Last week sadly, another wilderness traveler died of hypothermia in the High Peaks Wilderness. News of such calamities reminds me that winter isn’t an abstraction or a romantic postcard—it’s a force to be reckoned with. People often ask how I endure winter camping. I wouldn’t call it ...

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” — George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905). Last week, while trying to avoid the news of the day I channel surfed and found CNN’s series 1968: The year that changed America. (You can readily stream the four-part ...

Anyone who knows me well knows I’m competitive. Board games, cards, checkers, it doesn’t matter. I believe if you don’t play to win, then why play at all. It’s something in my genes. How competitive am I? It depends, but there was the time my best friend from college, Scott Smith, and ...

About a decade ago, I received a package from a student who I hadn’t heard from in over 30 years. Our paths first crossed early in 1981 when Terry, as a Saranac Lake High School senior, reached out to me about attending our field-based Summer Practicum. (Terry’s not his real name. When ...

I feel sorry for those who don’t enjoy reading, for they’re missing out on humanity’s greatest invention ... the book. The joy of reading is something my mother instilled in me at an early age. I remember going to the Locust Valley Public Library before I could read. My mother would ...

I was a decent high school athlete. But that was all ... decent. I never attempted to play an organized sport until eighth grade, when I went out for junior high basketball. I didn’t make the team. Instead, I became a wrestler, and along with football — you guessed it — had a decent ...