At Hanging Spear Falls
It's the summer of 1946. Howard Zahniser has just been named executive secretary of the Wilderness Society and is attending a conference in New York City at which Paul Schaefer is speaking. Schaefer so forcefully makes his case about the threat posed by dam-building in the Adirondacks that Zahniser wants to visit the Adirondacks for a first-hand look.
Paul Schaefer took this photo of Howard Zahniser at Hanging Spear Falls on August 9, 1946.
Schaefer invites Zahniser to his cabin on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness. On August 8th and 9th, he takes him on a two-day hike through the High Peaks to Hanging Spear Falls, a spectacular 75-foot waterfall that comes at the end of a 600-foot cataract.
In Defending the Wilderness, Schaefer describes Zahniser’s reaction:
"'Zahnie enjoyed the wild splendor of the scene -- the solitude, the remoteness, the roar of the water, the jumble of cliffs clothed by ferns and mosses and with evergreens clinging to narrow ledges and crannies in the rocks. It was not merely the beauty that won his heart and mind; it was how the place sparked all of his senses and made him feel vividly alive. He felt a sense of awe at nature's power at the falls, a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells of this wild place high in the mountains."
A REALIZATION
When Zahniser returned to his office in Washington, he saw his role at the Wilderness Society differently. His biographer, Mark Harvey tells us in Wilderness Forever that he came to the realization that he would have to step up his effort to save the wilderness for others -- to ensure that places like Hanging Spear Falls would always be there to be enjoyed by future generations.
Zahniser decided he had to think bigger. He had to find a way to achieve in federal legislation what New York had achieved in creating the Adirondack Park and declaring its Forest Preserve forever wild.
Zahniser came to another realization: He wanted his own place in the Adirondacks. A few weeks after his visit, he bought a cabin just 200 yards from Schaefer's on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness.
Over the next 18 years, until Zahniser’s death in 1964 a few weeks before Congress passed the Wilderness Act, he and Schaefer would meet often on Zahniser's front porch, which had the better view of Crane Mountain.
SCHAEFER’S ‘WILDERNESS COMPANION’
Schaefer later wrote this about the man with whom he became the closest of friends:
”Located at the end of the road, overlooking Crane Mountain and the east central Adirondacks, [the cabin] was a haven for Zahnie and his family, which he came to as frequently as possible, to rest from exhausting forays to Washington. Here he could dream a little and plan new strategies for the protection of wilderness.”
Schaefer dedicated Defending the Wilderness to Zahniser’s memory, describing him as his “inimitable friend and wilderness companion, who incorporated the ‘forever wild’ covenant of the New York State Forest Preserve in the National Preservation Act of 1964, of which he was the author.”
Schaefer also dedicated his book to John Apperson, whose “vision, courage, and indefatigable actions on behalf of the New York State Forest Preserve in the Adirondack and Catskill mountains inspired all who knew him.”
In this collaboration, we’ll tell their stories and celebrate the land they’ve left us.
Zahniser bought this cabin on the edge of the Siamese Ponds Wilderness shortly after his hike through the High Peaks and visit to Hanging Spear Falls.
Zahniser’s cabin was just 200 yards up Edwards Hill Road from Schaefer’s, above. Both are in what Schaefer called “cabin country.”
