04/15/2026
Here's the unexpurgated "Year In Review" that I do for the Indian Lake Association (ilaadk.org) newsletter:
THE YEAR IN REVIEW
It’s been said, “If you take a long enough view, everything always averages out.”
Last spring was so cold, damp, and persistently rainy that pollinators weren’t able to do their job the entire time that apple trees were in blossom; and most local trees bore no fruit. That dank season gave way to a summer of perfect tourist weather (AKA: a severe drought). One halcyon day after another drove lake levels to the lowest in memory.
By the time the jet stream finally sprang back to life, and winter descended with a roar; the booming tourist season felt quite overextended to fatigued hospitality workers. Our “short season” has ballooned over the years. Once upon a time, Labor Day was the Grand Finale. The Adirondacks breathed a collective sigh of relief, and certain local wiseguys adorned themselves in togas and stood at the bottom of the North River hill waving goodbye to the hordes of retreating flatlanders. Over the years, without anyone asking, it bled into Columbus Day. Nowadays it’s edging toward Veterans Day. Last century’s conversations about the merits or demerits of “July people” vs. “August people” seem quaint. Now the big effort is to persevere in preventing hospitality from turning into hostiletality before tamarack needles and worn out workers finish dropping. Such are the vicissitudes of cramming twelve months’ worth of work into six, so that personal income can “average out” for the year.
We are thankful, though, that our region’s allure is irresistible; and the tourists keep on coming - helping local businesses puff up sales tax revenues. This inflow has been calculated to be worth over $4,000 in tax savings per household per year in Hamilton County.
Any revenues extracted from out-of-town pocketbooks will become increasingly attractive, since New York State’s fiscal disabilities are rapidly and inevitably pushed downstream toward our community. Largely as a result of the leverage our spendthrift State brings to bear on us, its weaker partner, it appears that the school will be overriding the 2% tax cap again this year. The Town’s budget season doesn’t begin for another few months. But they’ll also be under tremendous pressure to hold the line. It would only take at most seven years of double digit increases to double what we owe in taxes.
Too bad spring still lags as a boom time. The world hasn’t yet noticed how the second hatch of black flies (the white-legged ones) has gone missing these last few years, or that punkies have almost disappeared from the scene. Word of these wonders might further loosen the world’s purse strings to our benefit. What is apparently a worldwide collapse of the insect population surely does not bode well for nature, but locally these clouds could have a silver lining.
That silver lining may wind up being dimmed, though, by the fact that the Town is ending its BTI program. This non-persistent bacteriological treatment of blackfly larvae has been carried out here for decades with absolutely no discernible harm to the environment. But NYS licensing requirements and application restrictions have finally grown too onerous for the program’s continuation. Whether the blackfly population maintains its downward trend or reverts to mean will certainly be one of the more anxiously watched parts of nature’s ebb and flow as the spring unfolds.
Of course, many of the losses we’re experiencing from our changing environment are not as beguiling as the decline of biting insects. The loss of mature beech trees (and their copious amount of nuts) has altogether changed the life of the white-tailed deer, forcing them to decimate decorative foliage and soon to extirpate cedar and hemlock trees from our Adirondack forests.
Emerald ash borer has reached our doorstep and will likely soon represent an enormous financial burden for many local property owners. Once the ash borer does its work, the dead trees quickly become brittle and dangerous to remove. I’ve been pre-emptively taking down a lot of my younger ones, before they can become the towering expenses their parents will represent. The cost of this plague will be further multiplied by the number of power outages toppling trees will cause.
But, at the end of the day, the woodlands will not have turned to desert, and the eye will continue to behold a seemingly endless sea of green. The unfortunate changes to our forests are not the result of climate change; they’re a latter-day manifestation of the 534 year old Columbian exchange - a hidden cost of global trade. Parasites and pathogens arrive as part and parcel of the cheap, imported goods that have blessed out modern lives – entering our forests more than a century ago in the form of chestnut blight and Dutch elm disease.
Indeed, there is no free lunch in this world, apart from the grace of God. While that grace is ever present; warm weather, unfortunately, does not last forever. This past winter’s onset came quick and harsh, almost Judgment-like. The first week of November seemed terribly early - but only because we’ve become so accustomed to it arriving late. Unlike summer, winter felt like it would never end. But the sun shone plenty; and it was not one of those bleak, achromatic winters when it’s a shock to see any color, and all the world seems to consist only of gray or white. Even so, snow fell often but yielded mostly only trifling amounts at any one time. But the persistent icy temperatures guaranteed that we hung onto just about every flake we received, and it felt like a “warm spell” when the temperature got up to 15 degrees. The snow pack wound up being two or three times what we’d been growing used to.
