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Read in the Blue Line

Healing from a difficult journey

Keene resident Robyn Shumer’s memoir chronicles her struggle with the eating disorder that surfaced in her childhood. By the time she was 8 years old in 1982, she was terrified that the scale in her doctor’s office would show her to be over 40 pounds. The New Jersey school she attended ...

Revisiting a ranger’s legacy

Revisionist history can be perplexing. Simply the passage of time may allow more neutral views of events. Long hidden documents may be unearthed. Better understanding of context can come to the fore. In a new book, Martin Klotz takes a comprehensive look at Robert Rogers (1731-1795), famous ...

‘The mountains are calling, and I must go’

Our headline today comes to us courtesy of wilderness preservationist John Muir, via Debbie R. White’s new self-published book Mountain Escapades. It’s one of the epigrams that lead into her 50 chapters on becoming an Adirondack Forty-Sixer and then a global mountaineer. The unusual book ...

Two works about hiking in Cranberry Lake

Erik Schlimmer grew up in the Adirondacks but now lives in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. Not surprisingly, he is a prolific writer of books about hiking and climbing. His work includes “Thru Hiker’s Guide to America,” “Blue Line to Blue Line,” “History Inside the Blue Line,” ...

Revisiting old Adirondack traditions

The large crowd at the recent Howl Story Slam in Saranac Lake indicated that even though movies are full of special effects and television offers abundant options, there is an audience for stories told by our neighbors. The Harrietstown Town Hall audience welcomed and listened to storytellers ...

Hiking and camping over 100 years ago

Winter can be a good time to sit by the fire and read someone’s memories of a long ago trek through the Adirondacks. By chance I found a copy of “Friendly Adirondack Peaks,” by Robert Wickham, published in 1924. Why not find out what such an undertaking would have been like exactly a ...