Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (48 page)

“Patricia, just look at this weather. This is the prettiest day we’ve had since we’ve been in the Adirondacks. Let’s go and kick back in the woods by that lake. You get in the cart and ride. Let Della and me take you back in.”

The only motor vehicles allowed on the road to Santanoni were for maintenance and to haul in the handicapped. Otherwise you had to walk, bicycle, ride a horse or take a horse-drawn wagon back in. That Wednesday the trail was busy with all of those modes of transportation. It was wonderful to be on such a road. The farther we got back into the forest, the more relaxed I felt. It was as if a weight was gradually melting off me. Like an apple tree being picked, I could feel my branches begin to lift.

A mile in we came to the farm complex for the Great Camp. At one time Camp Santanoni had more than forty-five buildings, most built from stone and wood harvested on site. Twenty of the buildings were part of the farm, which included two massive stone and wood barns–one with a milking parlor, three large farmhouses, several cottages for workers, a stone creamery, smoke house, huge chicken house and various other out-buildings.

Camp Santanoni was built for Robert and Anna Pruyn. He was a banker and business man in Albany. The farm supplied meat, produce and dairy for the family year round. The farm buildings were scattered up the side of a mountain, with the houses being the highest on the slope. They all had a panoramic view of the Adirondack High Peaks. As far as I could see it was mountain after mountain with dark pinnacles soaring up into a baby blue sky. Gazing at all of that, I thought,
I could handle being Mr. Pruyn’s farm hand
.

After we got past the farm, and deeper into the woods, I could tell Patricia was starting to unwind. She perked up and started noticing things along the trail. “Did you see that bunch of flowers? Stop this thing. Let me out. I want to get a better look.”

Patricia was walking beside me when, through a gap in the trees, we got our first glimpse of Newcomb Lake. Reflected on the shimmering surface was the rocky peak of Mount Santanoni. The blue water was surrounded
by the various greens of firs, ferns and fauna. My wife gasped, “Oh my God! Is that beautiful, or what?”

The poet in me could only muster, “Wow!”

Patricia grabbed my left arm and pulled my biceps into her cleavage. “Thank you for bringing me back here.” She reached up and kissed me on the cheek. “You were right. We need to spend a few days in a place like this.”

Our camp at Santanoni was about a third of a mile from the main lodge. On the lake side of the road was a long wide grassy area. We pulled the cart into one end of it, then staked out Della on the other end. When I did, she was calmer than she had been in more than a week. It seemed like every night since we entered the Adirondacks, she got increasingly restless. The night before, when we were camped at the trailhead, Della threw a fit at the end of the rope. She bucked, reared up and pawed the ground so much, I had to tie her short to a post. But that afternoon at Camp Santanoni when I let her loose, she rolled and rolled, then just laid there and basked in the sun.

Below the grassy area was a flat spot in the woods beside the lake. We pitched our tent there and I made a fire pit down by the water. A little after the sun set, the moon came up fat and golden. As it climbed up into the sky, it sent white and silver trails across the water. And somewhere in that cove were a pair of loons who kept calling to each other. Behind us, in the woods, two owls hooted back and forth. And a couple of times we heard coyotes yipping in the distance.

“This is just perfect.” My wife sighed as she took my hand and held it in her lap. “A perfect place. A perfect night. A perfect moon.”

I kissed the back of her hand. “I think this moon is just right for making honey.”

The camp was named after the mountain across the lake. Mount Santanoni was 4,361 feet high. When French explorers came through the Adirondacks
they named the mountain “Saint Antoine.” But when the local Indians said the name, it came out “Santa-known-ee”. So the name stuck. Santanoni.

Robert Pruyn, who was head of Chase Manhattan Bank, found the property while on a hunting trip. It took 1,500 red spruce trees to build the main lodge, which was actually six separate log buildings under one roof. It had a main living and dining lodge, seven bedrooms, a kitchen, a service area and seven staff bedrooms situated in the separate buildings. All of it was under one roof connected by a system of porches. Many of the architectural features had a Japanese flair about them. Pruyn’s father served as minister to Japan under President Lincoln.

Among the guests who stayed at the getaway was Teddy Roosevelt. He spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks hiking, hunting and fishing. When President McKinley died, Vice President Roosevelt was vacationing in the mountains. He took the presidential oath in a stagecoach as it passed through Newcomb.

Back in those days–as with the other Great Camps–when people came to Santanoni they dressed up for the visit. Ties and suit coats for men, and women wore long dresses. In the letters that I read from people who visited the camp, it was often mentioned how relaxed the atmosphere was at Santanoni compared to the other Great Camps. Practical jokes were encouraged and celebrated at Santanoni. While she was looking at photos from those days, Patricia said, “Do you notice anything different about these pictures?”

