Walk it off
I’ve fallen in love with long walks. This morning, in an audio postcard, I describe one of my favorite leg-stretchers, the old road in Newcomb that leads to the Santanoni Great Camp.
But there are nearly endless opportunities for taking flat-land strolls, some of them leading deep into the back country. The Whitney Wilderness area offers a complex network of old logging roads.
Then there’s the old rail bed that leads north from Saranac Lake toward Malone, which passes through the lush Bloomingdale Bog.
No doubt going for a long walk can seem, well, fairly pedestrian when compared with a trek into the High Peaks or an expedition along the Northville-Placid Trail.
But one of the beauties of the Adirondacks — and the North Country in general — is that we have great, accessible things to do right out our back doors.
Sometimes it’s just nice to pull on the sneakers and head off for a ramble along one of the sparsely-trafficked country roads near our camp in Westport, or stroll around Moody Pond in Saranac Lake.
Walking can also be kind of a blissful thing. There’s a rhythm to it. Years ago, in one of my Buddhist phases, I spent weeks in a monastery in Malaysia doing walking meditation.
Those saffron-robed monks would have loved the road to Santanoni.
How about you? Is there a favorite walk in your corner of the North Country? An undiscovered gem you’re willing to share. As always comments welcome.
come on Brian what will you ask for next, a secret fishing hole. Beautiful places to walk are right outside your door. If you have to go looking for them you surely won’t find them. You don’t have to go to Malaysia to do a walking meditation
“a long walk can seem, well, fairly pedestrian”.
Feeling punny this morning Brian? ;-)
Walks are good almost anywhere, any time. The back roads around where I live, the old road by Mountain Pond, the trails at the VICs, the trail to my adopted lean-to have all promoted contemplation, photographs and occasionally blog posts for me. I don’t climb mountains much any more but the walk up the West River trail on the Ausable Club property is wonderful. Our bodies were designed to walk. Be nice to your body and take it out for a walk on a regular basis.
Not really a walk, but I started a project this spring trying to photograph every type of flower and plant on my property. I’m learning a lot about how much I never knew.
My walks tend to involve me carrying heavy objects to remote corners of the farm where something is broken, bent, burnt up or dead. requiring repair or unsticking the hopelessly stuck. This idea of walking for pleasure…….strange what you townies thing up!
Where’s the on-air promised list of area walks to be found at the website?
You described 2 of my favorite walk, ski and snowshoe options.
As you walk along the old D&H RR ROW, it is still possible to find railroad spikes. In some spots, Osprey are nesting on the transmission line poles.
This is why hunting is such a great activity. I have not shot a deer for quite a few years now but I sure have walked many miles on many of those old logging roads you are talking about! It is kind of buggy walking those roads this time of year.
Bruce – I mention three or four places in my blog post. Whitney Wilderness, Bloomingdale Bog, Moody Pond, Santaoni Road. A couple of others have been mentioned in the conversation here. Feel free to add your ideas.
–Brian, NCPR
Bruce, look for the Discover the ___ Adirondacks series (fill in the blank with your region) by McMartin/Ingersoll. They cover a lot of walks that aren’t mostly vertical.
As a long distance walker for years, following several out-my-front-door routes over and over again, I gradually realized how much I was observing without even realizing it. Once, when my son accompanied me on one of these regular walks, he said, “don’t you get bored, doing the same walks all the time?” The answer is no. Every day the landscape changes: on Monday, the trilliums might be just forming buds, and by Wednesday, they’re in full flower; a fledgling on the side of the road one day, a snake the next (dead ones excellent for examination), and so on. It’s amazing what details I notice precisely because I have come to know the landscape within a ten mile radius of my house so well.
And, this note for Bret: I live and work on a farm, too. I know exactly what you mean about the miles logged on an average day just doing what has to be done. There’s a lot of neat observation right at home, for sure…and you get done what has to be done at the same time. But I also agree with Brian about the rhythm of a long uninterrupted walk…and the daily little surprises.