Bushwhack Jack's Tracts

Our recent trip to Alaska met all our expectations and then some. We saw abundant wildlife, met wonderful people, and saw non-stop jaw-dropping scenery. I was hopeful that I might see something I had never seen before…Denali. You see, in 1971, as a mere babe of 22, when I got to be part of the National Outdoor Leadership School's first attempt to summit the mountain, I never saw it. That’s right. I spent forty days on the mountain but it was always shrouded in clouds. Cl

Phyliss and I had made good progress up the Alcan Highway and were debating whether to make more miles north or spend the night in Teslin, Yukon. Teslin, a village of 239 hardy souls, was established by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1903. It’s also home to the Teslin Inland Tlingit First Nations. After passing through Teslin we would be on our way to Whitehorse and any chance of visiting my old friend Joe Ordóñez would be gone. Joe has lived in Haines, a small village in s

Ask someone in the lower 48 about Alaska and they’ll tell you two things: It has incredible mountain scenery and substantially more wildlife than people. Scenery and wildlife are the main reasons we made the trip, and I could try to wax poetic about it, but I could never do it justice. I surprise myself, however, at how important it has become to reconnect with old friends. I've always considered myself a wilderness-first kind of guy. Heck, I moved to Saranac in 1972 fo

Phyliss and I had been considering driving to Alaska for a couple of years. I’ve been to Alaska three times and over those three trips I’ve spent about 85 days between the slopes of Denali, hopping over to far Eastern Siberia, and visiting my son Dustin, who was a rafting guide on the Chilkat River. Only seven of those days did I really play tourist. Therefore the idea of driving the Alaska Canadian Highway (Alcan) and playing tourist tugged at me. Phyliss and I entering Ala

In the summer of 1969, when I transferred from the University of Wyoming to SUNY Cortland, I found out I’d be living in the first coed dorm on campus. Whoa! This put me at the front of the line of 1960s cultural change. Today, coed colleges dorms are as common as buildings named after donors no student has ever heard of, but in 1969 they were as rare as a bar in the college library. To give you an idea how archaic things were, women still had curfews. Having grown u

Have you ever been on an outdoor adventure and been abandoned by your travel partner? Perhaps you were too slow for your companion or perhaps you wanted to take different routes. Whatever the reason, it should never happen. Splitting up causes all sorts of problems. I sat down recently and within minutes came up with over fifty reasons why groups shouldn’t split up. For example, there’s the group that splits up, but only one of the parties had a flashlight. Imagine the c

While some people are furious about the Visitor Use Management Report for the High Peaks Wilderness Complex, I think it’s an excellent report with long overdue recommendations. The report establishes that the current levels of use cause traffic, parking, and crowding issues. Some feel the issues are overblown. Really? Does anyone doubt that these conditions exist? You don’t think there’s traffic congestion at times? You don’t think there’s parking issues at times? You do

I almost never remember what I’ve done on any given day, but I can never forget what I was doing on July 20th, 1969. I was with friends and family on the shore of Lower Saranac Lake watching a static-filled black and white TV as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. As space travel became more common it also became ho hum and taken for granted. But that all changed a few weeks ago. Space travel once again captured the imaginations of people around the world

Bushwhack Jack’s Tracts has reached a milestone. And while my English teachers are rolling over in their graves – I’m providing you with my 100th column! I thought I had some decent stories to tell but telling them in a way that people want to read them has been the challenge. If you enjoy my storytelling most of the credit is due to Bob, Mr. InSeide Dope, Seidenstein. Without his encouragement and help, these stories would have remained locked in my mind… perhaps where

It’s maple season, and with it come all the joys and frustrations of making the tasty, sweet maple nectar. As I cope with a broken reverse osmosis machine and wait for my maple lines to thaw, I’m reminded of prescient advice. When I first thought about making maple syrup, nearly fifteen years ago, I visited all the maple producers I could find. They were incredibly helpful, answered my questions, and gave me both solicited and unsolicited advice. Of the latter the most i

