“What the heck are you doing here?”

I’ve been asked that question more than once since the day I accepted a position as news editor at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise here in Saranac Lake. And Managing Editor Peter Crowley has invited me to address the answer via this space. So here goes.

I guess maybe it’s because some people look at my nearly 40 years of media experience — working in print and digital in some of the nation’s major cities — and wonder why I would come to work for a small newspaper for less dough instead of holding out for a big city/big money gig in New York or L.A. or wherever.

I don’t look at it that way. Not at all. To me, the answer is simple: We’re here because we want to be here.

And by “we,” I mean my wife Sue and myself. We are a team, and we come here to work and live as a team.

We always have wanted to live in the Adirondacks, right from the get-go, when we were dating back in Rochester. We’d go to a Mexican restaurant once a week on two-for-one margarita night, and we’d sit and talk about the future and our goals in life and stuff. One week we filled out one of those magazine questionnaires — you know, the ones that allegedly help determine our compatibility.

The magazine asked us to describe our home. Our town, our street, our yard, our house. We wrote it down separately, then shared the details. To our surprise, we had described the same place: a cabin on a lake in the Adirondacks. We left the restaurant feeling the heady euphoria that comes from a shared dream, a unified goal. The margaritas may have played a role. We were married on Sept. 22, 1984. That was 35 years ago.

Then life happened, and we set aside our Adirondacks dream as we raised two kids and I went about building a career, or as I call it, “40 years in 30 seconds.” From Rochester to Baltimore, then Miami, Detroit and finally, my dream newspaper job at the New York Daily News, which was as much fun as you might think, if not more. A huge bet on digital in 1996 took us from NYC back to South Florida with SportsLine.com. When that bubble burst, we spent a short time at a paper in South Carolina, then it was on to ESPN.com in Bristol, Connecticut, followed by almost nine years at FOXSports.com in Los Angeles.

It was a fun ride, but the good times couldn’t last forever. And they didn’t.

After FOXSports, the last five years have been a series of challenges, with three gigs that began with promise but ended prematurely and abruptly. I was pursuing a couple of promising leads when I had the great fortune to connect with Peter Crowley. A few weeks later, and here we are.

When the chance came for us to pursue our Adirondack vision in Saranac Lake and for me to join the talented team at the Enterprise, we jumped in with both feet, for several great reasons.

First, it’s important work. I firmly believe the future of journalism will be played out at the local level, and there are plenty of issues facing the Tri-Lakes region that resonate beyond the Blue Line. The Adirondacks are a national treasure and are worth fighting for, and the work the Enterprise does is a big part of that battle.

Second, and I know this may come as a surprise to some of you, but this is a beautiful part of the country. We spent our 35th wedding anniversary on Sunday driving first to the Wild Center, then to the VIC, and along the way we stopped counting the moments where we said, “Stop the car and take a picture. This is amazing. We actually live here.”

Third, and most importantly, it’s about the people. In the past few years, as we have bounced from place to place, we’ve made some good friends, sure. But we have struggled to forge deep connections with any given place or people. We want to change that. We want to make the most of this time and place.

Why here, why now? I am reminded of the words of Sue’s late grandmother, a feisty lady named Fran Heinrich, who put it all in perspective when she said, “Always say yes to an opportunity. You don’t want to be sitting around in your rocking chair wondering what would have happened if you’d only taken the chance.” Sue has heeded these words often during her career as an environmental educator.

Or, as the American poet John Greenleaf Whittier once wrote: “For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been!'”

So just exactly what the heck am I doing here? I have no idea, but we’re about to find out together.

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P.S. I would like to send a big thank-you to my predecessor, Brittany Proulx, who was kind enough to stop by the Enterprise office and show me the ropes. She already had left for her new job at Adirondack Health, and was under no obligation to be so generous of her time. But she showed up, and that says a lot about the kind of people who live and work here.