The word Adirondack comes from the Mohawk language. It means “eater of trees,” and was likely used in reference to their neighbors, the Algonquins, who were known to eat tree bark in harsh winters. Atirǫ́·taks was the Mohawks saying, “You guys are so bad at hunting you have to eat trees, lol.”
But, considering the innumerable varieties of fruits, nuts, seeds, saps, barks, pulps, leaves and more that come from trees, providing nourishment to untold numbers of animal species, including humans, including fish (driftwood washed to sea is an important source of shelter and food for oceanic marine life), not to mention pollen- and nectar-rich blossoms keeping birds, bees and other insects fed, leaf-munching caterpillars, earthworms dining on the understory, grubs in the sapwood, woodpeckers pecking out the grubs… we could continue with this theme all day.
The point is, aren’t we all eaters of trees?
Another theory says the Mohawk’s used their word atirǫ́·taks for the heavily forested region of northern New York in response to the intense logging undertaken by white settlers to the area starting in the late 1700’s. That may be an old conservationist’s tale, but the connection is not merely symbolic, it’s the story of colonization.
Down in the Caribbean, they were importing enslaved Africans to make cane sugar, the major non-human commodity of the Atlantic Slave Trade. Once they cleared off all the usable timber on the islands, they began importing firewood from New England.
If you don’t know about sugar, basically, they put that stuff in everything. When you add the rum, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, rice and other crops carried all over the Atlantic in ships made of New England wood, it’s more than a metaphor when we say the Europeans, the colonists (now Americans), their masters and investors, literally ate the New England forests.
With the country’s expansion after the American Civil War, the raw and rugged Adirondack wilderness was heavily exploited to supply the nation’s lumber demands. Deforestation intensified to such a degree that further destruction would threaten New York’s economy, so in 1894, the state enacted legislation to protect it, designating Adirondack Park, a 6.1 million area of forest, to be “forever kept as wild forest lands.”
Now, after 130 years growing untouched, it sits up there in the top half of the state full of resources, like a big bag of candy, rich and laden like it was when the colonizers first laid eyes on it, ready to be devoured by the commercial and industrial interests always nibbling at its edges.
In 2025, the environmental protection group Protect the Adirondacks! began sounding the alarm. A 36,000-acre area called Whitney Park went up for sale when its owner died unexpectedly, and has attracted the interest of some big developer in Texas. The Protect the Adirondacks! coalition is asking the state to buy the land and declare it a nature preserve.
Photos by Tom Dils, Alex Shutin, Kiya Golara, Ralph Katieb, Travis Wiens, Hunter Masters and Annie Spratt
