ABOUT THE BOOK
Adirondacks Alive is an extraordinary look at a mountain wilderness through the lens of one of the country’s outstanding mountain photographers and in the words of the region’s pre-eminent climbing author.
Photographer Olaf Sööt and writer Don Mellor have teamed up to guide a journey into one of the world’s great places, the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. Adirondack Park is a testament to the foresight of New Yorkers over one-hundred years ago, who set aside from development a park of over 6,000,000 acres, a regional gem within a half day’s drive for millions of Northeastern residents.
Adirondacks Alive is an adventure, not just a gallery. Instead of simply depicting the mountains from afar, the book takes us right into the scenes to feel for ourselves the cold winter wind against bare skin on the exposed summit of Mount Marcy, to dangle a thousand feet above the valley floor on a rock climb up Wallface, to touch with our own hands the bare rock stripped of its forest in the catastrophic landslides on Gothics and Giant Mountain. Olaf’s brilliant photographs and Don’s elegant essays make real to our senses the smells of a forest rebuilding and the sound of water as it trickles from a high mountain pond and grows into the mighty Hudson River. Along the way, Adirondacks Alive tells of history and geology and the marvelous interplay between the natural world and its human residents.
Adirondacks Alive illustrates and it teaches. It celebrates the preservation of the six-million acre Adirondack Park, and it inspires visitors to stop and wonder, to immerse themselves so fully in the physical landscape that they come out at the other end of the trip enlightened and charged with a renewed sense of stewardship.
Come along and join Olaf Sööt and Don Mellor for an adventure in the wild and high places of the Adirondacks.
Hardcover, 12.6” x 9.5” portrait: 176 pages; 120 full color photos; price $35.00 plus handling and shipping.
Don Mellor