Kanze - Adirondack: Life and Wildlife in the Wild, Wild East

Praise for Books by Edward Kanze

Over the Mountain and Home Again:
Journeys of an Adirondack Naturalist

Ed Kanze has emerged as a fresh and joyful voice of the Adirondacks, with a merry eye, a sharp mind, a deep heart.

Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home

Kanze has a vast knowledge of the natural world, and he complements it with a fine writing style, a sense of humor, and a joyful exuberance. His essays sparkle while they inform We are lucky to have Edward Kanze as a resident writer-naturalist in northern New York. His pedigree is long and his writing precise. But more than that, Kanze brings a tremendous enthusiasm and delight to his descriptions of everything he observes around him.

Betsy Kepes, book reviewer, North Country Public Radio

In sharing these Adirondack adventures Ed Kanze reminds us to cherish the natural world we have today, all around us. Over the Mountain and Home Again is a delight for those of us who also cherish time spent afield with a kindred spirit.

Bill Thompson III, editor, Bird Watchers Digest

Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey

This deliberate odyssey is a beautifully written narrative, rich in natural history observation, woven into a marvelous story fresh off Penelopes loom.

Ann Zwinger

Ed Kanze is the John Burroughs of the twenty-first centuryexcept that Mr. Kanze is a better writer What an amazing continent and what a grand book about it!

Jack Sanders, author of Hedgemaids and Fairy Candles:
The Lives and Lore of North American Wildflowers

An extremely satisfying look at a land most of us know little about.

Booklist

Wild Life: The Remarkable Lives of Ordinary Animals

Kanze speaks with several voices: that of the professional naturalist full of accurate information and scientific observations; the skilled writer with a grand sense of humor; the storyteller with a sense of drama; and the adult who has the capacity to view the world through the eyes of a curious child.

Charlotte Seidenberg, New Orleans Times-Picayune

The material is offered in lighthearted fashion and should be especially appealing to young readers with an interest in wildlife.

Publishers Weekly

The World of John Burroughs

[A] richly illustrated biography the real essence of [Kanzes] subject is captured in a wealth of marvelous photographs.

Publishers Weekly

Notes from New Zealand: A Book of Travel and Natural History

Kanze takes us on an entertaining, adventurous tour of New Zealands forests, parks and beaches and on a grueling three-day hike on the famed Milford Track.

Publishers Weekly

[An] insightful commentary on the congenial inhabitants, both human and animal, which first lured the author to this magnificent land.

Booklist

ADIRONDACK

Life and Wildlife in the Wild, Wild East

Edward Kanze

Cover photo by Edward Kanze

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

2014 Edward Kanze All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

Excelsior Editions is an imprint of State University of New York Press

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu

Production by Diane Ganeles
Marketing by Anne M. Valentine

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kanze, Edward.
Adirondack : life and wildlife in the wild, wild East / Edward Kanze.
pages cm. (Excelsior editions)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5414-6 (paperback : alkaline paper)
1. Kanze, EdwardHomes and hauntsNew York (State)Adirondack Mountains. 2. Kanze, EdwardDiaries. 3. Mountain lifeNew York (State)Adirondack Mountains. 4. Country lifeNew York (State)Adirondack Mountains. 5. Natural historyNew York (State)Adirondack Mountains. 6. SeasonsNew York (State)Adirondack Mountains. 7. NaturalistsNew York (State)Adirondack MountainsBiography. 8. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)Social life and customs. 9. Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.)Biography. 10. Adirondack Park (N.Y.)Biography. I. Title.
F127.A2K36 2014
974.7'5dc23

2014002382

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my family, friends, and neighbors,
human and otherwise, past, present, and future

It is through the power of observation, the gift of eye and ear, of tongue and nose and finger, that a place first rises up in our mind; afterward it is memory that carries the place, that allows it to grow in depth and complexity. For as long as our records go back, we have held these two things dear: landscape and memory.

Barry Lopez, About This Life

(Copyright 1998, Barry Holstun Lopez. Used with permission.)

A thousand feet above the wooded and rocky summits of New Yorks Adirondack Mountains, a hermit thrush, a deep woods songbird, traces an arc across the sky. Its the middle of a frosty autumn night.

Silver stars glitter on universal black velvet. The thrush, its breast spotted, back olive, and rump and tail a dull rusty red, keeps watch. With sharp eyes and a brain not quite the size of a table grape, the bird, about five months old, likely reads cues such as the earths magnetic field and star patterns to orient toward an ancestral wintering place it has never seen.

On this moonless night, the Adirondack Park, largest in the Lower 48, looms below like a sea of India ink. Its wild country down there. Six million acres of mountains, valleys, and forest in varying degrees of preservation, of broad lakes and winding rivers, of sodden bogs thick with wild orchids and carnivorous plants, sprawl over a dome of billion-year-old bedrock. Those acres represent one of the nations finest sanctuaries for birds, beasts, and nature lovers. This is a state park, one with inholdings of private land. My wife and I are privileged to own such an inholding. The Adirondack Park covers more territory than Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon, and Yosemite National Parks combined. The woods here are paradise for a hermit thrushexcept during the cold, hard winter.

Down near a river whose waters reflect starshine as fine as tree pollen, a solitary glow pierces the blackness. Its a lamp. The lamp shines in a house. The house crowns a hill of glacial sand. Inside, in pajamas, half asleep, I crouch over an aluminum container about the size of an old-fashioned pencil box. Its a Sherman trap. Shermans are favored the world over by scientists for livetrapping shrews, voles, and other tiny mammals. Inside the trap rattles a deer mouse.

Above, the thrush pumps southward. It utters an occasional short whistle, barely audible on the ground.

I growl. The traps jarring snap has summoned me for the third time this night. All I can think of is getting back to bed. I work like a robot. Opening a plastic bag half filled with fluorescent yellow powder, I shake the mouse into it, zip the bag, then shake. Inside, the unhappy rodent tumbles like clothes in a dryer. With each revolution, it looks more and more like a lemon with a tail.