Adirondacks

I just returned from a trip up to the Adirondack Park in New York. Though I wasn't there primarily to take photographs, I did get a few chances to explore with my camera. If you have never been to the Adirondacks before, I highly recommend a visit. Not because they are beautiful, which they are, but because of the unique human-nature relationship present. The six-million acres of the park are not a wilderness. People live there, work there, play golf and mini-golf there. However, because of the imposition of regional planning over the landscape, the endless blight of commercial development and exploitation that has destroyed so much of the United States has been, to a degree, corralled.

Heading west on Rt. 86 out of Lake Placid, you pass a Price Chopper grocery store, complete with sprawling parking lot glowing in the evening light. Only a moment later, as you enter the forest, you pass a yellow and blue sign stating you are entering the McKenzie Mountain wilderness area. I have yet to wrap my head around exactly what the Adirondacks as a landscape have to offer in terms of guidance to the rest of the nation, though that 30 seconds of driving says quite a bit about circumspection with commercial development.


Over the next week or so I'll be sharing some of these images via this site.