In reality, though, except for the ceaselessness of the cold, 2025-26 was just a statistically average, old-fashioned winter - certainly old-fashioned enough to give our roadways a good old-fashioned thrashing. Snowmobilers enjoyed the finest trail conditions in years; and Snocade was perhaps the best ever – plenty of snow for a change; wonderful, well-attended events; and no rainouts; no fog outs; no freeze outs; and only a single day’s activities altered on account of weather. But there’s never a year that Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t see his shadow in the Adirondacks, and the season’s remorselessly frigid grip held tight way past Presidents Week. Sap didn’t begin to flow until a full month later than it did in 2025.
By the time all these precipitation numbers are added up and all the daytime highs and lows are spread out across the year’s calendar, this will probably be recorded as a statistically perfectly-normal year. Doesn’t matter what it felt like. What in the world ever does seem normal anymore?
Nevertheless, the relief of re-leafing could not have been more welcome.
As the metal roofs shrugged off their winter coats and the snows receded, owners were able to venture forth and investigate how their docks fared in their first winter in exile from their old abode in Norman’s Cove.
After banning them, DEC posted a threatening sign at the entrance channel; but they never lifted a finger to clean the place up. The derelict wrecks that had disappeared did so by the Herculean efforts of past ILA President Glenn Van Norstrand and other members of the board, in an attempt to make the problem vanish; so that DEC would relent on the ban. When it became apparent that the effort was futile, the work ceased, leaving one lonely ramshackle sentinel dock, which will no doubt stand vigil through endless time, waiting in vain for DEC to finish the job.
Perhaps, since that remaining dock is the former property of folks who are no longer among the living, DEC’s reason for not completing the cleanup may be that since the dead are found to vote in so many jurisdictions, then perhaps fines can also be clawed back from assets in the afterlife.
Despite the best efforts of the ILA, it would appear that an amendment to the State Constitution would be required to gain the State’s permission to store docks in Norman’s Cove over the winter. That’s not going to happen.
But I’m wondering: what if docks were given boat registrations and just happened to navigate over to the cove in the fall and anchor in the deeper parts that don’t drain out during the winter? Even if not dry docked on the cove’s shore, which would be illegal, they would still be far more protected than anywhere else they wind up on the main body of the lake.
Navigable water laws are battle tested and they are Federal; therefore they supersede any State regulations. They are defined, in part, as waters that “are presently used, or have been used in the past, or may be susceptible for use to transport interstate or foreign commerce. A determination of navigability, once made, applies laterally over the entire surface of the waterbody, and is not extinguished by later actions or events which impede or destroy navigable capacity.” In other words, like the transporting of logs down Indian Lake, back in the day- logs which became lumber and paper that were sold hither and yon.
Registering a dock as a boat might be a little more problematic, since a dock has no VIN number. But the State does allow you to apply for an equivalent registration for homemade watercraft or canoes and such things, which have no VIN. It’s called a HIN (hull identification number/ form OPS-420).
Vessels with living quarters are prohibited from anchoring on State land which is underwater for more than 24 hours. But I find no mention of boats without living quarters.
Maybe some of our legal minds could consider whether or not such “boats”, that happened to get icebound in otherwise navigable waters could legally remain there until freed, and other questions, of which I’m sure there are many. I am not such a mind, so this should not be construed in any way as sound legal advice.
For now, this is just one of those screwy things that come to mind at 3AM, when I’d rather be sleeping. But hopefully it will stimulate others to think creatively. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, now that the Cove is mostly cleaned up, the reasonable storage of floating docks could be resumed, even if by hook or legal crook?
In the meanwhile, life goes on in the real world. And work, too.
The dam is nearly done and sports a very new look after its thorough makeover. There’s a massive, new, functioning log gate, to help expel more water than the sluices can handle in emergencies; a new steel walkway; an imposingly grander earthen embankment on the east side; more lights; a fluorescent boom; and a stucco-like coating over a lot of the old masonry. This has yielded a structure that lacks some of the quaint charm of the leaky old dam, but one that speaks authoritatively of serious business and safety first.
