Stony Pond-A Special Place

A Beaver Pond along the trail

On my way down the northway to visit family this week I took a side trip to visit my favorite trail in the Adirondacks. While there are many Stony Ponds, the one that I'm most fond of is located off of 28N between Newcomb and Minerva. To me it is the perfect trail, only 2 miles in length, easy up and down grades, with a well kept lean-to for camping out. The trail and the pond are very scenic, there are a series of beaver meadows and cascading streams to stop at along the way, and the pond itself has a pretty outlet with beaver dams that can be crossed for exploration if one is sure footed. This may not sound like an incredibly unique trail for the Adirondacks, as there are certainly numerous ponds and beaver meadows throughout the park, but this little pond has a special place in my heart, because I think that it's where my love for the Adirondacks was born.

The first time I set eyes upon Stony Pond I was 16, and it was my first summer with a driver's license and car. My friend Liz and I were on a camping trip with her parents at nearby Harris Lake, and decided to take off for the day and do some exploring on our own. This was by far not my first hike in the Adirondacks, as I was fortunate enough to have adventurous parents who took us on at least two camping trips a year since we were little kids, and dragged on us numerous hikes to waterfalls and mountaintops. I'm quite certain that I was dragged kicking and screaming on some of those hikes, especially when I became a teenage girl and didn't want anyone telling me what to do. I would fight back by complaining as much as possible on our hikes, and bless my parents for putting up with it.The culmination of this was when my parents dragged me up Snowy Mtn., the tallest mountain we ever hiked, and when I got to the top I remember making a remark the along the lines of "we climbed all this way just to look at a bunch of green hills?" at the top. I look back now and wonder, who was that person? Because deep down I knew that I loved nature and everything in it, but I guess as a teenager I rebelled against everything my parents wanted me to do, and hiking was one of them.

Stony Pond from the outlet.

Having a car changed everything because it granted me freedom to do what I want when I wanted. And it didn't take me long to realize that one of the things I still wanted to do was hiking. So we picked the Sotny Pond trail off the map of nearby hikes as the first place to explore on our own. I remember being struck with awe the first time I walked past a beaver dam about halfway up the trail to Stony Pond, where the beavers had built a dam so high that the only way to cross was to walk below it, granting you an eye-level view of this gorgeous pond that the beavers had created. Seeing a pond from below was something I had never experienced, and I still don't think I've seen a dam quite like it. A similar sense of awe arose when we finally reached the pond, when I was overcome with the sense of being in true wilderness. Back then two miles from a road felt like wilderness compared to the hustle and bustle of living in suburbia, and I relished the feeling of being away from all that. I remember finding the logbook in the lean-to and reading the notes left by other people, and someday hope to find that logbook and see what I wrote that day.

It's hard to explain what I felt that day, or why Stony Pond became such an important place. Perhaps it was the combination of freedom and inner peace that the pond represented. I returned there the following summer with more friends, and I have fond memories of catching frogs, toasting marshmallows, and carving our names in the lean-to (which have sense faded). The summer before I left for college I spent every day off in the mountains, canoeing, hiking, and camping whenever possible. When I left for college I posted pictures of the Adirondacks on my dorm room wall, and longed to get back to them. Little did I know that years later I would leave everything behind and finally move to those mountains.

So my trip to Stony Pond yesterday was a pilgrimage of sort, as I try to get there once a year to reground myself at the place that may have influenced my life more than any other. Each time I walk the trail it's different, as seasons change and the beavers are always at work. The water levels at the dam have dropped, so the trail past the beaver dam now walks above the dam rather than below it. The area around the lean-to now has boats to explore the pond, and supplies for campers. Monday night was the coldest night we've had this fall, leaving a thin layer of ice on the pond and coating some of the plants with crystals of frost. The beaver meadows looked more beautiful than ever with the frost-covered grasses and the

patterns that they made in the ice. The same walk today would be completely different, as 8 inches of snow fell in Newcomb the next day and the entire pond is now a blanket of snow. I've been to this pond in all four seasons, and even have a framed photo of the pond from each one that I put together years ago. My favorite season is summer, when a pair of loons calls from the pond and the woods are lush with ferns and wildflowers. But no matter what time of year I visit, that same feeling of freedom and inner peace still overtakes me when I sit by the shore of Stony Pond. Maybe it's the memories the pond invokes more than the pond itself that strikes me, but I still recommend it as one of the best day hikes in the Adirondacks.