Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 274

My life has been an open book since I started this column in 1986, and this is just another chapter that needs to be put out there. My wife Karen of 60 years was a very private person even though she wore many hats out in the public, licensed beautician, first woman police officer in Inlet, worked in the little gift shop at Hazen’s Cottages, librarian who set up the Inlet Little School House Library, exercise instructor with Cindy Sauer, then the first Women Who Do Firewood with Cindy, Advisor to the Town of Webb High School Cheerleading Squad, Hodel Hardware employee, actress for many plays with the Inlet Community Players, leader of the Inlet Girl Scouts, child care of several working mother’s children after raising her own three children and working at the Old Forge Library for over forty years. As many of you already know she will not be seen in life again as she passed away from this earth on Wednesday August 28 after a brief illness with family and friends at her side. She fought through many life-threatening problems and beat them all but not this one.

We grew up as next-door neighbors in West Milton near Ballston Spa, New York and I proposed to her when I was seven and she was five, but she did not accept. I believe her dog General bit me in the butt that day as I chased her around the house. I took her to her first day of school in the little one room schoolhouse in West Milton when she was only four and she was the only child in her class for all seven years. Then when several little country schools consolidated with Ballston Spa Central School, I gave her the first tour of that new school on Garrett Road. Going back a couple of years while I was at the Malta Avenue School in sixth grade, I would take my lunch down to the Noonan’s Feed Mill just down the street where I would try to catch street pigeons to add to my flock. Bernie Noonan and his brother ran the business, and they would let me put corn inside the big front doors and I would chase the pigeons inside and catch them. Bernie would make paper signs for different things, and he made me one that read Gary Loves Karen, which I gave to her, and she still had that when we got married on December 27, 1963. See, she accepted my proposal that year after I graduated Ranger School and had a job, me 20 and she was 17. Marry the girl next door and you sure know what you are getting. She had our first child Erin in February of 1966, and I got the Forest Ranger job at the interior cabin at West Canada Lakes in August of that year. We flew with all our possessions, our dog, Dog, and kisser our cat, no running water, no refrigeration, no electricity, and a phone when I fixed it. We did have communication by radio through the Pillsbury Fire Tower. She said she was not her grandmother, but she made do. She also now was carrying Michael in her belly. She took a stroll five miles following me down to Spruce Lake one day and not far from the cabin after that. We went back into the cabin the second year a day after the ice was out May 21 now with two children in diapers. We had looked at the new Forest Ranger Headquarters house built at Limekiln Lake during the winter, and she flushed the toilet, flicked a light switch, and said we are damn well going there after a short stay at West Canada. We arrived at Limekiln Lake July 4,1966 where we lived with our family until July 4, 1999. We found a beautiful piece of property eight acres on Limekiln Road in 93 and had a beautiful passive solar home built there much under her design in 98 into 99 by Sean Manzi and called it Eight Acre Wood as we didn’t have one hundred acres like Winney the Pooh Bear. The entrance sign has always been decorated with those characters, again her design. We traveled south many springs during the school break from South Carolina to Florida, two trips to Hawaii and one to the western states which she didn’t like, too many cacti. Her favorite we hit on one trip to Florida was Sanibel Island and we had been going there for a month for the last twenty years until covid struck and then a hurricane nearly wiped the structures and bridge away going to the island three years ago now. She had a bench down by the lighthouse which she would bike to in the morning and read while I was birding and the maintenance people who worked there called it Karen’s bench. There was a big gopher tortoise that lived under the building there which would come out and visit her as she read on her bench. 

We had a great time together just these last few weeks, going to shows at View, the Gala, glass blowing and the National Art Show there, visited the Wild Center’s bird nest, went to the Wanakena Ranger School Reunion, the Old Forge Library Bash, our Daughter Erin was up for a week, the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation fund raiser in Tupper Lake just last Saturday with our Granddaughter and her husband and saved a Loon from Big Moose Lake with a plug in it’s mouth and eye at the house. All these she would call adventures and that they were, now she is planning more for us in heaven.

My Grandson Jake, granddaughters Rachel and Emily went up with me to light the tower on Woodhull Mountain Sunday night, a beautiful sunset after the rain shower passed by. Even had a visitor, first time ever to be there for the lighting and reading of the observers that served there. See ya.