/\ /\ / \ / \ . / \ /\ / \../ \...../ \/ \....... / Fourpeaks--Adirondack Backcountry Camps \ / http://4peaks.com/ * Martin@4peaks.com \ / Stonehouse Road * Jay NY 12941 * 518-524-6726 \ To: My Visitor At: myvisitor@mail.com Dear Visitor, I can tell the season by Willy's call. Any guests at camp this week? I tell him, Yes. But OK to park at Wolf. He walks from there to Brown's Notch and hunts my neighbor Petersen's. Close enough to drag the kill if he is lucky. It works out like that for most of October, him and Andy. He never gets anything, though his two boys both bag their first on opening week. We meet on the road and I tease him about it, talking from our car windows in the Fall splendor on the flat by Halsey's place. All the locals hunt, an extended ritual experience foreign to me. Years ago, when he shows the place, stepping in footdeep snow, boughs overhead laden with wet fluff the quarter mile in from his car, the broker from Placid calls it a camp. We're there a while before that takes on meaning. The trophy head with glass eyes over the mantle, a bunkroom with six beds and two more outside, gun racks (bent deer hooves) and the bare jack pine by the door (I learn later), for hanging and skinning the carcass. When we talk together after the sale I learn more. A part-time seasonal employment, Jim guides visitors to hunt his place. With several well-placed salt licks, success is assured. He cooks it for them three ways in the log cabin kitchen. Pepper venison, with jam, and a cream brandy sauce. They play afterwards at cards by the stone fireplace. One day in a field by the road he finds guts and other evidence of fresh kill. Night jacking! He's distressed. His reasoning is murky, maybe this happens more than once, and he has difficulty talking about it. Ends up selling the place, violated, in disgust. For years my caretaker shares his duties with another AuSable trooper and a fireman from the city. We get friendly, and socialize together with the ladies. I can't refuse the offer to hunt with them. From Back Field they take me on the granite company parcel up a trail to Wainwright. Not far along they find a crotched tree off the path, and make it clear I'm to wait there. They continue up. I watch by the trail, ready to shoot. All motionless and cold, woods around clear of foliage in orange light, resolved to miss given the opportunity to fire, I hear the unmistakeable dried leaf crackling sound I'm listening for. But it comes from camp, not the trail to Wainwright. Later when they find me, I've scooped up Albert the Schnauzer safely inside my jacket, a bead still on the trail, alert and determined. We laugh about that spirited dog doing a Houdini, and I'm sure they believed I would have brought down anything they flushed out. Murray and Iza come up for the weekend. I tell them over again about the totally carniverous postglacial people from Siberia that follow the game north as the ice melts--extinct species of elephant, tiger, camel and tapir. Tom Pray finds their spearheads in nearby Black Brook, a unique style, called "Clovis" after the first find in Alberta Canada, radioactively dated 9,000BPE. They come up from the river, full, swift, perpetually in flood. A gang of them follow a fresh game trail, between Ebenezer and Wainwright, that leads across grade to a raging torrent crashing headlong into an ice mountain, unlike anything they have ever seen. It's a glacial remnant, over a quarter-mile at the base and 1,000 feet high. They stop their hunt in amazement. The leader walks them in, pleased at the favorable omen, and they work together for hours building a ceremonial rock pile at the ice face. Sunday we do the Pendragon matinee. It's the Fall Classic, Orson Welle's Moby Dick, a sparkling bit of serious theater. The ship owner manages the business, gear in good repair, provisions aboard, hiring crew. The young sailor signs on for the adventure, hazards considered, the risks theoretical. But at sea demons emerge, the drive to kill overtakes all on board, blotting out compassion, and personal wellbeing. The venture ends where the story began, an 80-foot sailing ship stove in and sunk with all hands dragged down by a stricken sea monster, 1820, somewhere in the Pacific. Save one. At dinner there's a call from Billy to say he's free for work. I say I have guests and then I'm taking off for a city visit. Keep in touch. Later, I'm sitting here polishing this letter and he phones again. OK to hunt tomorrow AM and in the evening as well? OK. Leisure time for a country boy. Thanks for reading this. For my part, I suggest a nature visit with no harm done. Time to just sit and look, enjoy the evidence of life. Benefits all around. And stay awhile. I can make this easy and fun. Visit my Fourpeaks, a natural place just hours from home. I'll show you the ice mountain, and the views. http://4peaks.com/fotrails.htm Enjoy the comfort and seclusion of a real Adirondack cabin. http://4peaks.com/fcamp.htm Make some time to experience it! (Availability Calendar.) http://4peaks.com/femail0.htm Your Adirondack Guide, Martin Schwalbaum P.S. If you liked this letter, save it for the links. And tell a friend! If you didn't like it, please send it back (REPLY) with "REMOVE" as the subject. Thanks. Member Whiteface Mountain Visitors Bureau Member Lake Placid/Essex County Visitors Bureau ****************************************************************** This is #23 of a really occasional newsletter, for Fourpeaks guests or anyone who ever inquired about a Fourpeaks Getaway. To see them all CLICK http://4peaks.com/fpswal.htm#ltrs TO STAY ON this list remember to send me your new email. TO GET OFF send this letter back (reply) with "REMOVE" as subject. ******************************************************************