The Incredible Journey

One man's century-long mission in the land he loves

Story and Photos by Benjamin Pomerance

It's cold at the beginning of the trail. It's frigid, actually, the kind of sub-zero Adirondack winter cold that cuts through a person's body like a clever. The ice on Upper Saranac Lake has frozen solid, thick enough to walk on without fear of falling through. All is quiet in the woods near Indian Carry. Even the bravest creatures of the wilderness stay at home on a night like this.

Out in the midst of that cold stands a tent, a seemingly desperate last stand against Mother Nature's icy breath. Yet inside that tent, shrouded in wool blankets and snuggled around a wood-burning cookstove, three people are as warm as can be. The woman rocks her four-month-old boy, holding him close as the wind lays siege to their flimsy fortress. The infant smiles. He's happy. He should be. He's at the beginning of an incredible journey.

"I suppose that meant the woods and I were destined to be together from Day One."

The peaceful infant is Clarence Petty. He's not scared of the woods, the cold, the ink-black darkness surrounding them. What's there to be scared of? Clarence is exactly where he belongs. His father is an Adirondack guide; his mother, a cook at a nearby camp. That tent is their home. That raw, rough, beautiful wilderness is the only place he knows. "I don't remember much from that winter of 1905," Clarence muses, "but I never remember being frightened. I suppose that meant the woods and I were destined to be together from Day One."

Destiny indeed. Clarence Petty knows the woods before he knows how to walk. He's fascinated by the plants, the animals, the sunlight reflecting off the water, the bark crumbling in his hands. He sees things, hears things, feels things, learns things. He wants to go outside every chance he gets, and his parents are happy to oblige. They take him out in their canoe and let him feel the water run beneath his fingertips. They carry him on walks on winding trails and let him smell the pungent odor of newly grown moss. The boy watches them, confident and harmonious with the wild, and smiles again. Someday, he thinks to himself, I want to be like them.

Time to move on. The journey's just beginning, and there's much to explore. Seven years go by. It's time to start school, and Clarence needs an address. So the family moves from their wilderness abode, buy a cabin near Corey's Landing and send Clarence off to school. He does well in his studies, but doesn't like it. Far more fun after school, when he runs to Indian Point Golf Course and works as a caddy, where he once carries the bags of actor Monty Woolly. Far more fun on the weekends, when he helps his parents guide rich city-dwellers through the Adirondacks. On one of these outings, he meets a five-year-old boy named Nelson, who gives Clarence a model canoe for a present. Clarence loves it. No matter what happens, Clarence vows, he'll never lose that canoe.

The trail widens now, and Clarence can see the horizon before him. He's old enough to guide parties himself now, the eager nine-year-old kid scampering through the woods with a party of wealthy hunters behind him. He knows those trails like the back of his hand, but he wants to learn more. To do this, Clarence enrolls at Syracuse University's College of Forestry. "I still didn't know what I wanted to do," he recalls, "but I knew it had to be something in the wilderness. It just felt right."

Yet when he graduates in 1930, everything suddenly feels wrong. There's a mountain in the middle of his trail, a roadblock called the Great Depression. Desperate for a job, he takes a research position with Western Union. Still, he hates New York City, so he bolts at the first chance he gets, finding work as a supervisor for Civilian Conservation Corps camps. Overseeing projects in the New York State wilderness...this feels better. He even falls in love with and marries a young woman named Ferne, a friend who's almost as attached to the outdoors as he is. Still, he's worried about losing his job, so he spends weekends at a Long Island flight school, earning his pilot's license to increase his chances for future employment.

Sure enough, when the camps start closing down, an employer calls. It's the U.S. Navy, needing new pilots to fly missions in World War II. All trails are flight trails for Clarence now, paths in the air between Honolulu and the islands of the South Pacific. He flies those paths for nearly four years, darting between clouds and Japanese anti-aircraft fire more times than he wants to recall. He flies to Midway, Guam, Guadalcanal—wherever the Allied forces go, Clarence's supply plane follows. One night in 1945, he's 30,000 feet over Albuquerque when his radio crackles to life. "Land as soon as you can," orders the voice. "Japan just surrendered. The war is over." He lands in Phoenix at 3 a.m., and finds the city bursting with humanity. Fireworks, cheering, dancing in the streets--it's the greatest celebration he's ever seen. "That," Clarence smiles, "was one happy landing."

The war over, he returns to his wife and their two young sons in upstate New York, in need of yet another job. Thankfully, all those old forestry connections pay off. Within weeks, he has a job with the Conservation Department, finally doing the work he always wanted to do in the place he wanted to do it. It's been a long journey, but the trail has finally taken Clarence home.

"It was a job somebody needed to do, and, by God, I was going to do it."