Summer is a hugely important season for the wild things out there that don't get to go inside insulated structures with central heat or woodstoves. For the most common July bird along the trail, the red-eyed vireo, which comes up to feed, breed, and skedaddle back to the Amazon River basin where it spends most of the year, this is a time of frenetic hard work, plus a lot of singing and judging singing contests and romance. For trees, which at a superficial glance might look like they're just standing there doing nothing in summer, this is a time of great busy-ness, too. Trees are not only capturing solar energy and using it to make sugars, but they're quietly manufacturing the following year's leaves and flowers and cones. July is a time of almost riotous activity in the woods. Join this walk with Ed to learn more!
Ed Kanze is a naturalist, author, and Adirondack Guide with more than forty years’ experience leading walks in wild places. A former National Park Ranger, he worked at Acadia National Park and Gulf Islands National Seashore, served as Curator of the Trailside Nature Museum in Cross River, New York, taught field ecology for the National Audubon Society, and was senior naturalist at the Teatown Lake Reservation in Ossining, New York. Ed has deep roots in the Adirondacks. His great-great-great-great grandparents Daniel and Hannah Brownell carved a farm out of the woods along the Sacandaga River, ca. 1795.
Ed is the author of many books as well as a longtime nature newspaper columnist, magazine columnist, photographer, lecturer, and videographer. A graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont, Ed is well- traveled in his 6-million-acre Adirondack Mountain backyard and has led international trips to Australia, New Zealand, and Alaska.