Everything was scheduled to have been done this past year, but an unforeseen problem of great magnitude and complexity was discovered at what was supposed to be the last minute: the foundation of the gatehouse was found to be unstable. A lot of the work on this hard to reach area has been performed underwater, much of it by divers.
Remarkably, from beginning to end, no drawdowns to aid the work were made throughout the entire rehabilitation. The debased lake level that everyone lamented was simply a tribute paid in exchange for splendid weather.
It speaks well of all the parties involved that apparently no corners were cut in the course of completing this contract, and each and every challenge was met head on and successfully dealt with.
Unlike the contractors for the Lake Abanakee Dam, who left the Town fathers wringing their hands in anguish and fumbling fruitlessly through their picked pockets, C.D. Perry, LLC did a first class job on both the Indian Lake and the Town’s Adirondack Lake dam renovations, with skilled help from Bergmann Associates and Colliers Engineering & Design. We should be thankful to them and to the Hudson River Black River Regulating District for seeing this challenging job through to its proper conclusion.
That conclusion is likely to come in late summer or early fall, when the new earthen embankment and the other affected areas are raked clean, re-seeded and the last of the equipment is moved off site.
The Regulating District faced another challenge, when the USGS issued new requirements for measuring real time elevation data that would have resulted in a brutal cost increase. As a result, real time data has been absent on the RD website for some time. But recently they’ve come up with vendor who’ll be able to satisfy the USGS at a cost the RD can afford. Data should be going live again by around Memorial Day.
As boats begin to repopulate our waters, it’s worth noting that the Marina’s success has been such that it’s enabled them to purchase the old Stephenson’s Lumber yard, to expand their winter boat storage capacity.
Nor was that the only change in our business community. Sadly (tragically, in fact) the owners of the enormously successful Axes & Irons announced that the business will close on June 1, because of health issues.
But, at the same time, new faces began popping up in town – sort of. The One Stop was renamed “The Indian Lake Market”. A Smoke Shop opened at the prime location at the corner of 28 & 30 and then quickly closed, leaving only a sign on the window as evidence of its short existence. A breathless rumor surged through town that a cannabis dispensary would be opening opposite the Theater. Turns out it is supposed to be a v**e shop. But a cannabis dispensary is supposed to appear in North Creek; so there may be that freedom of choice, when it comes to what people decide to fill their lungs with.
If the v**e shop comes to pass, our street-front businesses within the Village center will consist of two non-profits and a Government-sponsored purveyor of free materials and surplus food; two purveyors of highly-processed snack food and gasoline (one of which is making a determined effort to live out the ill-fated Smoke Shop’s ambitions), four places that will give you a place to sit and prepare proper meals for you, in three of which you can imbibe legal beverages; an income tax and accounting service; a bank that had to be coerced into keeping this local branch open; a staging area for a blacktopping company; a rafting outfitter’s office; two barber shops; a defunct smoke shop; a v**e shop; an occasional antique store; and a self-storage facility.
Thank God for Pine’s, where you can actually buy a nut or a bolt, to fix something yourself; because if anything breaks down, like your car, which you need to be able to drive out of town to buy groceries, you better know how to fix it yourself; unless you have AAA to help you get it towed to O’Connor’s in Lake Pleasant.
This is in no way a belittlement of the enormous efforts of the many individuals who have dedicated themselves to local enterprises. It is truly brave and admirable to attempt to raise up a business, even one that’s a non-profit, in this place and in this time. The meals are good. Things are well stocked, well kept, and cheerfully dispensed. The haircuts are first class. The blacktopping is the best that money can buy. The whitewater is the most thrilling east of the Mississippi. You can even get organic milk if you want it. A lot of the free clothing still bears its original sales tags. The efforts of all the individuals making these things happen contribute enormously to the quality of life that we enjoy here.
Yet I wonder if an economist who tried to divine the meaning of such a disparate collection of entrails of the chicken that is our local economy, and weighed them against the counterforces thrown at us by NYS, might find it hard to identify a happy place for the human species to occupy at the end of his divinations and prophesyings. In the big, final, profit/loss report, would people here be counted an asset or just an expense? And will they themselves be consumed by their various avenues of consumption?
At least, in our strange and wondrous little local simulacrum of a free market economy, we are broadly reflective of the Empire State as a whole. And, no doubt, when those in charge of telling us what we need to know give us their final tabulations, everything will be said to have nicely averaged out.
