On the beaten path

The EMTs would give you the shirt off their back; they’ve done that, in fact. They’d go get you gas. They’d change your tire.

But the whole debacle smacks of other things left out of the region: health-care options, business and industry, fair wages, good grocery stores.

Gas costs about $2.48 a gallon.

Some guy came into the store after buying gas one day and complained, saying he’d paid $1.68 per gallon when he left New Jersey.

I’ve learned that insurance companies redline this area because they can’t make money here; it’s too risky. But I can’t prove it, so I can’t write about it.

I’ve learned that one wireless company in a fight to put up cell towers told its competitors not to build the system on the Northway because they would never get a share of the market. But I can’t prove it, so I can’t write about it.

Nobody wants to discuss what hangs on the fringe of poverty. It’s too dirty and conjures up images of ketchup, kerosene and mice.

Decisions like these are made behind vaulted doors with long combinations.

There’s no such thing as open-door profits.

And it’s capitalism’s inner world that drives political sentiment.

People have caved to Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s claim that this is “Appalachia north,” which is wrong by definition.

The Adirondack Mountains are nothing like the Appalachians even if they erupted at the same time. These ridges are made of garnet and iron and anorthacite, the oldest rock on Earth.

There’s no doing business here, we hear. There’s nothing to do.

Standing in Essex County Court on break from covering a trial a few weeks ago, one visitor from elsewhere asked, “What do you do here?”

I laughed, I really did, before pointing out how much history was within eyesight of the court window.

“But you have to slow down enough to see it. You also have to like being outdoors.”

There’s a snowshoe trail on the golf course and good sledding hills, a couple small ski areas within spitting distance.

I’ve had people stop and ask me as I walked through E’town if there’s anywhere to hike.

“Pick a direction, east, south, west or north,” I laughed, incredulous.

Police have told me about people calling from the dark Northway claiming they to be lost, even though they can only go north or south on what is principally a straight line to Canada.

Other people wonder why we’re allowed to live on state land.

We don’t.

Only about half the land inside the blue line is state-owned.

We pay taxes just like you. And the state doesn’t pay the same as we do in taxes, either, I might add.

The people were here before the state land and before the Adirondack Park Agency.

The Adirondack Park doesn’t have gates, it doesn’t have a bunch of fake rides and it doesn’t have lights.

It costs something to get in, though.

It costs a lack of modernity.

So if there’s a way through the catch-22 of rural-keeping for lackluster capitalist desire, I’d like to write about it.

I think it would take a special kind of investor to get it.

They’d get some good neighbors, but nobody cares about that anymore.

I’m pretty sure the answer isn’t in real estate, since a lot of the newly rich need things like cell phones and broadband and wireless.

I asked a developer who owns lots on the other side of Whiteface who he was planning to sell to.

“Don’t they require a remote control for their living room?” I asked.

He didn’t think it was funny and didn’t answer, so I couldn’t write about it.

He did ask me, “Do you ever think they’ll put a cell tower on top of Whiteface?”

I laughed.

“They did that once and had to take it down. It was illegal.”

His response was a deadened, “Oh.”

Maybe we could attach tiny wireless chips to blackflies and at least get service for half the year.

Or maybe we should post the Northway: “Proceed at your own risk.”