Birches

Taken at the Wild Center in Tupper Lake. It’s the view of the ceiling of the immense lobby, when you walk into the building. There’s a circle of birches reaching up toward the domed ceiling. It’s very striking.

Didn’t the Adirondack Indians eat birch bark or something? Talk about diets that work, :-p. Adirondack means “bark eater” or something like it. It’s said that the native Americans in the area did their best to avoid the rugged and desolate Adirondacks, probably due to the large bears and scarcity of plentiful food. During the winter, when food was pretty slim, the legend goes that some Indians resorted to eating bark. Ouch, that’ll clean out the digestive tract all right…