SUMMER 2016
MAJORS: English and Political Science MINOR: Women and Gender Studies
David Olio ’17 HOMETOWN: Hebron, Conn. MAJORS: English and Environmental Policy MINOR: Classics
WOMEN WRITERS AND THE WILDERNESS: STUDENT RESEARCH PROJECTS TO EXPLORE ADIRONDACK CONNECTION The writer Joyce Carol Oates has frequently set many of her short stories and novels in the Adirondacks. Born in the upstate New York farming community of Lockport, Oates is intimately familiar with the landscape of her childhood. Sydney Paluch ’17 is spending her summer dissecting the work of Oates, Jean Rikoff, Jeanne Robert Foster and other prominent writers who have tapped into the literary voice of the Adirondacks in their works. “The focus has generally been on the men’s literary perspectives,” said Paluch. “There has been little research done specifically on the women writers. And that’s unfortunate, because there have been many women writers who have used the Adirondacks as a literary landscape.” John S. Apperson and Paul Schaefer spent a lifetime working to conserve and protect the sprawling six-million acre Adirondack Park, an area bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Glacier and Grand Canyon National Parks combined. Primarily using material from the Apperson and Schaefer collections held at the College’s Kelly Adirondack Center, David Olio ’17 is examining how the definition of wilderness developed by the two noted conservationists applies in today’s world. The collections, spanning from 1899 to 1996, provide a remarkable window into the history of the American environmental movement and the tensions that erupted over efforts to conserve the Adirondack Forest Preserve and expand the Adirondack Park.
“People have different perceptions of what wilderness is,” said Olio. He is the first to use this resource since the College received a grant to organize and make available to a national audience information about the two collections of papers. “Some view [wilderness] as land completely untrammeled by man, while others view it as, well, we can build large cabins and have nice estates by the sides of lakes.” Paluch and Olio are the latest recipients of a summer research fellowship program offered through the Kelly Adirondack Center, now in its fourth year. Over the course of eight weeks, fellows conduct independent research on an issue impacting the Adirondacks. They also participate in workshops and seminars, meet with representatives of organizations involved with Adirondack advocacy and policy, and write short papers related to their topic. Hikes, visits and weekend excursions to places such as the Adirondack Museum, the Wild Center and the High Peaks are also part of the itinerary. “The idea is to get students, and by extension the Union community, to see the Adirondacks as a place where you can study these concepts that have broader meaning and to use the resources of our library,” said Hallie Bond, director of the Center. The fellows will present their findings at a reception at the Center Aug. 10 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.
T H E K E L L Y A D I R O N D A C K C E N T E R at U N I O N C O L L E G E
HOMETOWN: Albany, N.Y.
UNION.EDU/ADIRONDACKS
Sydney Paluch ’17
WILDERNESS WATERWAYS&U
VO LU M E 9
ADIRONDACK RESEARCH LIBRARY ACQUIRES PAPERS of “OLD MOUNTAIN” PHELPS Orson Schofield “Old Mountain” Phelps (1816-1905) was the archetypical Adirondack guide. Guide historian Chuck Brumley attributed this to the wide literary attention Phelps received from early city visitors to the High Peaks, including Verplanck Colvin and Charles Dudley Warner. Phelps was painted by Winslow Homer. He became a stock character in the guidebooks of E.R. Wallace and S.R. Stoddard. He certainly had the requisite outdoor skills to be an Adirondack guide, and he cut many High Peaks trails still in use, as well as naming a number of high peaks. But it was his personality and aphorisms that caught the imagination of many of the “city men” he guided. He amused and impressed his clients with rustic humor and philosophy. He was a thinker and philosophizer of a depth that surprised folks who expected Adirondack guides to be simple rustics. It is this aspect of Phelps that is apparent in a previously unknown collection of papers recently acquired from Helen Chase of Liverpool, N.Y., who had them from one of Phelps’s great-granddaughters. The collection includes manuscript essays (theological and geological), letters (including one from New-York Tribune editor Horace Greeley to Phelps), portions of a diary, a Seneca Ray Stoddard portrait of Phelps and a series of short stories. Phelps regularly contributed to local and national newspapers during his lifetime, and a few of Phelps’s literary efforts have been published in the 20th century. Some of his columns appeared in Glenn’s History of the Adirondacks, and The High Peaks of Essex was edited by Bill Healy and appeared in 1992. (Interestingly, the ARL collection includes a different manuscript version of “The High Peaks” than the one Healy used.) Annie Stoltie looked at the ARL collection for her Adirondack Life article entitled “An Icon Revealed” (Nov-Dec 2011), but otherwise it hasn’t been studied. Phelps’s stories are the type better heard around a campfire (which one imagines was their purpose) than read in the artificial light of a library. But use your imagination with “A Frightened Dog at Meeting,” “Driving Cats” or “The Runaway Bedstead,” and perhaps you’ll hear above the crackle of the flames the “small, high-pitched, querulous voice” of the sage of the High Peaks.
