An Adirondack Passage
by Christine Jerome
Canoeing the Adirondacks with Nessmuk
Letters of G.W. Sears
Woodcraft and Camping
by G. W. Sears (Nessmuk)
Reviewed by Henry "Mac" McCarthy (Wooden Canoe Issue #69)
June 1995
For the last fourteen years I have been building cedar strip canoes. Most of them have been modeled on canoes built by Henry Rushton. My favorite canoe for personal use has been the Wee Lassie type canoe, which was modeled after the Susan Nipper that Rushton built for Nessmuk.
Nessmuk wrote for Forest and Stream Magazine back in the late 1800s. His letters to the magazine described several trips he took through the Adirondacks. The mountains were rapidly being changed by resorts for summer visitors, big so-called camps (actually mansions), the desire to harness the water resources with dams, steamers on the lakes, railroads through the forests, and the destructive forestry practices of that day (now we call it clear cutting). Nessmuk felt the game was being over hunted, and the fish were getting scarcer, and smaller, and harder to catch. Even with all that, the Adirondacks were still wild.
Nessmuk's letters are interesting as a basis of comparison with what the Adirondacks are like today. Christine Jerome's book is just that. Christine and her husband, using two tiny canoes, followed the route of one of Nessmuk's trips. Christine brings a lot of historical insight to the trip. She tells us more about Nessmuk's personal life than he reveals about himself. Her experiences along the way are very well told. I feel that anyone thinking of paddling the Adirondacks should read this book. The normal guide book tells you where you can put in, and where to take out, and some of what you will see along the way, but not what it is like to camp out in a lean-to, or what it is like to paddle all day in the rain and drizzle. You get the good experiences as well as the not so pleasant ones.
I haven't really figured out whether I like Nessmuk or not. He sort of grows on you. He talks about the glories of camping, but he seemed to spend a lot of time hanging around the hostelries and visiting camps along the way. Sometimes he seems to be whining, and feeling sorry for himself. Other times he is cocky and arrogant. Well, his letters are not dull.
I enjoyed Woodcraft and Camping much more than I did his letters. He has a long section devoted to the small, light weight, open, double-paddle canoe. I absolutely agree with everything he has to say about this style of canoe. Nessmuk was an early advocate of the go-light school. His camping habits would not be approved by the low impact campers of today, but much of what he said then still applies. He ends the book with a paragraph that I really enjoy.
Let us be thankful that there are still thousands of cool, green nooks, beside crystal springs, where the weary soul may hide for a time, away from debts, duns, and deviltries, and for awhile commune with nature.
We should all be thankful to writers like Nessmuk. They helped to preserve some of the wild country from total destruction.
Nessmuk felt that the Wee Lassie type canoe would soon be the leading feature of summer recreation in his day. A similar style plastic boat that just came on the market was recently touted by Canoe magazine as the HOTTEST thing on the paddling market. Where have they been the last hundred years?
I found that reading all three of these books at the same time made all of them more interesting, but together or apart, they are all worth reading if you are interested in either the small canoe or the Adirondack area.
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