Bushwhack Jack's Tracts

​ Of all the outdoor technical skills taught at NCCC, perhaps the most valuable is navigation. On the thirty-three-day expeditions I...

I spent over twenty years training outdoor leaders. The thing I learned above all else: It doesn’t matter if it’s in the outdoors, the...

I had a colleague at North Country Community College who loved a lot of things about the Wilderness Recreation Leadership Program. He...

A couple of weeks ago there was a meeting in the Harrietstown Hall. Its purpose was to solicit public input on issues regarding the High...

My dad was a devout Episcopalian and a dedicated church goer who rarely missed a Sunday. While my mother was spiritual in her own right...

It was July 2010 and we were preparing to load our gear into the de Havilland Twin Otter seaplane, the workhorse of the northern Canada...

I thought I knew Doug Kelley. And while in some ways I did, in many ways I didn’t. I met Doug at a meeting at Paul Smith’s College one...

I first met Jim Whitelaw in 1959 at my Great Aunt Dot’s summer camp. Jim, the camp caretaker, was sharpening some knives on an old pedal...

I’m a competitive guy. It’s something I’ve disguised much of my adult life, but it comes bubbling to the surface every now and then like...

My friend Ed Hixson, hiker, mountaineer, skier, and world-class paddler passed away last week at his home on Upper St.Regis Lake. As a...

The brief cold snap of last week had many in a panic. For me, although age has dampened my enthusiasm for the cold, it was just another...

I tell young parents to hug their kids tight and not let go because they’ll be grown up and gone in a nanosecond. I also tell them to...

For sixteen years I led month-long wilderness expeditions in the fall and two-week winter expeditions in January for NCCC. People told me...

In the fall 1998 I hopped onto a DEC helicopter at the Lake Clear Airport heading up to Lake Colden to help rebuild the interior ranger...

Occasionally we’re reminded our first-world problems are just that, problems that Third World folks would gladly have. The vast majority...

I’ve been watching a four-part Netflix documentary called, “Pepsi, Where's My Jet?” It’s about a community college student and outdoor...

By 1972 I had completed my bachelor’s degree in Recreation Education from SUNY Cortland, and had two transformative experiences – taking...

In 1961 when I was twelve, Tom Cantwell, patriarch of the Cantwell family, invited me to go on a four-day canoe trip along with a platoon...

If I ever had illusions of pulling off another Brink’s robbery, I was cured of them in the spring of 1958. That’s when Eddie Berkins...

Have you ever looked at a spot on the map and said, “Now there’s a place I have to explore.”? That’s what happened to me. I’d been...