The Writing Chair

For me, one of the great pleasures of the Adirondacks is quiet time to be creative. On different days, I find myself inspired to photograph, design, draw or write. When I find myself inclined to write, I always head for the Writing Chair, secluded in a clearing within a particularly dense patch of White Pines and Hemlocks. By mid-Summer, the ferns there grow to waist-height, and the Writing Chair seems to float among them. It is there, perched at lakeside, that I can write for hours on end, inspired by the surroundings and views of the lake.

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Snow Transforms the Landscape

With winter upon us, I have been thinking of how dramatically the landscape changes in the Adirondacks at each season. This little boathouse, at Twin Coves, looks and feels like a different place in the winter than in the summer. You can see it out the windows from one of our guest rooms and I always snap a few photos of it when I have the chance. Standing in the same spot, taking the photo, it even feels as if I am in a different place – the silence surrounds and penetrates the forest when it snows. The boats and fishermen are gone. The waves no longer lap up against the shore and the breakwater. The beach is frozen, mute. This boathouse is in a small bay called Pine Bay and is eerily quiet when the snow comes. Isn’t it grand?

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Bitter, except when it’s sweet

By now, the leaves have fallen, and the first snowfall of Winter has begun. The Adirondacks take a pause for a few weeks during this time of year, when boat engines fall silent and snowmobile engines have yet to make themselves heard. Summer homes are shut for the season. The town dam has been fully opened to lower the water level of the lake in advance of Winter, and each weekend brings newly uncovered parts of the lake bottom. Even after all these years, we still find trash and debris from the early 1900s on the shallow areas of the lake-bed. Old porcelain shards, cobalt bottles and strange metal pieces rusted beyond recognition. A deep silence settles in the Adirondacks, as we wait for the lake to freeze and the snow to reach a depth appropriate for snowshoes and skis.

The picture above was taken during Columbus Day weekend, when we took the Chris Craft out for its last tour of 2006. Now, it’s out of the water and has begun its annual hibernation. The Chris Craft that belongs to Penwood is a 1953 runabout purchased by Mark’s grandfather, and it has faithfully given Mark’s family 53 summers of pleasure. In April, when the ice begins to crack and recede and the first stirrings of nature are in evidence, my attention often turns to the Chris Craft, as I begin to anticipate its debut in the new summer season.

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In honor of Daylight Savings Time in the U.S.

While I am personally partial to Autumn, many Adirondackers believe that Winter is the most beautiful time of year. It is a time of crystalline light and endless silences, when the land is cast in white. Sometimes, it seems that the Adirondacks are at their most forbidding in Winter, but they are also at their simplest. It is then that the dizzying species of flora and fauna lay dormant, and the land is reduced to ice, snow and wood. The sun, low in the sky, is so enfeebled that one can almost gaze at it in a manner that would be unthinkable in Summer. By January, the lakes freeze to a depth of two feet and thus become terra firma, to such a point that locals are known even to drive cars on them (not that I would ever dare). I do go out on the lake with my snowshoes and enjoy walking out to its center, where I am surrounded by nothing but the purest white.

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Penwood Main Lodge in Winter

When it snows in Old Forge, it snows! Here is a view of the main lodge at Penwood in the middle of Winter 2005. The house is covered in snow and the woods are eerily quiet. There is a lone snowmobile in the distance, barely audible. The house is about 100 years old and has its own personality, its own stubborn soul. You can’t recreate such character, at any price. It’s a member of the family.

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