I had a great time guiding a nature walk today at Morningside. Everyone in the group came from highly urbanized areas: Brooklyn, Queens, and Huntington, Long Island. They ranged in age from 3 years old to folks in their mid-60s. It's fascinating: The older people thoroughly enjoyed all the activities I planned for the youngest ones. We explored the balsam fir trees, mosses, and mushrooms with 4 of our 5 senses (no tasting!), and everyone got so into it that we went way overtime. A really genial group.

Then I hung out at Randi and Dave's for awhile while Ken worked on Randi's laptop. Earlier in the morning I noticed that Gracie wasn't acting right, but after the walk, I was more concerned. I touched her belly and it felt red hot. It looked to us like Gracie had come down with mastitis. Randi had had one emergency after another with their guests this morning, and she hadn't had a second to sit with Gracie.

Randi immediately went to find Dave while I took Gracie's temp. It was 104.8 degrees. Even considering the fact that a dog's normal temp is over 101 degrees, I know from experience that that's an alarmingly high temp for a dog. Dave came back, Randi called the vet, and Dave zoomed Gracie down to Glens Falls to their vet, an hour's drive away.

Meanwhile, Gracie's puppies were ravenous! She wasn't able to give them much milk this morning, so Randi and I puzzled over what to do. Randi called the vet back. No pet store within an hour's drive, so no, we couldn't get any puppy formula. The vet gave Randi a recipe: evaporated milk, egg yolks, sugar and water.

The puppies were so frustrated with the small hole in the baby bottle. They were crying, crying, give me more, more! So Ken made the hole bigger, and finally, they were happy. It's strange, though. The vet had said give them 2 teaspoonsful at a time. Randi, Ken, and I looked at each other. Did the vet know that these were LABRADOR puppies, not Pekinese pups? They each drank one to two ounces and then they were, at last, quiet and yes, asleep.

For some bizarre reason, I can't get my puppy portrait to upload. I'll try later.

It rained off an on all day so I spent my time doing business paperwork. No matter how much time I spend on the business, I barely scratch the surface of all there is to do. My website is still in process, and in a few weeks I'll have to add the Fall 2006 content. I'm still writing ads: I'm going to be advertising in the Gore Mountain brochure for 2006-2007 and on their website. I'm psyched about that; their website got 3.1 million hits last season. This week I also made some important contacts with some five-star inns in the area. The concept: Wilderness adventure by day, luxury and pampering by night, complete with massage, jacuzzi, wine bar, and three-course dinner by candlelight. Sounds like fun to me!

I pounded away on the treadmill this afternoon while I read Women with Altitude: Challenging the Adirondack High Peaks in Winter by Carol White. Bushwhacking up the High Peaks in winter, I'm sorry to say, is a bit out of my league. If one can judge by the memoirs of women included in this book, their winter trips were miserably uncomfortable. Climbing with snowshoes, 30 degrees below zero, through whiteouts and ice, hanging on to icy cliff faces, talk about extreme sports! I love the snowshoes part, I love the climbing in winter part, but is it necessary to endanger one's life to have a peak experience in nature?

Here's my idea of a winter adventure: Snowshoe up a decent, marked trail (that has been scouted out previously) to an altitude of 2,500 to 3,000 feet. Carry a tiny camp stove for hot drinks to be prepared on the trail, bring thermoses of hot chocolate and sandwiches. Ooh and aah over coyote and deer tracks and the view of snowy peaks. Be at the end of the trail as the sun sets. Climb into car. Drive home to tea, or to a bar for a wine and conversation.

News Flash: The Adirondack Safaris link in the sidebar is working again.

The phone could be ringing more than it is. Might the telephonic quiet be partly due to tourists' attitudes toward bugs? This summer they've been complaining vociferously about the population explosion of our insect friends. Everywhere I go, when I go swimming at Garnet Lake, when I walk down the street in North Creek, at Cafe Sarah's, everyone is upset about the bugs. Is this why I'm always all alone on the trails this summer?

In the spring I was worried about how I'd handle the nasty little things, and actually I'm glad my first summer has been a bad bug summer because whatever comes next will be heaven sent in comparison. I made up my mind that bugs were not going to interfere with my enjoyment of the outdoors, and, with just a few exceptions, they haven't. I have, however, complained about bug dope. Right now I've got some deet-free stuff that is made from a base of olive oil and bee balm (those are not the active ingredients, of course). The stuff is so greasy, it's impossible to keep it from smearing my glasses. But it works. The stuff I had before that smelled so bad that my friends made jokes about it. But it worked!

Gardening on the deck has been a fun challenge. I've got a problem with my zucchini and squash plants--they're producing a profusion of male flowers and not much squash. Something wrong with the soil, I'm sure. The peppers have been great, and I hope to have many more before the season is over. Due to the cool nights here (down sometimes to the high 50s and low 60s), I bring the pepper pots in at night.

Sophie has been miserable in the heat. We put on the a.c., but she's still unhappy. She'd prefer to be gallivanting in the outdoors, but, with the exception of the very early morning, it's just too hot for her.

Starting a business has been an enormous challenge, I've found. I keep going, consulting experts and reading alot, but much of it is trial and error, and I'm still in the error phase. I freeze up with the technical stuff. I'm still trying to understand my credit card processing company's software. Complicated!!

In the good news arena, I think I'm going to be guiding the guests of a well-known inn in the area in the future--probably in the fall, and I'm looking forward to that.

