Adirondack Peeks Winter 2023

Grace's house

In Heaven Up-h’isted-ness! , the history of the Adirondack Forty-Sixers and the high peaks of the Adirondacks, Suzanne is quoted: “My new husband displayed great faith in his new wife by disregarding his compass reading and following me down the mountain and back to the Loj. Had we gone his way we would have wound up at Wanika Falls” (p. 329). Many of you know Suzanne as the editor of PEEKS magazine. She held this role with her brother, David Lance, #1801V, from 1985 to 2003. Others recognize her from her role as author of “The History of the Adirondack Forty Sixers,” a chapter in Heaven Up-h’isted-ness!. Kim and I met Suzanne when we interviewed for the editor position for PEEKS , and I had only known what I had read about her. She served as the associate director at the NYS Writers Institute at the University at Albany from 1989 to 2018. Prior to the Writers Institute she was the special projects officer for Toni Morrison in her position as Schweitzer Professor in the Humanities at UAlbany. Suzanne co-edited Bootlegger of the Soul: The Literary Legacy of William Kennedy (2018). She helped to create a digital archive from the thousands of hours of individual recordings documenting Writers Institute visits by more than 2,000 writers and was featured in Albany Times Union article titled "Digging Deep to Digitize: Writers Institute Works to Make Immense Archive Publicly Accessible." The instant comradery between 46ers kicks in and soon we are sitting on the screened-in side porch off the living room, looking out over Schroon Lake from its eastern

side. The long ridge of Hoffman Mountain is directly across the lake and in the distance to the north, the Dix Range. Suzanne points out where Grace and Ed’s camp was located further down the property toward the lake’s edge. The footprint of the camp is still there; however, it has been refurbished by a new owner. Suzanne shows Kim and me a few pictures of the original Boulders Camp with its red cedar logs and wide, spacious, wraparound roofed porch. Ed and Grace bought the camp in 1954. Ed passed in 1966 at 62, three days before his official retirement from the Department of Public Works, where he was an electrical engineer for the canal system. Today, I’m interested in finding out what motivated Suzanne to volunteer for 18 years as the PEEKS editor, not to mention her participation in trail maintenance projects that earned her a Conservation Service Award for accumulating over 546 hours of volunteer service. Let it be noted that PEEKS editor’s volunteer hours are exempt from this award. The point is: 18 years is a long time and 546 hours is a lot of volunteering. How did she maintain the passion over the years while working a full-time job? * * * SR (Sherry Roulston): You climbed your first high peak when you were eight years old. What mountain was it and what do you remember from that hike? SL (Suzanne Lance): It was Cascade during the summer of 1962. It was a family outing with my mom, dad, and two

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