We are fortunate to have excellent health care in Saranac Lake, but that doesn’t mean our medical services are infallible. A couple of weeks ago the system broke down and I was the victim. So what happened? I woke up in the middle of the night with a deep, stabbing pain in the lower left-side of my back, the kind that gradually brings you to full consciousness. At first it hovered around a six out of ten—bad enough to make it impossible to lie still but still leavin

If there’s one word to describe making frigid outdoor living tolerable…or even pleasant, I would say it’s quinzhees. What’s a quinzhee? A quinzhee is a snow shelter made from a large pile of snow, which Athabaskan natives are credited with developing. While Wikipedia said quinzhee entered the English language in 1984, I first heard them called quinchees in 1977 and learned how to build them from my good friend Bill Connolly who was the director of SUNY Potsdam’s Star Lak

Last week sadly, another wilderness traveler died of hypothermia in the High Peaks Wilderness. News of such calamities reminds me that winter isn’t an abstraction or a romantic postcard—it’s a force to be reckoned with. People often ask how I endure winter camping. I wouldn’t call it easy, but I think of it in three parts. First, there’s knowledge: how to dress in layers, how to fuel your body, how to conserve heat, how to recognize the early signs of trouble. Winte

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." – George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905). Last week while trying to avoid the news of the day I channel surfed and found CNN’s series 1968 The year that changed America. (You can readily stream the four-part series online.) Nineteen years old at the time, I remembered 1968 as one of turbulence and assassinations, but I remembered little else. The year started with the Vietnam Tet offensive, a m

Anyone who knows me well knows I’m competitive. Board games, cards, checkers, it doesn’t matter. I believe if you don’t play to win, then why play at all. It’s something in my genes. How competitive am I? It depends, but there was the time my best friend from college, Scott Smith and I went out into his yard to play catch with a frisbee. We took turns. One of us stood between two trees as goalie while the other tried to throw the frisbee past him. We were outside for nea

About a decade ago I received a package from a student who I hadn’t heard from in over thirty years. Our paths first crossed early in 1981 when Terry, as a Saranac Lake High School senior, reached out to me about attending our field-based Summer Practicum. (Terry’s not his real name. When I contacted him about writing this story, he was amenable to the idea but asked that I not use his name. He’s not the type to draw attention to himself.) The course was demanding both p

I feel sorry for those that don’t enjoy reading for they’re missing out on humanity's greatest invention…the book. The joy of reading is something my mother instilled in me at an early age. I remember going to the Locust Valley Public Library before I could read. My mother would pick out books for me, and we’d bring them home, where she’d read them to me and I would study the pictures. Dr. Suess was a favorite. When I was twelve my family moved to the Finger Lakes and I

I was a decent high school athlete. But that was all…decent. I never attempted to play an organized sport until eighth grade, when I went out for junior high basketball. I didn’t make the team. Instead, I became a wrestler, and along with football had, you guessed it, a decent high school career. My Dad during his hockey years My dad, on the other hand, was an outstanding hockey player. Ice skating was a big part of his family's life. His sister was a national calib

As ice starts to form on the lake, the days get shorter, and the ski season is upon us, I’m reminded of the winter of 1978-79. Lake Placid was abuzz with preparations for the 1980 Winter Olympics and I was still working on establishing a career in the outdoors. I‘d spent two seasons leading adjudicated youth on wilderness adventures, a couple of winters on the ski patrol at the Lake Placid Club’s Mount Whitney, a winter working at Joe Pete Wilson’s ski shop, and started

If you’ve read this column frequently enough you know that my parents raised Newfoundland dogs. My mother got her first Newfoundland when she was 12, and a Newfie survived the car accident that took her life sixty years later. Many dog stories were generated during that time period, but one stands out. Drury family Christmas card 1960 In the summer of 1965, two months after I had gotten my driver’s license, I was working for my parents’ diecasting business thirty-five mi