“What?”

“The people all have smiles–some are even laughing. Whenever you see photographs from this era, everyone looks so serious. But these folks were having fun.”

In 1953, Pruyn’s heirs sold the camp to the Melvins of Syracuse. While at Santanoni on holiday in 1971, Melvin’s eight-year-old grandson disappeared in the forest. Despite a massive search, he was never found. The family left and never returned.

The place sat empty for two decades. Then, in the 1990s, a consortium of organizations got together with the state and worked out a plan to save
the Great Camp. Friends of Camp Santanoni organized as a non-profit to help the state restore and maintain the camp. It was certainly a place worth saving.

Tentatively I pushed the store door open and asked, “Are you closed?”

It was Thursday August 14
^th
and I had just bicycled six miles out from Santanoni into Newcomb to get ice and a few other supplies. All the lights were off at the North Woods Store, but I could see people moving around in the building. A man’s voice from the back of the store called out, “We’re open. Come on in.”

“With the lights off, I thought maybe you were closed.”

A flashlight was bobbing toward me as the man said, “Nope. The electric is off.”

“Someone hit a light pole or something?”

“Haven’t you heard? The whole eastern half of the country is dark from Ottawa down through Baltimore. And as far west as Detroit, nobody’s got power.”

“Terrorists?”

“Nope. Some sort of fire at a switching station in New York City. It’s been off all day. They don’t know when it will be back on.”

Before I biked back to camp, I stopped at the Bar and Grill for a beer. Of course, all the talk was about the black out. If the electricity wasn’t on by sundown, the place was going to close. When the barmaid handed me the beer she said, “I guess it doesn’t bother you.”

“Nope. We’ve got plenty of power.”

The guy next to me laughed. “What, a Coleman lantern?”

“No. We have electric lights. They’re powered by a solar panel and a generator that runs off the tire.” I handed him one of our flyers. “Here. I printed this about an hour ago.”

After finishing my beer, I climbed on my bike and headed back to camp. Then I turned on the computer and printed a dozen poetry books
just so I could say I did. I figured I was probably the only publisher in New York printing anything that day..

Sunday afternoon when we walked out of Camp Santanoni, all three of us were different than when we trekked in five days earlier. The weather was beautiful every one of those days we were there. We took the camp tour twice. Swam in the lake countless times. Paddled Chris’ canoe on it and did some fishing. (As usual, my wife caught the most.) We both rode Della all over the place, and I wrote. We ate well. And the moonlight loving was wonderful. We were all much more relaxed. Everyone had a better attitude.

That morning as we were breaking camp, Doug brought a wagon full of folks back into Santanoni. He reined the horses to a stop and said, “You’re going to let us treat you to a night at Aunt Polly’s B&B, aren’t you?”

Patricia said, “Quit twisting my arm. We’ll do it.”

It’s a superb inn. The main house was a long two story structure built in 1845 as a stagecoach stop. Aunt Polly Bissell ran the place back then, and in those days you got a night’s lodging, dinner and breakfast for forty cents. When we were there, lodging for two, and a gourmet breakfast, was sixty bucks. The accommodations were beautiful and Maggie made us an exquisite meal in the morning.

That night at Aunt Polly’s was the first time it rained since we walked back into Santanoni. It was a fierce thunderstorm. But Della was safe in a stall in the barn, and we were in a beautiful dry bedroom. Let it rain!

From there on, our trek through the mountains was completely different. It didn’t rain much and campsites were easier to find. One was at the headwaters of the Hudson River. The rest of our Adirondack experience was delightful!

He yelled at me from the cab of a log truck, “You stupid bastard, get the hell off the road! Someone needs to beat some sense into you!”

We were on Highway 74 between Paradox and Chilson at Eagle Lake on the east side of the Adirondacks. When I heard the diesel engine babble up behind, we were in a blind curve, with two cars behind us. But instead of taking his place behind them, the driver blew his air horn, pulled into the oncoming lane, roared up beside us, stopped and started cursing at me.

Calmly, I said, “You’re on the wrong side of the road.”

“What did you say?” He pulled the nose of the truck over to the right so it was directly in front of us. We had nowhere to go. The brakes hissed a blast of air as the driver’s door flew open. He sprang out of it and up onto the hood. On his hands and knees on the hood, with his long flaxen hair and beard, he looked like a lion about to leap onto prey. He shook his left index finger at me and roared, “What the fuck did you say?”