NEW YORK STATE Department of Environmental Conservation DIVISION OF LANDS & FORESTS Fire Tower Study for the Adirondack Park DAVID A. PATERSON ALEXANDER B. GRANNIS Governor Commissioner For Further Information Contact: Robert K. Davies, State Forester New York State Department of Environmental Conservation 625 Broadway, 5th Floor Albany, NY 12233-4254 Phone: (518) 402-9405
[email protected] February 2010 “From the summit of any of the higher mountains of the Great Wilderness, the scene presented to the eye of the beholder is one of the most striking and sublime in the whole domain of nature. It is at once awfully grand and wildly beautiful beyond the power of language to describe. On every side peak after peak towers up into the clear, cold atmosphere above the clouds, their outlines growing softer and more shadowy in the distance, until the earth and sky commingle in the vast encircling horizon. In all the nearer valleys, full in view, sleep numberless mountain meadows and quiet lakes and lakelets, ‘pools of liquid crystal turned emerald in the reflected green of the impending woods.’ Wonderful also are the hues and tints and shades of color which these mountains assume with the varying seasons of the year and with the daily changes of the weather, as the sky becomes bright and clear or dark and overcast. Now we see them clothed in the crimson and golden tints of the evening – now in the cold, leaden grey of the morning; now silvery mists creep up their shaggy sides and linger languidly in their valleys – then purple shadows flit across them and play upon their summits.