Hut Next to Wilderness
Set in China’s ancient T’ang Dynasty,
Gerald Stern’s “Ancient Chinese Egg”
poem says “a hut is a hut be it this or that.”
I have like feelings about our old cabin
in the Adirondack Mountains, which our
father christened “Mateskared” to honor
we four kids by combining first syllables
of our names — Mat, Esther, Karen, and
Edward — a strategy he garnered from
Schaefers’ camp “Cragorehol” that used
first syllables of three nearby mountains.
Having examined our father’s writings
about wilderness, I now wonder if he ever
repented of anthropomorphizing our hut
that now rests just across our dirt access
road from the New York State-designated
Siamese Ponds Wilderness Area. It was
formerly simply park lands that hosted
all our past family, and then later sibling
camping and fishing trips — “Excursions,”
Thoreau might have called them — with
what was, even then, their wild character.
The history of achieving the 1964 Wilderness Act in the U.S. Congress is commonly seen as an eight-year legislative struggle. The first wilderness bills were introduced in Congress in 1956 — in the House of Representatives by John P. Saylor of Pennsylvania and in the Senate by Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota.