The Woods

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Camping, Not Yet

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Walking in the Albany Pine Bush this afternoon, I was thinking how much I miss spending nights in the wilderness. Those open canopies, like Moose River Plains or even Confusion Flats in the Western Adirondacks are special. While I have a trip planned for 2 1/2 weeks from now, it’s seems like that could be an eternity. I guess I could out somewhere sooner, although the issue would be that there is still a lot of snow up north and the next few weekends I expect to be fairly busy. But it’s obvious that nicer weather is heading our way, and I fully expect to spend more nights in the near future out in the wilderness.

Back camping at the same site tonight

Solitude Doesn’t Bother Me Much.

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Apparently some people get quickly bored when they are alone. They can’t take extensive solitude. I’ve never felt that way, although like every human being, I do crave interaction with other humans from time to time. But I’m quite happy being alone in the wilderness, just enjoying my time without anybody else to set my schedule, or tell me what to do.

Buck Mountain in West Canada Wilderness

Unbroken Natural Lands (Forest, Farmland) Over 10k Acres In New York

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While more then 3/5th of the landmass in New York State is forested and roughly a quarter is farmed, many of the parcels are broken up by roads and houses. Even small gaps in natural cover can have significant impacts on wildlife. Most of state's largest parcels of unbroken cover is in the Adirondacks, though a few large parcels can be found in the Catskills and Allegany hills of Western NY. This data set also contains some data from watersheds in Northern Pennsylvania that feed into New York. From the New York Natural Heritage Program:

Although forests in the Northeastern US had been increasing in their extent since the early 1900s, more recently, we are starting to see this trend reverse,with development fragmenting and reducing the size of forests on our landscape. The objective of this project was to delineate road-less forest patches throughout New York State, based on the latest version of the National Land Cover Dataset(2016), and then to assess the condition of those patches within the Hudson River Estuary Watershed.

Data Source: New York Natural Heritage Program, New York Forest Patches, Natural Lands.