day at the museum

i woke up in my campsite at stillwater in filthy cold rain and getting rainier by the minute and thought maybe i didn't feel much like taking hikes or long bike rides and i'd had a lot of those and sort of needed a rest and if the weather had been nice, i maybe would'a' felt like doing a ton of roadside caches up in watertown, the flashtrashcache capital of the north country. that can be fun sometimes when you don't feel much like anything else.

but then i decided that it would be a good day to go to the adirondack museum. i have never been there before, since to do it, you really have to clear a couple days on your calendar and i've alwasy been doing something else.

if you;re following my story even a little bit, you know that i spend a fair amount of time in the adirondacks. what you maybe don;t know is that between the fabulous geological history and the social history of the lumber camps and the gilded age and the great camps, i'm a big fan.

so yesterday i went. and today when they open up, i'm going back. it;s a little exhausting, because i can;t just go and look at stuff; oh, no. i have to go and look at stuff and read ALL the accompanying material and take notes about things i want to look up later and i think museum going is more exhausting than a day of hiking an biking.

and the whole time i;m there i feel like i'm going to cry, because i have spent so many hours out here riding the back roads and looking at the places that used to be the old camps, that used to be full of life and are now moss covered ruins and i know them only by name, but here at the museum are the photos and relics of those days when they took those names that come down to me as echoes on my wilderness lansdscape.