02/01/2024
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Wars, tragedies, and natural disasters… We watch the world tear itself apart on the evening news, in the comfort of our living rooms, warmed by our woodstoves, telling ourselves that Indian Lake is a cocoon of safety.
But in the back of most minds there’s a nagging dread that our safety is only an illusion, because civilization looks more and more like a veneer that’s beginning to peel.
No matter how we fill or woodsheds or our 401k’s, ultimately we're at the mercy of forces far beyond our control, and life can be upended in a heartbeat.
Fact is: we are but a part of a whole, and our past year here was very much a microcosm of the larger American society.
A murder occurred in town, followed several months later by another in Long Lake. There was a mini homeless encampment at the edge of Byron Park for much of the summer. A devastating storm washed out most everything from Maple Lodge Road in Blue Mountain Lake all the way up to Newcomb.
If you think about it, we were pretty much on par with the whole USA, troublewise.
But since we’re the least densely populated county east of the Mississippi River, we attempt to reckon some kind of perverse safety in numbers (or the lack thereof).
It turns out that two homicides in one year, in a county with a population barely over 5,000, placed Hamilton County in a per-capita dead-heat with Orleans Parish in Louisiana, the reigning murder capital of the USA, by county.
In fact, to stretch the statistical hyperbole a bit farther, if Hamilton County were its own country, it would probably rank 4th in the world by homicide rate. And at the municipal level, Indian Lake’s homicide rate was worse than Chicago, Memphis or St. Louis and may only have been exceeded by Long Lake’s. And like Chicago, Memphis and St. Louis, these were not simply numbers, but real lives cruelly ended and others ruined as a result.
We also shared the world’s travails in many other ways this past year:
Drugs, drunk driving, child abuse, fraud … the list is long and sadly familiar throughout the land. But there were also new, shared misfortunes:
Wildfires in Canada obscured our vistas with haze for the entire summer and fall, and only the abundance of rain kept the skies from turning the doomsday orange they did south of here.
A sad controversy engulfed the school over its reluctance to serve a child with Down’s syndrome. Meanwhile other elementary-aged children have been permanently banned from ILCS, and some parents as well – apparently never to see their kids play on their home court or graduate.
The deficit-damaged economy wilted the bloom off the Airbnb rose, as discretionary spending took a back seat to the burgeoning cost of groceries.
But the continuing rise in interest rates, and thus mortgage financing, has yet to impact the Adirondack real estate boom; as flatlanders continue to look to these hills for safety.
Hopeful newcomers should be warned, though: in my time here, I’ve witnessed the Great Blowdown in the summer of 1995, where 100mph cyclonic winds flattened 900,000 acres of timber in the Park; a catastrophic ice storm in 1998, which left most of region (including the City of Montreal) powerless for several weeks; a four foot blizzard on Valentine’s Day 2007; and 50 degrees below zero in 1979. Nor are we inoculated from further calamity by any acquired immunity. That’s not the way life works.
So: Welcome Flatlanders! We’ll do our best to keep you safe. But please understand: our ability to do so is severely limited. As Scripture cautions: it rains both on the just and the unjust.
One of the biggest impediments to your safety is the increasing difficulty of young people (who constitute the bulk of first responders (among other key roles) being able to afford a place to live, as a result of your land rush.
And also, be advised, this is a region that doesn’t think twice about going against the grain and may not shrink from offending downstate sensibilities.
While the rest of the world points with pride to their high-speed rail networks, the Adirondacks has converted both of its rail corridors to pedal car conveyance. Locals eschew the use of electric vehicles for the simple (but politically non-viable) reason that they don’t work well at all when it’s cold. And your neighbor is far more likely to fly a “Let’s Go Brandon” flag (or a more obscene variation) than the rainbow banner. What he considers his “toys” you might perceive as a dangerous arsenal. And just as darkness and light are a part of each day, so it is with the human heart, here as elsewhere.
In Warrensburg, the most distinguished business location in town is slated to become a ma*****na dispensary (one of two being planned for the town). It will be owned by no less a distinguished citizen than the former Ess*x County District Attorney.
Statewise, New York also continues to have a major blind spot when it comes to stewarding its own abundant natural resources, preferring instead to focus on global issues it can do faintingly little to affect, such as climate change.
The DEC boat launch at the south end of the lake went almost entirely untended. There was only a steward on site for a couple of weeks during the summer. And even if someone had been industrious enough to take on this fairly easy task, it would still only have been a 9 to 5 position, while launching is allowed 24/7 – not to mention the shoulder seasons. It seems like the State isn’t trying very hard at all to protect this precious lake from the introduction of more invasives.
Meanwhile, yet another economic revitalization organization has formed in town, calling itself “Revive”. They are advocating for another untended trailered motorboat launch site to be placed at the north end of the lake, near the dam. They make the argument that it’s 11.5 miles to the present launch from the center of Town vs. only 4 miles to a put-in at the dam.
