Adirondack Luxury

On campus, many people who are unfamiliar with the Adirondack Program have approached me with questions, and many of them are based on the assumption that we are living in tents, a yurt, or a cabin without electricity. Usually these questions make me laugh and I explain the actual luxurious living situation that we have at the Mountain House. The other person has usually been very surprised and then a little confused before moving on to another topic.

While most people at Hamilton by now (especially the people interested in applying) have heard about how spectacular the Mountain House is, the fact that very sparse and rustic accomodations is the go-to assumption for life in the Adirondacks makes me wonder where this idea comes from. There is a long history of luxurious living in the Adirondacks, as we can still see in the Great Camps, the multitude of historical hotels, and with the guides that used to provide a "wilderness experience" without compromising complete comfort. Despite all of this, living in the Adirondacks is automatically viewed as a harsh and unmodernized pursuit. 

Although we know that the Adirondack Park is nearly half comprised of towns, farms, etc., the Adirondacks are almost immediately associated with mountains, lakes, forests, or a number of other types of "wild" landscapes. This assumption makes sense and is very much true in one sense, but I think that it affects the notion of what it means to live there. For someone unfamiliar with the Park, living in the Adirondacks must mean living in an almost completely wilderness setting without modern technological conveniences. Our setup in the Mountain House is difficult to line up with the widely accepted view of the Adirondacks as a place of wilderness, despite the reality that there is much more than wilderness within the Blue Line.