Paddling toward a vision
Kris Bratton couldn’t believe she hadn’t known about this place years before. The architect from Highlands, New Jersey, stood on the banks of Sagamore Lake on a crisp late-September morning, marveling at her ability to come tramping up a trail on the western corner of the Blue Ridge Wilderness and snag a bedroom and a hot meal at the former summer home of one of America’s all-time richest families.
Great Camp Sagamore, wildland retreat of the railroad baron Vanderbilts at the turn of the twentieth century, is now a nonprofit lodge open to the public and just a five-hour drive from Bratton’s home. It took her participation in a test trip for the Adirondack Hamlets to Huts trekking initiative to open her eyes to the rustic elegance of a Gilded Age log chalet.
“I didn’t even know this existed,” Bratton said. “It’s shocking I was that naïve when this is basically in my own backyard.”
She meant the lakes, the trails, the lodge: everything. The night before, a nearly full Harvest Moon had risen over the white pines and painted a buttery slash across Sagamore Lake as some of her group sat awed and others jockeyed for position with their cameras.
Bratton is the kind of traveler Hamlets to Huts has in mind as the Saranac Lake-based economicfrom vision to business model by introducing recreationists to things they might not have considered without a little help.