It may take days before I can adequately describe the hike I went on today. On days I don't have clients, I seek out new trails in the hopes of finding ones that will excite my customers. Today I hiked from Garnet Lake to Round Pond and was dismally disappointed in the trail. It's a shame--it must have been beautiful at one time, but, oh, it was a horror! I have never seen so many down trees blocking a trail in my life. A mile in took me so long, I nearly turned around and went home. But I wanted to see what would happen if I made it to Round Pond. And what happened was more of the same. There was no let up in the level of difficulty. It was worse than bushwhacking! The trail was marked only about once every half mile, which was terribly difficult because everything was so overgrown.

When I arrived at Round Pond, I should have been pleased, but I wasn't. I realized I'd rather walk five miles than to go back the way I came. So I bushwhacked from the south end of Round Pond to the north end and picked up another trail there that led me out eventually to Garnet Lake Road South in Thurman. Fortunately this worked out, but I had to walk miles and miles farther than I intended to.

This hike will not be appearing as a safari. End of story.

Yesterday I dropped my brochures off at the LaBars in Minerva at Morningside Camps and Cottages. Dave told me that Gracie, their black lab, had her puppies on Sunday. I felt like racing the car down to their house to see. And here they are!!

I sat mesmerized for more than an hour, watching them, just two days old shove and push and move their bodies to reach a nipple. Amazing. Two days old.

The brochures have arrived! They look beautiful; Terry's design and Carl Heilman II's and Stephanie Leonard's photos are so crystal clear, so well done, I'm really happy I made myself have the patience to do the job right. They came at 5 pm Friday--I distributed them to just a few places Saturday, and waited until today, Monday, to deliver most of them, when the owners and managers of hotels, tourist attractions, and stores were back at work.

Bringing them places turned out to be a fun time for me because people were receptive and intersted in Adironack Safaris, wanting to know more. Karma must've been just right because I didn't run into a single hostile individual. I came home tired but excited about the future of the business.

The weekend was a welcome break. I spent all day gardening on Friday and got a lot accomplished. My zucchini and summer squash plants are sprouting squashes, the pepper plants and tomatoes are going gangbusters--actually, there isn't any plant that's not doing well, except perhaps the Brandywine heirloom tomato plant, which I have had no success with at all. Over the spring, I planted five different pots of Brandwine, with the result that only one looked halfway decent, and it is none too happy. I don't think I'll try Brandywine again.

Saturday, as I've discussed on the Adirondack Safaris blog, was spent at the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, and Sunday Ken and I drove the car four miles to paradise.

Four miles from our home is a lake surrounded by mountains that people around here like for paddling and swimming. About a third of it has cabins along the shore, but the rest is wild New York State land. From the road it doesn't look like much, but from the water it is stunning. Sunday was mighty hot, but there were a few cooling breezes out in our boats. I spent my time in the pickerel weed along the shore hunting for dragonflies. Ken found some shade and vegged out for a while. I tell you, it was such a perfect day and so much fun that I vowed to return as soon as I could.

While I wait for the infernal printer in Plattsburgh to get his act together and do my brochures (the latest story from my designer is that the printer's computer and printer are not communicating at the moment), I'm hiking lots of new trails, with the hopes of adding a few to the safaris I offer my clients.

The weather has been great, which means it hasn't rained for quite a stretch. Temperatures have run from the high seventies to low eighties each day, which has been feeling hot on days I'm climbing a mountain in the sun with a pack on my back. I've been getting out everyday because I know we'll hit a heat wave soon when I won't be able to explore.

When I'm not hiking, and not examining wildflowers, trees, mosses, and other plants, I'm working on the business, often dealing with advertising and financial issues. On a good day, though, I chafe at these chores, and wish I could confine them to rainy days.

I have been sorry for months that I've been unable to find the time or make the time to write. Yeah, I write the blogs, which is writing of a kind, but when I say I want more time and mental space to write, I mean fiction or one of my nonfiction projects. I also wish I were writing in my journal--there's so much about my life, the people I meet, and the things that happen that are just not blog material.

As far as the gardening goes, the incredible wet weather of late June made me glad that I didn't start a vegetable garden out back. The entire area is still sopping wet. What I have, however, is a garden on the deck. I have 5 tomato plants (four different varieties I grew from seed), summer squash, zucchini, two varieties of sweet red peppers, cucumbers, peas (gone now), lettuce, swiss chard, beets, and then I have some eggplant coming along. I love to go out there first thing in the morning to see how each plant has grown or changed since sunset. We have a hummingbird feeder on the deck, too, and it's fun to see them come to feed.

Today it's time to take a break from hiking and nature study to return to a small pond that Ken and I love. As I've observed, there are two major groups of paddlers: destination paddlers (the ones who feel the need to travel from Point A to Point B) and the dawdling paddlers. Ken and I usually behave as the latter variety. Most times we love to go to a place that's quiet, wild (no houses dotting the shoreline), and full of wildlife. I just sit, often in one place, and study the dragonflies, my dragonfly book in hand. I soak in the sun, ears acutely tuned to bird songs, and observe everything around me. It's absolutely the most relaxing pastime I've ever encountered.


I sometimes sit back in my Hornbeck boat (Lost Pond boat is its actual name) and read a book. This past September I read a book in Dragonfly Cove on Minerva Lake that transformed me and made me know I had to live in the North Country. I'm sure I must have mentioned the book last year, but for new readers, I read Bill McKibben's Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America's Most Hopeful Landscape, Vermont's Champlain Valley and New York's Adirondacks.