A Little About the Camp at Little Moose Lake

Looking-out for the Little Moose

So, we drive all the way to the mid-Upstate NY with two dogs mainly to pick up a 100 year old Caribou head but that’s not the whole story. What is a nice girl from Graaaand Rapids doing in the Adirondacks, and inviting people such as us to visit? Let me give you a brief history.

Ann and I moved to NYC in 1979 after graduating from the U of M (I did live in LA for half a year then I graduated, I changed my mind about locations, she graduated and we went). We lived on the upper East Side in a nice “garden” apartment, actually I lived there twice. After I met Michael there and moved out, about ’84, Ann met and married Milo Williams in ’89. He was a descendant of one of the founders of Sherwin-Williams, which was started by Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams in 1866. The Adirondeck League Club was founded as a hunting and fishing camp and became a get-away for many. I don’t know when the venerable Williams clan built their “camp” at the ALC but I think it was right around then.

I was at Ann and Milo’s wedding in 1989 at the “boathouse” of the “Summer Lodge” at the ALC. I was shot in the heart by the rustic beauty of the “camp”, the lodge and the 50,000+ acres of American history. If you’ve ever been enchanted by the beauty of an Adirondack chair or the magic of the Adirondack “style”, imagine being surrounded by the real thing. Back when it was founded the privileged families (at first the men only) took trains up to Saratoga (where the tracks stopped) and then barged, boated, horsed and hiked to these elaborate compounds (at first just the lodges) in their victorian versions of L.L.Bean.

The architecture is mainly brown with green highlights, wooden and timbered. The furniture is twiggy, rustic, Stickley, Mission, with a smattering of refined period but not purist. The people are upper crusty and very nice and extremely friendly. What’s a Polish boy from Motown, HIS husband and their Non-hunting-hunting dogs doing at a place like this? They’re guests, just visiting, and extremely lucky.

Back to the story. Milo and his siblings inherit the camp, and the dues. Life and League revelry continue, Ann and Milo have a child, buy their own smaller house at the Club. Milo suddenly dies. Morgan, Ann’s son, inherits property, Ann gets the membership, and the dues. Years later, Ann and Morgan are fixtures at the League. This year, Ann & Son decide to sell property, finance Morgan’s college, store a lot of the furniture, boats and accumulated hunting trophies, leave the Caribou to us, and keep the Club membership, all for now.

What will the future bring to our friends, to the property and it’s artifacts, indeed to the bucolic environment? Can we ever know the future?

I do know that we were very fortunate to be able to visit that long weekend in August, to have such friends, to meet such people, to be able to experience those places.

The Caribou? An amazing souvenir

- - - David

Coming soon: Camping it up