Thursday, August 5, 2010

Adirondack Country. William Chapman White (14).


New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1954.
Why read it? The history of the Adirondacks, the names, the lakes, the peaks, the guides and impressions of the tourists and the seasons. "As a man tramps the woods to the lake.. .he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue heron and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets, just as they were in the summer of 1954, as they will be in 2054 and beyond; he can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see; he can be a part of time that was and time yet to come."
Ideas:
March: “How so much mischief and disappointment and general orneriness can be put into thirty-one days is hard to understand.” P. 301. ………. “In March a man congratulates himself on having come through the winter without a cold and thereupon comes down with the worst in three years.” P. 302. ………. “A bright afternoon in March may even lure them outdoors to practice a few casts, but a shift in the clouds can bring sudden snow and they retreat to the fire indoors, asking, ‘How Long?’ ” ………. “March brings one new activity and one cheerful note: Adirondack people watch the weather closely in the first weeks…waiting for the first sign of ‘sugar weather,’ bright sunny days to set the sap running fast in the maples, and cold crisp nights…but sugaring has been spoiled or shortened many a time by a March that stays cold, sleety, and sunless until it is too late to make decent syrup.” P. 303. ………. “Sugaring time is usually over by March 20 and still winter may hold.” P. 305. ………. “The silence of winter is gone; there is sound everywhere.”  P. 306. ………. “Hour by hour, the woods come again to life.” P. 307. ………. “…one of the miracles of the land—an Adirondack spring.” P. 307.

The end.

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