It's been over two years since I wrote and recorded Song's From Mountain's East And West. Bill and I needed an Adirondack fix early this spring so we loaded up the kayaks and headed north to Long Lake. Buttermilk Falls was in full force with the melting spring snow and the ice, thinly transparent but not yet gone from the northern end of the lake. A cold kayak! The northern end of the lake being where the Cold River flows and further up 8 or 9 miles or so, thirty years of Noah John's life spent in hobo meditation and seclusion. Lucky dude. I became smitten with this old hobo and have read everything I could get my hands on about him in my pursuit to know and understand the history of the Adirondack mountains
Visiting Hoss's general store, I got talking to a store clerk and got hold of a business card to the store's buyer. I came home and said...Well here goes another ten dollar business card and mailed out a copy of Songs From Mountains East and West in hopes someone would like it enough and deem it worthy to sit on the shelf of Hoss's most famous general store. The CD MADE IT!
They wanted 6 copies and invited me to Author's Night always the second Tuesday in August.
So Tuesday, I packed up and headed to Long Lake and sat under the same pavilion as Anne La Bastille and many other famous Adirondack authors sat. I got all choked up and weird when I made this realization, eating the simple but tasty picnic prepared for us before the event.
With two hours to kill before hand, I got lucky finding a parking spot in the Adirondack hotel parking lot. Route 28 runs through the small town of Long Lake and was loaded with tourists, camper trailers, kayaks, canoes and barking dogs.
Running across the road in between traffic and over to the beach area I found myself right in front of Helms, the little cabin with pictures of the aviation history of their service on Long Lake. Thirty dollars for a twenty minute ride. This was a no brainer and the best thirty dollars I ever spent flying over the Blue Mountain area of the Adirondack mountains. I could see as far as Raquatte and almost to the site over Noah John's camp. I was in heaven over heaven! The bluest sky with the whitest, fluffiest clouds shadowing over the wild greens and gray bouldering erratics of the Adirondack park. Love Love Love LOVE!!!
Anyway...the Author's night was a tremendous gathering under a large red and white circus tent. Books written about anything one would want to know under an Adirondack sun stacked up on tables with their proud smiling writers backing them.
I met several infamous Adirondack musicians. Dan Berggren whom has played up there for years and storyteller/balladeer Bill Smith of Colton NY. I also got a chance to perform my song Up The River Cold, Rim Of The World and the two covers of Stewball and Eye On The Prize.
What a fine night. A night I'll alway's remember. Dad would of been so proud!
