In the Adirondacks
Dispatches from the Largest Park in the Lower 48
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An immersive journey into the past, present, and future of a region many consider the Northeast’s wilderness backyard.
Out of all the rural areas of the United States, including those in the West, which are bigger and propped up by more pervasive myths about adventure and nation and wilderness and freedom, the Adirondacks has accumulated a well-known identity beyond its boundaries. Untouched, unspoiled, it is defined by what we haven’t done to it. Combining author Matt Dallos’s personal observations with his thorough research of primary and secondary documents, In the Adirondacks rambles through the region to understand its significance within American culture and what lessons it might offer us for how we think about the environment. In vivid prose, Dallos digs through the region’s past and present to excavate a series of compelling stories and places: a moose named Harold, a hot dog mogul’s rustic mansion, an ecological restoration on an alpine summit, a hermit who demanded a helicopter ride, and a millionaire who dressed up as a Native American to rob a stagecoach. Along the way, Dallos listens to locals and tourists, visits wilderness areas and souvenir shops, and digs through archives in museums and libraries.
In the Adirondacks blends lively history and immersive travel writing to explore the Adirondacks that captivated Dallos’s childhood imagination while presenting a compelling and entertaining story about America’s largest park outside of Alaska. The result is an inquisitive journey through the region’s bogs and lakes and boreal forests and the lives of residents and tourists. Dallos turned toward the region to understand why he couldn’t shake it from his mind. What he learned is that he’s not the only one.
In the Adirondacks explores the history and future of the most complicated, contested park in North America, raising important questions about the role of environmental preservation and the great outdoors in American history and culture.
In the Adirondacks is an earnest meditation on what Americans have made, for better and worse, of the land they call “wilderness”. Dallos takes us on a freewheeling tour of what may be the largest temperate forest left in the world, which is also now a strange vacationland for flatlanders from America’s biggest cities. Among all the neon signs and asphalt and campground bathrooms, he still finds the beavers and loons. Among a whole history of misguided development, he still finds reason to hope that humans are capable of harmony with the land they claim as their own.---Joshua Wheeler, author of Acid West
In traveling and combing through “America’s Switzerland,” Matt Dallos pens a unique profile of the largest park in the lower 48. Dallos digs through research, both field and academic, to tell a better story of this land that is ever-changing and, in many ways, resistant to change. The Adirondacks, Dallos reminds us, serve as playground for one-percenters with place names like “Algonquin Whispers.” But the park and its edges (there is no official entrance gate) also harbor poverty and white supremacy. This is not an Edenic portrait but a nuanced accounting of a land where, as Dallos informs us, there are only 130,000 people for six million acres. Mixed among the human drama are plenty of coyotes, birch trees, gray befogged slopes, the hermit of Cold River, 250 lakes, and countless American myths.---Clinton Crockett Peters, author of Pandora's Garden and Mountain Madness
This is a great read for all, particularly those interested in conservation issues and the role of nature in the growth of American popular culture. Highly recommended.---L. T. Spencer, emeritus, Plymouth State University, Choice Editors' Picks
For Matt Dallos, the Adirondacks are most certainly his “place,” and throughout his wonderfully readable and ambling recent book, In The Adirondacks, the reader feels his deep appreciation for the region that holds a powerful yet misunderstood place in the American cultural imaginary.---H-Net Reviews
