Bushwhack Jack's Tracts

I met Doc Bill Forgey when we both served on the Board of Directors of the Wilderness Education Association. Bill is a wilderness...

If life is measured by family, adventure, passion for work and hobbies, and humor my mother checks all the boxes. Kitty Drury came from...

When I was the Director of NCCC’s Wilderness Recreation Leadership Program my staff and I worked ceaselessly to assess student outdoor...

I grew up in farm country and one thing I learned was that I never wanted to be a farmer. I occasionally helped my farmer friends during...

I went to the Wilderness Education Association annual conference a couple of weeks ago in Asheville, North Carolina. I’ve been involved...

During the start of the COVID pandemic there were runs on certain items in the grocery store. Understandably, there were shortages of...

I loved high school. Maybe I should say, I loved certain aspects of high school. I loved sports, I loved being a student leader, I...

Last week as I was cleaning up my excuse for an office (a tiny corner of our bedroom) I came across the obituary of my grandfather Kenyon...

Forty-one years ago this week, my colleague Doug Fitzgerald, and I started NCCC’s first Winter Practicum. It was a student-planned...

I spent my first eleven years on the north shore of Long Island. But my formative years were spent in the northern Finger Lakes after my...

In the fall of 1977, at the tender age of 28 and struggling to convince NCCC to start a wilderness program, I was asked by the Associate...

I didn’t give decision making a lot of thought until I started leading wilderness trips and realized that quality decision making was the...

I graduated from SUNY Cortland in January of 1972 and soon had to deal with the reality of having to make a living. Working construction...

I first visited Lower Saranac Lake in August 1956 at the tender age of seven. Given the circumstances it’s a miracle I ever wanted to...

I just got off the phone with my good buddy Jeff Olson, former Executive Director of Camp Confidence in Minnesota, a year-round outdoor...

Do you remember your first jackknife? I do mine - it was a souvenir beauty from Niagara Falls. It had a scene of the falls with a rainbow...

I suppose there are things to be afraid of in the Adirondack wilderness. Once a generation there’s a murderer on the loose. I hear people...

I remember the Metz family for a number of reasons. First, Stan Metz and his sons Andrew and Matt joined me in the early seventies on a...

I made a pilgrimage of sorts a couple of weeks ago. As we passed through Lander, Wyoming on our way to Grand Teton National Park, I...

For three straight years our family camped at my great aunt’s tent platform on Lower Saranac Lake. It’s where campsite 37 is now,...