, we will need to create parks and preserves that combine public and private land, and the Adirondack Park provides us with abundant examples of things that have worked, and things that haven't, to learn from as we strive to create parks that are up to the challenges facing nature in the modern world.

One of the difficulties of creating parks that marry public and private land is that the contest between nature and private enterprise is so heavily weighted in favor of the latter. Joan is usually alone when she hikes up Adirondack peaks in pursuit of Bicknell's Thrush and often finds herself singing loudly as she hikes to "keep the bears away." It is safe to say that, if the payoff for the hike were a thousand dollars rather than a few glimpses of an endangered bird, she'd have a lot more company. But surveys confirm what Joan's lonely hikes suggest: love of nature is a widely, but not deeply, held value for most individuals. As a result environmental interests are at a distinct disadvantage compared to economic interests when they must settle their differences in the arena of democratic politics. The Adirondack Park's "Forever Wild" clause and its land use plan help to balance these interests, and we plan to explore both in future posts.

Blackflies, Blue Mountain, and Bicknell's Thrush

On a beautiful Wednesday in June we set out from Cortland on a 3 ½ hour drive to Blue Mountain in the Adirondack Park. Unlike most visitors, we stopped at the entrance because we wanted to photograph the sign that welcomes visitors to the Adirondack Park. Visitors who don't want a photo of the welcome sign have no reason to stop at the park entrance because there is no gate, no uniformed park employees collecting entrance fees, and no list of rules and regulations to read about on a sign or pamphlet. With an estimated 10 million visitors a year, not halting the flow of vehicles into the Park makes sense, but given the 55 MPH speed limit on Rte. 28 and the fact that the brown and yellow sign is designed, like all official Adirondack Park signage, to blend in with natural surroundings, it is not surprising that a lot of visitors to the Adirondack's don't even realize they are staying in the largest park in the contiguous U.S.

We tested the notion that many Adirondack Park visitors don't know they are visiting a park by conducting the following not-very-scientific experiment. We drove to Old Forge, a small village located several miles inside Park's boundaries, and asked the first five people we encountered walking through the parking lot of the Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park if they could tell us where the Adirondack Park was. The response we got in each case was a variation of the following: "I'm sorry. I don't know where it is. I'm not from around here." Taking the experiment a little further we asked the same question of the young woman inside a glass booth who was selling admission tickets to Enchanted Forest. She did know that we were "inside the Adirondack Park," but when we faked puzzled looks in response to that piece of information, she had a hard time explaining further. "It's this county," she told us. "Well, it’s a lot of counties. It's…" Her voice trailed off and we nodded our thanks and walked away.

It is not surprising that many Adirondack Park visitors don't realize they are in a park, since homes, businesses, schools, churches, and crowded shopping districts regularly dot, and sometimes crowd, the landscape amidst the vast stretches of natural scenery. Unlike other parks in the United States, the Adirondack Park combines public and private land in a manner similar to some European parks, but on a much larger scale. Its six million acres of public and private land take up approximately the same area as the state of Vermont, and the 45% of the park that is publicly-owned protects more untrammeled land than any other national, state, or local park in the contiguous United States. The trail we climbed up Blue Mountain in search of Bicknell's Thrush illustrates this blending of public and private land by starting at the base of the mountain on private land owned by the Finch Pruyne Paper Company, then moving without notice onto public land on the way to the summit. Hikers that fail to register, or fail to read the brochure that is available at the trail head, will be unaware that they are experiencing this essential aspect of the Adirondack Park.

Many of the Adirondack Park's approximately 250,000 permanent and seasonal residents find its marriage of public and private land to be a stormy one, mostly because development on private land is regulated by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The APA uses density zoning, compatible uses, and agency review of significant new construction to regulate development, and its decisions are often controversial. Environmental groups are frequently critical of APA decisions as well and, as a result, the Park is as much home to heated politics as it is to serene landscapes. After our hike up Blue, for example, we stopped for breakfast in Indian Lake and came across a woman wearing this t-shirt that read "Adirondack Porn Agency: Screwing the Little Guy Since 1972."

It is the mixture of public and private land that makes lessons gleaned from the Adirondack Park so valuable. It is clear that merely setting aside land in public parks and preserves will not be sufficient to protect natural ecosystems from careless development and environmental degradation. Studying the Adirondack Park may help us learn how to preserve wilderness and protect natural ecosystems through land use planning on a regional scale, and Steve and I intend to look for, and try to learn from, its successes and failures as we explore the Adirondacks in the future.

Re Blackflies. We thought we'd experience the discomfort of blackfly season in the Adirondacks, but it turns out that warm spring temperatures arrived both late and suddenly, and that combination severely diminished the blackfly population. Having made a trip to the emergency room to cope with the aftereffects of a previous visit to the Adirondacks in early June, I can't say I'm sorry we missed them.

