Welcome to the Adirondack Photo Gallery

I enjoy the solitude and beauty of wild places. My love of backpacking started with a desire for adventure, and perhaps a bit of nostalgia for my childhood on the family farm. I quickly discovered that the time I spend in the wilderness restores my spirit like no other form of recreation.

My favorite destinations are those which are remote and seldom visited by other people, including other hikers. I find a small Adirondack lake ideal.

For the first couple of days away from civilization I'm edgy and nervous—I'm used to being busy and having deadline pressures. There is no television, no radio, no cell phone, no traffic, no bustling crowd. The resultant peace is disquieting, but by the third day I start to relax. The day to day "tyranny of the urgent" begins to pale as I focus on God's handiwork. Nature is beautiful, fragile, brutal, and unforgiving. In the wilderness, life is reduced to essentials--the life cycle and the food chain are the core of existence; preparedness for the elements is paramount for survival.

The vastness of natural surroundings dwarfs my daily hassles and headaches. The harsh simplicity of life in nature (the proverbial "basics") and the realization that I'm a very small part of a very large creation helps me put things in proper perspective. This, I've learned, is the key to happiness: rather than trying to "meet my needs" and "find fulfillment," I am reminded just how transitory most of my "problems" really are. In the grand scheme of life, the endless urgent details really don't matter one bit. Or, as a very wise man once said, "what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul?"

As I relax and let go of the daily hassles I carry around like so much excess baggage, I begin to focus on those things which give my life meaning. My family comes immediately to mind, for if anything I do ever makes a difference in this world, it will be the impact I've had on two very special little girls and their mom. Sadly, I tend to lose sight of that when I get caught up in the daily rat race. Time spent in the peaceful solitude of the wilderness restores my focus.