Chapter Twenty-Five
Exhibits
Like the rest of the Appalachian chain, the Adirondack Mountains are almost inconceivably ancient. The rocks that form them are a billion years old. In a time before there was life on Earth (or at least recognizable life) they reared up higher than the Himalayas, jagged ramparts of rock bare of the simplest algal fuzz. Now, thirteen million human lifespans later, they’ve eroded low and rounded, their highest peaks little more than a mile above sea level.
Home to thousands of lakes large and small, their slopes and crowns (luckily spared the atrocity of mountaintop removal mining that has so devastated the lower Appalachians) are draped with a thick covering of boreal forest. Kin to the taiga that stretches across so much of Russia, this mix of conifers and
