Eventually, I grew homesick and returned to the Adirondack Mountains, where I resumed my “career” as a performing musician during the summer tourist season. I moonlighted as a geologic consultant in New Mexico during the winter months, serving as an expert witness in a case involving the same nuclear dump site on which I had written my doctoral dissertation. And I began restoring long-neglected hiking trails in the Lake Placid watershed, as I had done elsewhere in the Adirondacks during my youth.
One day on the Gothics summit, I met a hiker with an ATIS logo on his clothing. He worked for the Adirondack Trail Improvement Society, clearing and maintaining hiking trails in the Ausable Lakes watershed. I had been hiking in the Adirondacks since I was four years old, but I had never known that you can get paid for clearing the trails. I have worked with ATIS ever since, for thirteen years, on a seasonal basis.
On the morning of my interview with ATIS Executive Director Tony Goodwin, I was camped in a lean-to in the pouring rain. I hiked out to the Town Hall at Lake Placid, washed my face and hands, and walked into Tony’s office with my clothes all covered with mud, thus proving I was up to the job.
House musician, title searcher, trail blazer. Yes, I am all of these things. I am also a retired college professor, an erstwhile field geologist, and an election fraud investigator.
As I write these words I am sitting on the mossy banks of Johns Brook, watching the whitewater rapids which flow to the Ausable River, thence to Lake Champlain, and ultimately to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. I hop from rock to boulder to have a closer look as the water rushes by like time itself. Time is endless, but our lives are very short. We are here a little while and then are gone, and nothing but our legacy lives on. I have made my mark in a quest for truth and beauty. All other motivations are unworthy in comparison.
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