{"id":1857,"date":"2010-04-16T09:47:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-16T13:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/16\/fire-towers-and-the-eye-of-the-beholder\/"},"modified":"2010-04-16T09:47:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-16T13:47:00","slug":"fire-towers-and-the-eye-of-the-beholder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/04\/16\/fire-towers-and-the-eye-of-the-beholder\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire towers and the eye of the beholder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
This week’s debate at the Adirondack Park Agency meeting<\/a> over the future of fire towers on St. Regis and Hurricane mountains was fascinating.<\/p>\n

The two towers are widely beloved, a destination for generations of hikers. They’re also iconic fixtures on the landscape, and a tie to the Park’s history.<\/p>\n

But many environmental activists see the presence of human structures as an erosion of a rare and fading experience in modern America: pure wildness.<\/p>\n

The fascinating thing is that in the 1970s, lawmakers encoded some of those aesthetic ideals in legislaton. <\/p>\n

The State Land Master Plan, which governs and shapes the Park, was created at roughly the same time as the Federal Wilderness Act.<\/p>\n

Many of the same people and writings influenced the two documents. <\/p>\n

The SLMP (“slump,” as it’s known) altered radically the way that state officials manage the Park.<\/p>\n

Gone are the days when road-building, tree-cutting, and lean-to building are the priorities.<\/p>\n

Instead, state law nudges the Park’s forest preserve land steadily toward a wilder state.<\/p>\n

They set out that in wilderness areas, one of the ultimate goals is creating an experience where there is no permanent sign of people. <\/p>\n

Another goal is to limit crowding and preserve solitude. Those are complicated and subjective ideas, incredibly hard to define or pin down.<\/p>\n

But critics point out that sensibilities have changed over time. The aesthetic values embodied in the SLMP 40 years ago have shifted.<\/p>\n

We have far more interest now in preserving historic and cultural artifacts. (When the SLMP was first created, there was no provision for protecting historic areas.)<\/p>\n

And a lot of Americans have developed a very different eye for what “wildness” should look like. <\/p>\n

Should float planes be allowed on a wild mountain lake, at least occasionally? Many folks say yes. <\/p>\n

How about fire towers or lean-tos or the occasional cabin? <\/p>\n

Critics of the Park Agency — and of the environmental community — point out that “non-comforming” structures are often allowed to remain, if they’re popular among hikers, greenies or state officials.<\/p>\n

The two dams that create Lows Lake, for example. Or Marcy Dam. Or the smattering of cabins and other structures that the DEC maintains in the back-country.<\/p>\n

Should those be torn out at the earliest possible moment, as the SLMP seems to require for the fire-towers?<\/p>\n

If not, why not?<\/p>\n

What’s certain is that this debate isn’t really about traditional environmental concerns.<\/p>\n

No one wants to pollute or develop places like the summits of Hurricane and St. Regis.<\/p>\n

But we do need a fresh discussion of what our shared vision of the Adirondack back-country should be.<\/p>\n

To the APA’s credit, much of that conversation — full of nuance and some real intellectual risk-taking — was on display at the APA’s session on Thursday.<\/p>\n

You can listen in on their debate here<\/a>. And your comments are welcome below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week’s debate at the Adirondack Park Agency meeting over the future of fire towers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}