All Points North - Navigating the North Country

All Points North
SUNY Plattsburgh
101 Broad Street
Plattsburgh, NY 12901

apneditor@gmail.com

Back in the Day

It's early in the morning and the phone rings. He quickly reaches for it, afraid it will wake the rest of the house. He grumbles and nods a bit, fighting the urge of sleep. "Here we go"he mumbles and Dr. Sidney Martin was gone on an emergency veterinarian call. Read More

Nestled within the thick forests of Clinton County, New York lies the tiny and rich in history town of Mooers, New York. Mooers was first settled in 1796 and was founded as a township on March 20, 1804. The town’s name came as an honor to a prominent early settler of Clinton County, Major General Benjamin Mooers. Over the past two hundred years the town has seen many changes both in businesses and people who were once part of the town’s lifeline. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that the town’s industry started to thrive. Read More

Somewhere over the Northeast, streaking through the blackness of the night, a flight of supersonic fighters, some of the fastest around, makes a push towars Mt. Washington in Northern Vermont. The enormous mountain passes below unnoticed, half becuase of the incredible speed, half because of the pitch blackness encompassing the relatively small flying machine. The small group of about 8-10 men fly all the way up to northern Maine, following a river with practice targets lining the route. As they dip and dive through the cavernous river valley, electronic blips from the fighter's computer blips in the ears of the pilots, directing them through the night. Soon the horizon and the Atlantic Ocean come into visibility, and a sonic boom erupts from behind the formation as the men swoop out over the Atlantic, New Hampshire and eventually back to the base of operations, landing in Northern New York. Defending mainland America's northern border during the Cold War was no joke. Read More

In the depths of an untamed wilderness, a cemetery overlooks the narrow dirt road, lined on both sides by dilapidated structures. The Hudson River flows quietly behind what appears to be nothing more than a large pile of moss-covered rocks. What remains of the village of Adirondac, a once thriving mining town, are reminders of its incredible existence, and its devastating demise. Read More

"I was walking one night in the verandah of a small house in which I lived, outside the hamlet of Saranac. It was winter; the night was very dark; the air extraordinary clear and cold, and sweet with the purity of forests…on such a fine frosty night, with no wind and the thermometer below zero, the brain works with much vivacity; and the next moment I had seen the circumstance transplanted from India and the tropics to the Adirondack wilderness and the stringent cold of the Canadian border. Here then, almost before I had begun my story, I had two countries,…it fitted at once with my design of a tale of many lands; and this decided me to consider further of its possibilities." Read More

It really wasn’t so different, that mother of all American road trips. There was adventure. There was booze. There was a dare that started it all. And there were plenty of the death-defying, teeth-gritting, knuckle-whitening, don’t-tell-the-kids-you-did-this-when-you-were-their-age escapades now synonymous with the cross-country misadventures of America’s wanderlust youth. Horatio Nelson Jackson did it in 1903. Adolescents with a few bucks in the glove compartment, responsibility in the rearview mirror and a makeshift sign reading "California or Bust" merely began doing it a few decades later. Otherwise, their stories merge as nicely as an entrance ramp with the interstate. There isn’t a contrast to be found. Read More