VO LU M E 9
SUMMER 2016
“ Near forty years ago on the suthern slope of the great Adirondacks there was being held what was then called a protracted meeting by a sect that were called Protestant Methodist. It had come to be so interesting that the old log schoolhouse was crowded evry evening, when one evening it received the addition of a young [character] that seemed to have an idea that nois was the most convincing argument with out much regard to what kind of a nois it was, but so happened that night that a young Dog worked his way into the house and laid himself away under the back seat. The meeting commenced and had gone part through when the young [character] arose brim full of course, and commenced in a sort of a supprese gron quite low at first. My dear brotheren and sisters, it was so different a nois from what the pup had heard he picked up his ears and gave a low woof woof when the [character] opened his mouth near half way and repeted his sentence with a half groan and sob, that it did not seeme possible to suppose to the pup that a human being could be makieng such a nois when he sharpened up his woof woof bark to correspond, when Mr opened his mouth the third time and opened it to its full capacity and repeted the same sentence not subdued this time, but a sobbing howling thundering yell that no one could suppose was made by a human being, or animal unless they had long ears. This time the pup thought this was no place for him and out door he starts with bristles erect, and a woof, and Bow wow, Bow wow and he did not stop till he got home and it was the making of the pup as far as going to meeting was concerned, no sir you did not get that Dog to meeting any more.”
TRANSCRIBED AS PHELPS WROTE IT WITH ONE EXCEPTION: A WORD HE SPELT “CHARTER,” WHICH HAS BEEN INTERPRETED AS “CHARACTER.”
UNION.EDU/ADIRONDACKS
He was a thinker and philosophizer of a depth that surprised folks who expected Adirondack guides to be simple rustics.
WILDERNESS WATERWAYS&U
“A Fr i g h t e n e d D o g A t M e e t i n g ”
VOLUME 2 1 OF TH E AD IRO NDACK J OUR N AL OF ENVIRO NMENTA L ST U D I ES Geological study of the Adirondacks began in the 1830s with the forays of Ebeneezer Emmons, under the aegis of the New York State Geological Survey. Scientific research has continued unabated, and in recent years, great strides have been made in unraveling the complexities of the plate tectonic history, bedrock geology, glacial processes and soil/water systems. Much of this research has been spurred by economic and environmental concerns, but in the main, the Adirondacks are studied because they are fundamentally interesting, as a geological terrain set in a landscape of preserved, ‘forever wild’ ecosystems. Volume 21 of the Adirondack Journal of Environmental Studies, to be jointly published by the Kelly Adirondack Center and the Adirondack Research Consortium in September 2016, gathers our current knowledge of the geology of the Adirondacks with the goal of informing a broader public audience. The papers summarize historical and current work, calling upon the accumulated studies of many excellent geoscientists who have worked in the Adirondacks for nearly two centuries. Please see the table of contents on the right for a preview of the topics and the contributing authors in the upcoming volume. We hope that this issue will find broad readership and urge readers to take advantage of the references provided by the authors. The Adirondacks are gems, indeed, and appreciation of their special character is only enhanced by greater scientific understanding.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ANNOUNCING
GEOLOGY OF THE ADIRONDACK REGION T A BL E O F CO NT E NT S Forward ASSEMBLYMAN STEVE ENGLEBRIGHT
Introduction BRUCE W. SELLECK AND JEFFREY R. CHIARENZELLI
Regional Geological Setting of the Adirondack Mountains, New York JAMES M. MCLELLAND
Bedrock Geology of the Adirondack Region JEFFREY R. CHIARENZELLI AND BRUCE W. SELLECK
Episodes in Geological Investigations of the Adirondacks WILLIAM H. PECK
Metamorphic Conditions of Adirondack Rocks ROBERT S. DARLING AND WILLIAM H. PECK
Rare Earth Element and Yttrium Mineral Occurrences in the Adirondack Mountains MARIAN V. LUPULESCU, JEFFREY R. CHIARENZELLI AND JARED SINGER
Mining, geology, and geologic history of the garnets at the Barton garnet mine, Gore Mountain, New York WILLIAM KELLY
Faults and Fracture Systems in the Basement Rocks of the Adirondack Mountains, New York
Post–Valley Heads Deglaciation of the Adirondack Mountains and Adjacent Lowlands DAVID A. FRANZI, JOHN C. RIDGE, DONALD L. PAIR, DAVID DESIMONE, JOHN A. RAYBURN AND DAVID J. BARCLAY
Soils and Soil Acidification in the Adirondack Mountains
WILDERNESS WATERWAYS&U
RICHARD APRIL AND DIANNE KELLER
Director of the Kelly Adirondack Center Hallie Bond bondh2@union.edu
Special Assistant to the President's Office and Kelly Adirondack Center Caleb Northrop northroc@union.edu
Kelly Adirondack Center Assistant Margie Amodeo amodeom@union.edu
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UNION.EDU/ADIRONDACKS
DAVID W. VALENTINO, JOSHUA D. VALENTINO, JEFFREY R. CHIARENZELLI AND RICHIE INCLIMA