So I am headed out for the next week on a well-earned vacation to The Adirondack Park in upstate New York, and I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been vacationing on-and-off in the Adirondacks since I was an infant, and going back (after several years of not visiting) is like going home. Founded by the New York State Legislator in 1882, the Adirondack Park is unique among American parks, as it is a state park that encompasses 6 million acres, but includes plenty of privately-owned property mixed in with the state land.

Part of the beauty of the park is the overall commitment to minimizing development and returning previously developed lands to their original wild state. At the 1894 Constitutional Convention, the Legislature proposed (and passed) a covenant to achieve meaningful protection of the (Adirondack) Forest Preserve, this became the pledge that the park land be “Forever Wild.”

The lands of the state, now owned or hereafter acquired, constituting the forest preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or private, nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.

While the state is able to develop land for recreational purposes, the majority of parkland is meant to be kept wild (really and truly wild). Because of this, when lands are donated to the park, the structures on them are often left to fall into disrepair, and eventually turn into ruins over time. Some of my favorite Adirondack memories are of hiking back old roads and stumbling upon long forgotten homes that are little more than foundations and fireplaces. Plants and animals reclaim what was originally theirs, and after enough time has passed, it’s difficult to tell that people ever lived on the land.

In consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation, the Adirondack Park Agency formulated the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan in 1972 to accommodate outdoor recreation without diluting the intent of the “forever wild” protection of the Preserve. The state has, and continues to make improvements on the park in order to expand access for recreational purposes, and has classified the park land into the following classifications: Wilderness, Primitive, Canoe, Historic Areas, Wild Forest, and Intensive Use. In maintaining the land, the Adirondack Park Agency has built roads, tent platforms, telephone poles, boat landings and campsites (among other things) in an effort to accommodate visitors. In doing so however, the Agency centers new development around already developed properties, so as to limit the expansion of man-made structures within the park.

For a kid from the suburbs (more urban than not), going to the Adirondacks every summer was a way to truly connect with this earth, and to understand that just because I lived among so many people didn’t mean that the animals weren’t out there too. This time around it’s my 11-year old nephew’s turn to watch for bald eagles and loons, and I hope he’ll want to have the same kind of connection to his environment and the other animals that inhabit this world as I did when I was his age.

The wildlife in the park really is spectacular, and (according to the Adirondack Park website) includes: black bears, white tailed deer, common loons, mergansers, bald eagles, beavers, coyotes, fishers, bobcats, brook and lake trout, land-locked salmon and more. Personally, I’ve come face-to-face with an adolescent black bear at Camp Santanoni Historic Area, watched loons dive and surface for hours on end, and watched beaver families devour trees and turn marshland into ponds with their busy work.

Another thing I learned about from my Adirondack vacations was the flora and fauna of the region. Both of my parents are “amature naturalists” (for lack of a better term I suppose), and can identify countless tress, plants, flowers and mushrooms. Hikes always involved my dad explaining the makeup of the forests – he would point out rare plants, identify trees, and explain how the old-growth forests developed over time. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I realized that not all dads knew this kind of information, and that I was a really lucky kid for growing up with people who knew which plants were native to a region and which were imported. And while I could have learned this kind of stuff in Maine or New Hampshire, or any number of other forested regions of this country, we went to the Adirondacks, and I learned it there.

Clearly the park is a special place, though I will admit that I am a little nervous to go back there and see how much it’s changed – if trees have been cut down – if people have developed their own lands… Every region needs some development, and the Adirondacks has a year-round population who protect the land, but also need to make a living and feed their families. It will be interesting to check out what’s happened in the 5 years since I’ve visited the park – let’s hope that the mantra remains “Forever Wild.”

See you when I get back!

All Photos by Jessica Bacon

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