Barry,
I enjoyed your account of your Adirondack Park days. The Park is such a huge place that you can focus your attention in one area and be oblivious to the rest. I've spent a lot of time in the central and southwestern parts. Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Barry Caselli" <[email protected]> To: "ENTS" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, December 5, 2009 10:35:29 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: [ENTS] My Adirondack experiences ENTS, Today I'm finally caught up with my email. But that probably won't last. I've been reading about the Elders Grove in some of the emails. This reminded me of when I was up there myself. To give you some background: At both ends of Schroon Lake there are camps, owned by a group called Word of Life. The camp at the north end is a 90-acre island, one mile from shore, east of the town called Schroon Lake. Word of Life used to tout this island as virgin forest, and they were quite pround of their giant white pine. I know that one of the ENTs went there to measure it a couple years ago, only to find out that it was gone, a victim of a building fire next to it. The island, called Word of Life Island, was purchased by Word of Life in 1946, and it was the former estate of a "Miss Clark", heiress of the Clark Thread fortune. At the south end of the lake, Word of Life has a 340 acre property called the Ranch/Ranger Camp, a camp for 6 to 12 year-olds. I was a camper at the Island for two weeks during the summer of 1979 and again during the summer of 1981, right after I got out of high school. During any time I had to myself I would wander the island, taking pictures of the trees and rocks, the scenery across the lake, etc. In addition to the great White Pine, I also found a single-trunk Paper Birch, which I believe I estimated to have a 2.5 foot DBH. I do have a low-quality picture of it somewhere. I also remember seeing Common Juniper growing on the island, near the shore, if I remember correctly. >From September 1981 to September 1982 I attended the Word of Life Bible >Institute, which uses the Ranch/Ranger Camp as its campus. While there I would >wander the trails and photograph the white pines. They were pretty and >majestic, but not very big. They might have been tall though. When winter started, in 1981, I wrote home and asked my parents to include a thermometer in their next care package, since it was getting really cold there. When the thermometer arrived I hung it on a hook outside the window nearest my bunk in the cabin I lived in. The coldest morning I recorded was -22 F. That morning at breakfast the staff announced that the thermometer in the parking area at the maintenance garage read -40 F. Students had to work, and I was put to work with the maintenance guys. During the winter we had to shovel the snow off every roof of every building on all their properties, after every snowfall. Wow, what an experience! To get to the island we rode on the back of a pickup truck, driving on the ice. Also during the 12 months I as there, I used to ride my bicycle a lot, and covered many miles with it. So anyway, those are my experiences in the Adirondack Park. By the way, the Adirondack Park is slightly larger than the State of New Jersey. Barry -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -- Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected]
