Commemorating Cabin Country

A Conversation with Kirstin Seleen

By May Braaten, Skidmore ‘24

As a natural resources planner for the Department of Environmental Conservation, Kirstin Seleen is responsible for managing a quarter-million acres of state Forest Preserve, much of which is in western Warren County, the upper Hudson River area we call the First Wilderness Corridor.

*You may view the entire live stream of our Civic Conversation with Kirstin Seleen on our* ***YouTube channel.***

This is the land Paul Schaefer called “cabin country,” a “tiny east-central part of the historic Adirondack mountain region” located on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness and Wilcox Lake Wild Forest.

“There are mountaintops jeweled with tiny lakes,” Schaefer writes in Adirondack Cabin Country, the memoir he published three years before his death in 1996. “There are cataracts seldom seen; there are trackless swamps and regions without trails except those made by the denizens of the forest.”

It's the place where Schaefer and Howard Zahniser owned cabins on Edwards Hill Road. In their day, the ardent conservationist duo made extraordinary contributions to the Adirondacks and the whole of New York State. In their legislative work, the impact of Article 14 rippled outward and served as a legal framework for basic non-extractive conservation law at a national—even global—scale. Still, the story of the minds behind the famous “forever wild” clause remains largely in the shadows.

Seleen agrees that Schaefer and Zahniser are seldom mentioned in the same breath as Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, but they should be.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We share a few of her favorite photos.

As a natural resources planner, what’s your general role within the DEC? How long have you been doing it?

We’re responsible for the management of the Forest Preserve, which is divided into multiple management units. The units that I manage are Siamese Ponds Wilderness and Wilcox Lake Wild Forest. You might ask, well, what does “managing” encompass here? There’s broad-scale planning, looking at the whole area at large—and Siamese is 115,000 acres and Wilcox is 125,000 acres, almost a quarter of a million acres combined, so it is quite a large area.

Recreational infrastructure requires some upfront planning before they’re out on the ground. This is handled in the unit management planning process, one of my bigger responsibilities. The different areas of the park are in different states of that unit management planning process. Some units have finalized plans, like Siamese, whose plan has been implemented for over 15 years. Others don’t yet, like Wilcox, whose plan has been in the draft state for more than 15 years.

I’ve been doing this for seven years, working out of the Warrensburg DEC office. I work mostly with volunteers, coworkers in my office and throughout DEC, as well as other state agency land managers and local governments. Everything at that broad planning level is interdisciplinary. We’ll have fish biologists, forest rangers, historians, ordinary citizens, wildlife folks, etc., working together from the planning to the project level.

When we implement those plans, I coordinate all the different resources and approvals needed to get projects completed. How would you describe your childhood?

Did you have any “aha” moments that made you decide you wanted a career in open space or wilderness preservation?

I always ask this question when we’re hiring stewards and interns. It’s a good one. I’m always curious how people come to careers in the outdoors, especially because I didn’t even know it was an option when I was growing up. I spent a lot of time outdoors, as a lot of families do, camping and just playing in the woods, but I thought I wanted to be a doctor. It wasn’t until my second year of college that I changed my mind and transferred to SUNY Environmental Science and Forestry.

I had a great professor who gave me my first opportunity: a co-op position with the U.S. Forest Service. That eventually blossomed into a landscape ecologist position with the Forest Service in Michigan. Wanting to move back to New York, I took a job with the Nature Conservancy, doing a lot of broad-scale eco-regional planning and land protection. And then I came to DEC, my current position, which is fantastic, working in the Forest Preserve. If I had to describe the evolution of my career, I'd say it's been a narrowing down of conservation interests.

I initially focused on multiple-use land management, including extractive uses like timber. Over the years, I've shifted more toward conservation and areas that are protected in perpetuity. Unmanaged reference ecosystems help us measure how our activities and impacts compare to those that are managed. Having these protected reference areas enables us to learn how ecosystems function over time.

How would you describe this quarter-million acre of forest that you manage? Can you take us through its history, current uses, and challenges?

*A favorite photo of Tenant Creek Falls*

Siamese and Wilcox are pretty big units compared to many others within the Forest Preserve. The Zahniser and Schaefer cabins are nestled against Siamese, looking out at Wilcox. I am very moved when I think about how these lands were a big part of the inspiration for wilderness protection.

This area has some of the first parcels of the Forest Preserve, and there are some notable cultural locations, such as old building foundations and wells. You can still see the remains of several important tanneries.

Most Adirondack forests have been harvested for timber in some way. But many of the Siamese and Wilcox forests have recovered incredibly well because they’ve had so long to heal. Many of those older parcels that were only minimally entered or logged, function as “old growth” today. In terms of how people use the area, they are hiking, biking, skiing, backpacking, camping, paddling and hunting, and fishing.

