Fifth & Sixth Lakes
AndyArthur.org photo
Sixty-seven years after initial publication I finally read Dave Beetle's Up Old Forge Way and West Canada Creek *. In 1946 and 1948 each was chronicled by Dave in a series of columns published by the Utica Observer Dispatch. In 1971, around the time of his death they were combined into a single volume and republished. The book is a natural and social history leavened with considerable gossip - a snap shot of people who settled in New York State's Adirondack region, specifically the Moose River system - North, Middle and South branches.. Reading it today is time travel - straight back - the people of whom he writes are "frozen in time" and their communities today dramatically altered.
I first met Dave when I was age 8 or so. He and his wife were friends of my parents via the Utica Tramp and Trail Club - a vigorous hiking, canoeing, kayaking and skiing club with a solid social component. My mother and father were introduced at a T&T event. Organized in the late 1920s it flourishes still - I think.
David H. Beetle was an educated man - Phi Beta Kappa from Hamilton College. He had a slender frame topped with black hair parted in the middle, combed straight back and a thick mustache. Dave was exceptionally fit - able to hike or kayak miles in Adirondack wilderness to visit an isolated lake or a rarely climbed peak. Before commencing a 16 mile trek Dave writes of a warning from the NY State District Ranger.
" ' It's going to be cold, cloudy and wet for the next three days' he told us on the May morning we were slated to go to the place where the West Canada begins. 'The trail is a mess. It will be a dismal trip. Do you still want to go? ' Well we didn't come from a long line of Martha's Vineyard whalers to be bothered by a little thing like the weather. ' Sure we'll go' we said cheerfully. So we went and the weather was everything the Ranger promised - and maybe a few gallons more." (WCC p. 15)
The Fulton Chain of Lakes - my mother and father tried each year to spend his one week vacation camping (i.e. tenting) somewhere in the Adirondacks. Through the years my brothers, sister and I helped our father pitch a heavy canvas wall tent (no floor - had to be Army surplus) in many sites including but not limited to Hinckley, Piseco and Eaton lakes, Eagle Bay, 3rd, 7th, and 8th lakes. Dave writes of the life and times of permanent and seasonal residents in these and other Big Moose locations up to the end of the Second World War, As for natural beauty he identifies places not to be missed, e.g. the peak that offers one of the finest views available in the Adirondack Park. Dave calls it the Fulton Chain's No. 1 landmark; Bald Mountain.
"You can puff up the mountain in from 15 minutes to an hour depending upon how energetic you are or how deep the snow is. The summer route is a well-defined path with planks, ladders, cables and convenient tree roots. It starts from the Old Forge - Eagle Bay Road about opposite the Bald Mountain House Drive. . . . The winter route starts 100 yards or so up the Rondaxe Lake Road and bears to the left. We tackled that on skis; got a gorgeous, wintry view from the top; saw a deer floundering in the snow; made the descent without a single spill - something we thought was pretty good until we found an Old Forge ski folder grading it as a 'novice trail' ". (UOFW p. 95)
On my finest day it never occurred to me to go up and down the Bald Mt./Rondaxe trail in winter on cross country skis.
During the 1966 New York State Assembly session I saw Dave a few times in the Capital Building. He was now an editor for the Albany Knickerbocker News. I was a staffer for a one term Assembly man and future Utica mayor, Eddie Hanna. Aware that Dave was around I would try and unearth a tidbit of information that might interest him and also help our District. (e.g. At the time creation of a Hinckley Lake State Park was under consideration by the Department of Environmental Conservation.) But my boss was a "maverick" and in the kingdom of Assembly Speaker Anthony Travia and Democratic Majority leader Stanley Steingut we were privy to almost nothing.
Summer in the late 1960s - my wife Annette and I with two young daughters were camping (i.e. tenting) in Maine's magnificent Arcadia National Park. Shopping one afternoon in Bar Harbor we met the Beetles coming out of a tourist shoppe. Dave had remarried and was with his wife and four (?) year old daughter. They were staying in a motel and we invited them over to our tent site to share a campfire. To my immense pleasure they came that evening. For a couple of hours we sat in darkness before a perfect log fire. The little girls roasted marsh mellows and then poked hot spots with long sticks. We talked, watching sparks streak up and vanish. Dave with his slow melodic delivery mused of state politics, the Tramp and Trail Club and of course the Adirondacks; the mountains, the lakes when frozen for skiing or liquid for canoeing, the rivers, bogs, the bears, storms . . . .
Closing Dave's book I sort of returned - the world of 2015 seemed a slightly darker, emptier place.
* David H. Beetle Up Old Forge Way/West Canada Creek North Country Books: Lakemont and Old Forge, NY; 1972.
See also; AndyArthur.org for excellent photos of the region.