The State is already requiring an untended carry-in launch be placed there as a part of the dam rehab.
That work on the dam got under way right on schedule, and a great deal more was done during the winter than had originally been projected. Besides clearing land, setting up staging areas and construction trailers, demo work was done on the walkway, bore holes were drilled for bracing up the earthen embankment, and the old, inoperable log gate was being rebuilt. It should be interesting to watch progress once the warm weather arrives. It’s apt to be a noisy summer up past the narrows.
The budget for the project has swelled from the original estimate of $7.7 million to $11.1 million.
The Town put the Adirondack Lake dam rebuild out to bid, but awarding the contract was delayed by the Comptroller’s Office, as they reviewed the $7million bonding that will be needed.
The Town Board seems to have taken a pass on any form of short term rental regulation. And Indian Lake may be unable to open its public beaches this year due to a lack of life guards.
Access to the trail to Chimney Mountain was lost, when the new owners of the property at the foot of the mountain were bedeviled one too many times by badly behaved hikers and revoked permission for the public to transit their land.
Directors from your Indian Lake Association met with representatives from DEC to discuss improving fishing in the lake.
DEC is committed to continuing to stock brown and lake trout. Attempts to establish land-locked salmon have been abandoned. It was agreed that stocked fingerlings would be deposited in deep water at the Marina’s launch ramp this spring. In prior years the dumps have been made right at the foot of the State launch on the Lewey Lake arm. It’s believed that many of these young hatchery trout were immediately devoured in that warm, shallow water by native fish and never made it north into the deeper lake, which would have been more suitable habitat.
The dream of generating hydropower from the Indian Lake dam remains stalled. Progress was blocked by Adirondack conservation organizations and DEC in 2012, because of their belief that because the dam is inside the Blue Line and is the property of the State (sort of), it is de facto a part of the Forest Preserve, and generating power for money would violate Article 14 of the State Constitution.
Fair Enough.
But more recently, when we discovered the deeds that had conveyed the dam and surrounding land to the Hudson River Black River Regulating District (which is a public benefit corporation under the auspices of the State of New York), we noticed that one of the provisions of the transfer that NYS agreed to specified that the dam and its surroundings not become part of the Forest Preserve.
The fact that Adirondack Park conservation organizations have been unwilling to revisit the issue and even look at these deeds betrays a real insincerity on their part, given their outrage at global climate change and their advocacy of green energy.
It would seem that a sensible project such as this would generate the kind of “feel good” PR that such organizations thrive on and raise money from. But perhaps it’s naïve to have hoped otherwise, in a world where so many of the loudest voices for a carbon-free economy dart around the globe on private jets and live in Walmart-sized homes (plural).
Weatherwise, winter continued its recent staggerstepping. The ground was covered with good snow from Thanksgiving until mid-December, giving false hope to snowmobilers who were able to hit the trails right after they opened on Dec. 4. But a big thaw, followed by another heavily damaging rain on Dec. 18 left a grisly residue of what could best be described as “snope” , which ended riding and other snow activities until well into January.
That December torrent caused serious erosion on a lot of Indian Lake’s shoreline, which was exposed because of the normal drawdown, but unprotected by snow, and unfrozen.
In what has now become more of a process that an event, the lake finally finished freezing on Jan. 2 – not the latest ever, but only the second time I can ever remember it glassing over for good after New Year’s. It never achieved its usual depth of two to three feet, however; because the baby ice was quickly blanketed with snow, giving it a hard time thickening. Fishermen and snowmobilers were absent for much of the winter.
We also experienced the latest killing frost I can ever remember, and we were still picking tomatoes during the 4th week of October.
Nevertheless, the first snowflakes did hit the ground before Halloween, as usual; and snowsuits again had to be amalgamated into kids’ costumes – a skill well known by Indian Lake moms.
For those unaware, it’s worth noting the tremendous generosity of homeowners in the center of town, where 100% of trick or treating occurs.
The insidious effects of inflation have impacted the cost of candy, like everything else, making the “Trick or Treat Zone” almost like a special tax district.
Yet as the kids soldiered on, from door to door, they were greeted as usual with candies and praises for their costumes. It was a wonderful example of cultural consistency in a world becoming fraught with unforeseen change.
So, looking back down the road at the anomalous year of 2023, in which we found ourselves to be the murder capital of the nation, only a year after having had the lowest murder rate in the world for what seemed like forever; I would simply point out that statistics can be misleading (see Mark Twain, via Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”).
Somewhere, shrouded in the fogblast of numbers that the media tries to terrorize us with, the truth lies hidden.
We do live in a fragile civilization. The more we learn about our universe, the more we must appreciate the miracle of our existence.
Whether civilization’s veneer proves more durable here in Indian Lake or not; in the end, I’ll take this as my abode and give thanks to God for it.
I love getting up every morning to see what it looks like each day. I hate to miss even a moment of its daylight (or its starshine, for that matter), blessed that my candle’s flame is fueled by this fine forest air.