Regarding threats or challenges to our management of the Forest Preserve, climate change is a big concern, especially the broad-scale impacts that are beyond any one management agency or state’s control. Like acid rain or atmospheric deposition, the source of the threat to ecosystem health requires multi-state, multi-national action. We’re seeing those effects already in species diversity and movement. Additionally, Invasive species are a concern and have the ability to change ecosystems in a short period

There’s also a worry about unsustainable human use. We have to be pragmatic about how we’re using the Forest Preserve recreationally. The past couple of years have seen significant spikes in use levels at Thirteenth Lake, Hadley Mountain, Crane Mountain, and Otter Falls.

Given the significance of the Zahniser and Schaefer cabins, how do you think the DEC can best commemorate the place they occupy in the annals of wilderness preservation?

*Howard Zahniser, architect of the Wilderness Act of 1964, bought this cabin on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness at Paul Schaefer’s urging in 1946.*

I’d like to see many improvements, such as a parking area with interpretive information, or a kiosk that describes the significance of what happened there. We could include photos and excerpts of the Wilderness Act and perhaps drafts of the act developed at the cabin.

I’d like to develop some trail connections that would link from the end of the road on Edwards Hill, which is state land, all the way to the top of Gore Mountain, where the Schaefer Trail begins. I want to make it a continuous experience, where we can go by the old hunting camp along Diamond Brook and highlight some spots of significance. It would also bring you right into North Creek, where there are all kinds of history. There are many possibilities there. It's exciting.

The process requires an amendment to the unit management plan. We work through a public planning process with many stakeholders to develop the amendment. We submit a proposal and make a presentation. The Adirondack Park Agency then determines whether or not it’s consistent with the Park master plan. Once that's finalized, we start the work planning process, which is more detailed, for the projects identified in the amendment. For example, if we opt to tackle the parking lot first, we develop a work plan for that, send it through our regional approval process and then construct the lot. We identify our projects and tackle each one by one.

I’ve seen an amendment happen within a year. I’ve also seen amendments have to wait. In the latter case, there’s usually a reason, some issue that needs to be worked out, or communications that need to happen.

Nevertheless, the waiting time is less than what's required in getting the original unit management plan finalized and approved. Amendments are usually much shorter in time frame.

How will you collect the data needed to plan these projects? Will you be using trail counters, or will you be doing counts from the logbooks?

A lot of different methods are being discussed. They’re coming up with different approaches as we speak. We currently use trail counters strategically. While we keep track of our register book entries, there are issues with people not signing in. We can have people in parking lots, counting people and cars too.

Strava heatmaps provide a sense of use levels. Along those lines, I would love to figure out a way to count mobile phones in any given area.

There's no single answer. There are many different methods. A protocol or tool that can consistently combine all of this data would be helpful. This is an area of inquiry academically and has spurred the creation of a whole new discipline of study – recreation ecology. More is being learned all the time and hopefully, we will be able to tap into that reservoir of knowledge for use in the Forest Preserve.

How would you describe New York’s place nationally in the history of wilderness conservation?

*Eleventh Mountain figures prominently in Paul Schaefer’s* ***Adirondack Cabin Country****. He renamed it “Cascade Mountain” because “Eleventh Mountain” was so non-descriptive.*

Around the turn of the century, there was a big movement, from which came the recognition that what we do on the land has impacted and there is value in conserving and protecting it. This was exhibited in many different geographies and different disciplines, but there wasn't really crystallization until there was some tangible action. Here I speak of the significant change that occurred when activists went from thinking and talking about conservation to putting it into law. That distinction was really what Article 14 did. And in doing so, it became a model for protecting lands in perpetuity.

Ed Zahniser told me his father had looked around and asked, "Where is the best example of protections that exist today?” At the time, some spaces had been set aside administratively by a governor or by a previous president. However, those actions had been administratively designated. As a constitutional amendment, Howard Zahniser saw Article 14 as having more staying power. That's why it was chosen as the model of the best example, not only for the federal Wilderness Act but around the world.

The legal standard for basic protections against extractive uses, and the recognition that society benefits by protecting functioning natural ecosystems, was born right here.

Given the significance of their contributions and achievements, John Apperson, the Schaefers, and Zahniser should be mentioned in the same breath as Thoreau, Muir, and Leopold.

Is New York’s distinguished history in wilderness something you think a lot about in your day-to-day work, especially when your boots are muddy?

Absolutely. The genius in this great experiment is the gradient of use levels incorporated in the classifications that the APA established in the 70s. They enable the public to enjoy the park in different ways, thereby allowing for more access in some places and limited access in others. It's zoning for forest ecosystems.

It's great because it reduces conflict. You can say, "You may ride your bike here, here, and here, but we're going to prohibit them in this area and limit them here."

Why don't more Americans know this story?

I suspect it's because the efforts that led to Article 14, as well as what came after, were internal, self-contained state processes. There wasn't much national park or national forest land here in New York, so there's not much federal agency presence here. We’ve never had those high-profile federal partners sitting around at the table. This was an internal New York audience and it stayed relatively contained within our borders.