The 6th Annual Cardboard Sled Race, planned originally for Saturday, February 10th, then moved to Saturday, Feb 24th due to weather, fell victim this year to the warm weather of El Niña. What was otherwise a delightfully warm and sunny week leading up to Saturday, melted much of the snow that had dropped the weekend prior.
Even if its precise definition isn’t at the tip of your tongue, most everyone gets the drift of what’s meant by the term ‘biogas.’ There is biology involved, and the result is gas. One example might be the funk in the air on the bus carrying the sauerkraut-eating team home after a weekend competition. Another type of biogas is cow belches, and the rotten-egg stink-bubbles that swarm to the surface when your boot disappears into swamp mud.
As the new Project Manager for Nature Up North, I’m excited by the many possibilities in front of me. In my first few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to visit students in Norwood as they learn about the difference between deciduous and coniferous trees.
In her poem “It Sifts from Leaden Sieves,” Emily Dickinson lauds the sublime beauty of snow – gossamer flakes that garnish a forest, wispy grains that infiltrate nooks and crannies, and wind-sculpted rings of snow around fence posts. Given that the poet lived in a time before cars and stayed in her bedroom for 20 years, she never had to shovel snow, trudge through it, or drive in it.
In the Northern edge of the Adirondack park, where the towering heights of the High Peaks give way to smaller mountains and rolling hills, sits one such feature. 2,518 feet tall and one mile to the top, it presents an easy hike that anyone can do. And indeed, Azure Mountain is many people's first hike given its proximity to universities in Canton and Potsdam.