Lori and I spent a week in the northern Adirondacks, accompanied for a few days by our friend Stella. It was past peak fall colors except for the golden tamaracks which looked like they could glow in the dark. We had many trails practically to ourselves and were among the very few paddlers out on the waters. The main street through Lake Placid was torn up due to major infrastructure work, most of our favored restaurants were closed, and the loons had departed for the winter. Regardless, it was a very relaxing and rejuvenating stay: sharing good food, good camaraderie, and that brisk mountain air does the soul good.

We made a quick visit to the Adirondacks March 18-20, primarily to visit my mother in Wilmington.  We always work in a little quality outdoors time and for this visit we were treated to a fresh heavy snowfall to decorate what would otherwise have been a dreary gray landscape.  Among our adventures, we snow-shoed in Wilmington Notch along the lovely Owen/Copperas/Winch Ponds trail.

We paused along the northeast end of Owen Pond to shoot a rare picture of us together with the frozen pond in the background.

From there we headed off to Copperas Pond to enjoy the view from the lean-to at the north end.

The lean-to was, of course, defaced over every inch of the logs with graffiti.  These are the scratchings of the mindless, answering to a primitive urge to degrade a beautiful place to announce to passers-by that their inconsequential existence oozed through this extraordinary place.  Many, no doubt, carve or scratch because so many others had done the same thing before.  This honor roll of the dull and unimaginative appears all over similar lean-tos and rock faces all over the Adirondacks.  Sadly, this is as creative as most of these people will ever be: