President's Blog: Adirondack Chronicles, Part XI

Everyone needs the memory of great open spaces to help us through the drudgery of too many long days in closed rooms with fluorescent lights and bad air and droning meetings….  My favorite wide open spaces are here in the Adirondacks where the boreal forest is still a vast cool green expanse, the clean air shot through with the scent of balsam, the expansive network of thousands of lakes and ponds and streams giving life to countless creatures great and small.

Summer is coming very slowly up here in the north country, the remnants of the long wet winter still evident in the deep forest runoff cascading down rocky slopes, birch and pine trees still deeply bent over from the weight of ice.  Everywhere, the green cover is lush, the ground soft underfoot.  I don't necessarily come for the cool nights that require blankets, but that sure is a bonus!

Spotted half a dozen wild turkeys on the drive into Long Lake last Saturday.  Frogs galore on the backwoods Bear Pond, and in the distance mother ducks and chicks repeating the endless annual cycle of learning to swim; in a wild stream just visible beyond the road, a doe and fawn forage for some delicious nibbles until, sensing a car slowing down, they retreat into the underbrush.  Not much traffic here yet, and I'm wondering if gas prices will hurt this slim economy even worse than in other places — $4.31 a gallon at Stewart's in town, I'm doing more paddling and less driving this year!

Tomorrow:  what "bogged down" really means!  For now, I'm off to find a sweater…