Today, we got our Something About the Adirondacks magazine; it is stunningly glossy and full of very fit people doing all kinds of fit things. #YayFit.

I have some questions, though. It seems/appears/looks like there are lots and lots and lots (literally parking lots, in some cases) of die hard “GO ADK! GO! GO! GO!” folk, willing to drive X amount of miles to get to the top of some mountain named after whomever or whatever (the story behind Nippletop is great), to take a picture, send it to their not as fit friends, or more than fit friends, or maybe just friends, and then zoom home, ready to hashtag with a local IPA — although the cans are not local, nor is most of the brewing equipment and definitely not any vehicles delivering them. Doesn’t it seem like “local” means whatever you are buying appeared to have shown up within a few miles of where you live, or maybe within the state? I have no idea what local means. Do you?

If I order a bunch of signs from Canada, but they were made in Pakistan and then shipped to Canada, with ink from a business who imported it from a blind shaman in El Salvador, that shimmers with a stunning shaman gloss and says “Shop Local,” will those signs be local because you bought them at Store X in town? Can a continent be local? Are ticks local? I don’t support them. Is there a local galaxy? I digress.

Wow, do I digress.

So this magazine is great, lots of fit folk letting everyone know that they conquered some kind of depression or friend’s tragedy, or they just needed to know they could do something like climb a mother load of rocks.

I totally/kind of/absolutely/sort of understand that, but what doesn’t quite butter my bread is how so many “GO ADKS! GO! GO! GO!” folk don’t seem to realize how damaging their promotions of the Adirondacks are. We don’t have to do science here, not because I don’t want to, but because I barely understand it all (do you?).

If Sarah, who does yoga from Saratoga, drives up here to hike, get some new sustainable boots and then drive back home, her carbon number is going to be much higher than if she never came up. Does that make sense? So Mike who hikes, and is the president of the “Go ADKS! GO! GO! GO!” Club, drives up every weekend from PickAPlace to hike, get some headlamps, some protein bars, a “super cool trucker hat,” maybe a backpack, maybe nothing but some drinks from the gas station along the way. Drinks, mind you, that came from trucks that came from boats that came from who knows where. I digress. So when Mike who hikes gets home to #hashtag with the non-local/local IPA, did he just “help” the local planet?

Could someone explain how a million people coming here and advertising this gem of a place like it’s a restaurant or some kind of Fit Disney World — and not an actual ecosystem with a history of connection that, from what I understand, did not include Instagram, TikTok, or “bagging peaks” — help the area, other than “tourism money?” Will gold sticker planet savers ever capture the massive amount of carbon being burned/pumped/used to get here? The stickers that say “GO! GO ADKS! GO! YAY” — know what they are made out of? Petroleum. Know what that “hike like a local” Nalgene is made out of? Petroleum. You know where the exhaust goes from your car, even if you are listening to Deepok Chopra or the “Tiny House Building” podcast? Do you? Of course you do. Right? You know that a million people coming here produces a mind boggling amount of poison that cannot be balanced out. You have to know that. It’s not like Tom Cruise sending cakes on a jet, but still.

I love being in this place, it is like no other. Beauty. Stillness. Air. Healing. Trust. And now it has been, as some folks like to say, “discovered.” Pretty sure that isn’t the best word and we don’t have anyone who is more than 110 years old to tell us how things used to be, which still wouldn’t work as we would need a lot of them, because it is hard to get people to agree on what happened. Humans like conspiracies, allegedly, and don’t often agree on much. We can agree on that, right?

I wonder how many people start their vehicles in the winter, so it’s nice and warm for the ride to work, with the radio that may or may not announce the Forever Ending World. Shouldn’t there be a moment where we/I/you say, “Oh, I am clearly doing things that I don’t have to do and owning things that I don’t have to own, like all of these skis, or clothes, backpacks, mugs and tools and whimsical artwork. And because I continue to fill the air with my lifestyle, and buy things that fill the oceans with my lifestyle, maybe I should own that reality instead of trying to pretend that holding up posters for the planet, or advertising ‘sustainable hiking’ will somehow balance out the blatant disregard I show, everytime I warm up my car, to go to somewhere to spend money on things I don’t need. I would love an insurance discount if my vehicle could monitor that I don’t warm up my car for more than a minute, but that doesn’t exist, so maybe I should be more honest with myself and with my actions?”

Is that a ridiculous notion? Sometimes a great, ridiculous notion?

I’ll be in my truck in about 15 minutes or so (it’s warming up) and will have my Bluetooth on from my iPhone that came from a truck, from a boat, from a factory, from a mine … blah blah blah. Call me. If not, let’s figure this out … in the gondola.

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Jason Smith, the one who writes these letters, lives in Saranac Lake.