Ascent of Blue Mountain - 14 June 2007 - Part II

Bicknell’s thrush is a habitat specialist. It nests in spruce fir forests near the top of mountains in the Northeastern United States. The species is fairly secretive, preferring dense conifer foliage. It sings infrequently and then again only in the early morning hours. Today was no different than my two previous early morning trips up Blue Mountain in 2005 and 2006. No singing Bicknell’s. We did hear four birds calling to one another from a short line of firs. Their gentle “breeer” notes varied slightly in frequency, but they were clearly the Bicknell call. Tom watched patiently for several minutes, but no bird showed itself. Thirty seconds of calling was all we earned on June 14.

Before our descent, we studied the chain of lakes in front of us from Blue Mountain, Utowana, Raquette and Eighth lakes. Each tells a different story of geological and human history. Raquette bears the scars of a glacial ice scour that moved from the northeast to the southwest creating the lake basin many millennia ago. Changes in Adirondack lake chemistry have followed the industrial revolution which deposited acidic aerosols and heavy metals on northeastern mountains. Changes in soil and water chemistry forms a powerful selective force and is currently at work on the algae, fish, bird, tree, and insect populations of the Adirondacks.

Solar light illuminated our path down the mountain. Swainson’s thrush, blackpoll warbler, winter wren and white-throated sparrow blessed the mountain air that was full of fresh balsam. Bunchberry, blue bead, and starflower were in full bloom near the top. I relished this observation as I usually see the fruits during my three week August stint at Raquette Lake.
As we end our first Adirondack excursion as a team, the songs of the early morning birds have been replaced with black-throated blue warblers, red-eyed vireo, and American robin. The dull roar of automobiles traveling at double nickel speed signals the end of the trail. It is 7:30 A.M., time for breakfast and a shower. In three hours of hiking, I have begun the outline for the scientific issues that are shaped by the unique features of the Adirondacks: geological history, ecology, and the human environment. Adventure one is complete.

Ascent of Blue Mountain on June 14, 2007

January 14th began a little early. At 3:56 A.M., Tom began rustling a backpack and a wind breaker to break the silence in our borrowed pink room. A flip of the lights, a rub on Cory’s back and we are off to the kitchen for a fast coffee. At 4:15 A.M. we are in the Town & Country rolling down highway 28 a half mile to head north on highway 30 to the Blue Mountain trailhead. After turning twice in the darkness, we find the gravel parking lot awaiting our anxious bodies. Flashlights working, trail log signed, and we are off on an Adirondack adventure.

The Adirondacks showcase many lessons in ecology, earth science, and a legacy of the human impact. Some 18,000 years B.P. glaciers had moved across this wilderness we recognize as Adirondack Park. One glacier excavated bowl-shaped cuts in the side of Whiteface Mountain. Another glacier from the north shoveled sand and gravel from an area now know as Potsdam, trucked it 30 miles south and deposited at a higher elevation on the north slope of Whiteface. Another glacier is responsible for the boulders thrown in front of my walk up Blue Mountain at 4:30 A.M. These boulders have seen life from somewhere in Canada, survived the migration of entire ecosystems over their surface, and now they serve as a refuge for insects, the beginning of life for mosses, rock ferns, and a yellow birch or two.

Fifteen minutes into the walk, the morning chorus begins with a Swainson’s thrush, and then a second, and a third. Their bubbly crescendo introduces our ears to a new day. It is still dark and our flashlights are illuminating the rock strewn trail. Shortly after the Swainson’s started, the smooth clear notes of the white-throated sparrow introduce themselves to the new day. It has been reported that the larger birds with big eyes begin the morning chorus followed by the singing of successively smaller bird species. This trend continued with the Blackpoll warbler, Tenneessee warbler, and the winter wren on our ascent.

The change in eleveation along the trail shows another interaction between earth science and biological ecology. Trees typical of a temperature deciduous forest (American beech, eastern hemlock, yellow birch, and sugar maple) throughout New York are observed at 2000 ft where the trailhead begins. Somewhere around 2800 feet balsam fir and paper birch become more common. The forest is shorter here and the trees are sculptured by the wind, long winters, and drier conditions. In terms of appearance, the higher elevation fir-birch forest looks like the impoverished neighborhood on the mountain. Thin soil, dry conditions, and severe winters keeps these trees from reaching their full potential.

At 5:15 we reach the peak of Blue Mountain at 3200 ft. are greeted to a brisk breeze and temperatures that most certainly are no higher than 40°F. The sun breaks about the ridges and mountains to the east and casts an orange glow over the balsam fir near the top of Blue. The steps on the fire tower have small puddles of water. Tom believes the steps were frost covered just moments earlier.

Aside from the breeze, the top of Blue is silent except for a dark-eyed junco singing somewhere on the tree line. We skirt around the rock escarpment carefully listening for another, much rarer thrush called Bicknell’s. This bird is the sole reason I encouraged my son, Cory, and my friend Tom to the top of Blue so early in the morning.