Both books, published by Adirondack Life Inc., are now available at all major booksellers.
"Short Carries: Essays from Adirondack Life" retails for $16.95.
"Lake Champlain: An Illustrated History" retails for $44.95.
For more information, visit www.adirondacklife.com.
LAKE PLACID — Adirondack Life released two new books this spring, one celebrating 400 years of Lake Champlain history, the other honoring 20 years in essays from Elizabeth Folwell, writer, editor and the magazine's co-publisher.
Both books mark 40 years of ink at Adirondack Life.
A launch party at Lake Placid Lodge announced publication amid early green leaves bursting through the late spring chill. Adirondack Life gathered a crowd in the new pub, many who wrote and edited the pages of the new books, and feted guests with fine food and earnest conversation.
Some things Adirondack have changed through her decades of writing, Folwell said.
"But some stay so reassuringly the same. It still snows. The leaves still change color; the blackflies still come out."
Among more remarkable changes have been those among the quiet lake towns and villages, coming to grips with their rural nature in a changing world, she said.
'SHORT CARRIES'
For "Short Carries: Essays from Adirondack Life," Folwell culled from past issues of the magazine, dividing a repast of narrative into two sections: "Shades of Blue" and "Shades of Green," casting a division of blue and green segments like a horizon connecting a deep forest edge to the clear blue sky. Each section moves chronologically from among older essays to newer ones, in passages through 20 years of exposure to all things Adirondack.
The "Blue" side of the book derives from more human Adirondack endeavors, mostly; the "Green" side relates tales from wildlife and weather, generally.
A notable exception puts Folwell's story "Blood Sport," a recollection of "How I almost missed the Miracle on Ice," in "Shades of Green" between a trip down the raging Hudson River and reflections on the legacy of the loon.
But the story reveals something of a sense of self-reliance strung through Folwell's work, in her straight-faced determination to watch the 1980 Olympic Gold Medal hockey game even after taking a heavy Russian elbow to the face while waiting in line.
With an epic nosebleed, a wad of gauze stuffed under her upper lip and a bag of ice on her face, Folwell insisted "no way was I missing the game."
And through a blood-soaked nose, she writes, "I could smell the crowd, all that wet wool, and hear the rumble of thousands of fans."
The carries are 55 essays altogether.
LAKE CHAMPLAIN
After 40 years of publishing, a second Adirondack Life compilation this spring celebrates times 10 the 400 years of Lake Champlain history, with a foreword by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy.
"There is no better way to honor the history of Lake Champlain than a rededication to its stewardship," he conveys in the opening passage. "I hope this book can help to reinforce that message while providing an insightful look at this place we care about so much."
An adventurous project in 215 oversized, glossy pages, the work is billed "A celebration of America's Most Historic Lake," connecting communities on all its shores.
Vermont, New York and Quebec share colorful images portraying common boundaries of landscape, geography and human history.
Christopher Shaw, once an Adirondack guide and editor at Adirondack Life, now a writing professor at Middlebury College, summed up the book perfectly in his prologue:
"We imagine and teach that there is one objective reality composed of immutable laws, and that it transcends history. But we can see in the story of Bitabawgw, as the Abenakis call Lake Champlain, how realities pass over the landscape like waves, carried on the subjective experience of the minds that inhabit and pass through it."
Each town sharing shoreline is featured in the first chapter of the book, which then dives deeply into quite scholarly work on "The First People," the military and economic histories of Lake Champlain's waters and its recreational resource.
Designed by renowned Burlington graphic artist Bill Harvey, the book includes a wide array of large photographs along with historic images from postcards, maps, paintings and illustrations.
E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com
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