ADKX-tra Credit
ADKX-tra Credit
All About Anne: Meet the Woodswoman
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Have you heard of Anne LaBastille? She was an incredible Adirondack woman who was a certified Adirondack Guide, a scientist, the first woman commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA), and lived off grid in a cabin. This episode of ADK-Xtra Credit introduces Anne, and tells the story of how she built her home with the help of her friends. Anne’s cabin is now in our Life in The Adirondacks exhibit.
All About Anne: Meet the Woodswoman
Introductory Segment
Picture this: You are looking for a fresh start. Your whole life is falling apart, and you only have a few months to find a place to start over. What would you do?
Well, that’s exactly what happened to Anne LaBastille. She had been living and working at the Adirondack resort her husband owned for several years when they decided to go their separate ways. This meant that she was losing her husband, her job, and her home all at once! Most people probably would have stayed with friends or family while they got back on their feet, but not Anne.
TRANSITION - ADKX Podcast Intro - Ready to earn some extra credit? You are listening to ADKX-tra Credit, a podcast for students about the history of the Adirondack Mountains and the people that have lived, worked, and played here. The Adirondack Experience, the Museum on Blue Mountain Lake, is located in the heart of the Adirondack Park of New York State.
CONTENT
Anne LaBastille was one of the most famous Adirondack women, she wrote several books about her life and experiences living in a tiny cabin on Black Bear Lake, was a certified ADK guide, the second woman commissioner of the Adirondack Park Agency, or APA, a conservationist, and an expert Woodswoman.
Anne grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey, and her first experience in the Adirondacks came when she was 18 years old, working a summer job at a resort in a town she calls by the nickname “Lake Serene” to protect her privacy. She uses nicknames like this alot.
TRANSITION - another voice
My very first glimpse over the folds of the Adirondack wilderness came on a June day when I stepped down to the shore of Lake Serene. Hill after hill lapped away in lightening shades of blue-green. The clear lake was ringed with dense forest, summer camps, and a few small hotels. I had never seen anything so beautiful or primitive in my travels. The live scene was better than any nature poem or photo I’d admired. Bemused, I intuitively realized that I had found what I’d longed for all my life. I had come, like hundreds of other young, needy college students, to work at an Adirondack summer resort, saving salary and tips for tuition and books.
For Anne, it was love at first sight. The Adirondacks seemed made just for her, the mountains ready and waiting for her to venture out into the wilderness. The waterways begged to be swam in, and the animals made quiet and interesting neighbors.
Fast forward several years, and Anne has less than two months to find a place where she could make a fresh start. She had always wanted to live in a cabin in the woods. A quiet place where she could enjoy the outdoors, have plenty of privacy, and write.
Anne wasn’t interested in any old cabin in any old Adirondack town though. Oh no, she wanted to be far away from any human neighbors, and she wanted to build her new home herself.
Like many Adirondackers, Anne had some trouble finding the perfect place to live. Most of the options were super expensive, or too close to neighbors and towns for Anne.
But then, Anne got lucky.
She happened to hear about an estate on what she calls “Black Bear Lake” (another nickname) that was being sold because the owner had recently passed away. Black Bear Lake was extremely remote, you could drive to the lake, but once you got there you had to travel to the various camps and homes by boat, because the road did not go all the way around the lake! Anne liked the sound of that.
She also liked the sound of an “Off Grid” lifestyle. You see, there were no power or phone lines on the property, so Anne would not have access to electricity or phone calls. Plus, she could afford this property!
So Anne made the long trek to the site of her future home, and started planning.
By evening, I had a firm idea of where a cabin could be located and how it might be built. It must stand far enough from the lake to leave a fringe of firs for privacy and beauty. The balsams would make fragile black silhouettes against the stained-glass sunset of Adirondack skies. Yet the cabin must be close enough to run down for a dip and see beaver swim by. Most important, the building would have to be put upon one special knoll where no large trees grew. Even though hundreds of board feet of lumber and dozens of stout logs lay locked in these behemoth trees, I vowed to never cut a single giant for my home or for my firewood, unless it was absolutely necessary. The trees and I would be companions and coexist upon the land. At that moment I also vowed never to commit an act which might pollute the lakes lapping on the tract. The cabin should face south and west in order to have the best exposure to sun (for warmth and brightness) and wind (for blowing away insects). My home would need a steep cathedral roof from which the heavy snows would slide easily. And, most critical, it had to be small enough to build myself.
Two days later Anne had to make her way to New York City to sign the paperwork to purchase her new home. She was so excited she didn’t really bother to read the papers she was signing, and rushed back to the glorious Adirondack mountains the very same day.
Because Anne had decided she was not going to cut down any trees on her property, she was going to have to find logs for her cabin elsewhere. This would be tricky, since she didn’t have a lot of money, and the only way to get things to her new home was by boat. Plus, there was no electricity on her land! So she would have to use portable generators if she needed power to help build her cabin.
So Anne visited a local lumber yard, luckily, they had just the thing. A large pile of spruce logs, 16 feet long, at least a foot in diameter, and weighing around 500 pounds each, would soon become her cabin. Anne paid $600 for 45 of these massive logs, including the cost of shipping them to the edge of the lake. That would be about $6,000 in today's money. That's a pretty hefty sum! But a pretty cheap house!
But there was still a lot of work to do. Pretty soon a truck arrived at Black Bear Lake carrying all 45 of Anne’s logs. The truck dumped them into the lake and left Anne to bring them to her property.
In two trips, Anne towed her future home 1.5 miles down the lake behind her tiny 10 horsepower motor boat, going painfully slow to keep from crashing the logs into the shore, running aground, or overheating her boat's engine.
Anne was a resourceful woman, but she was no carpenter, and handling those logs alone would have been nearly impossible. So she hired two local brothers to help her build her cabin. The brothers coached her on the more technical matters, and kept her from biting off more than she could chew. It took Anne and her two helpers all of the month of May to build her new home, and she spent the month of June adding the finishing touches and moving in her furniture, books, clothes, and supplies.
Remember those papers Anne signed when she bought her land? Remember how she was so excited she didn’t really read them? Well it turned out that was a big mistake. In August a man came to Anne’s house and told her she had built her cabin 12 feet too close to the lake! Apparently, those papers said all buildings must be at least 50 feet away from the lake shore, which meant Anne’s new home would be torn down, unless she could find a way to move it further from the lake.
What on earth was she supposed to do?! How can you move a cabin?! Even though Anne’s cabin was tiny, it weighed 14 tonnes! That's about the same weight as 30 moose! And remember, no heavy machinery could get to it. That means no backhoe, no crane, not even a pickup truck.
Luckily, Anne had good friends with time to spare, and a lot of ingenuity. Her friends made a plan to move the cabin by sliding it on smooth logs. Yes, it would be hard work, but they could do it!
It took one whole day to jack up the building and lift it off its foundation.
The next day was spent getting the logs in place for the slide.
The day after that they set up all the equipment, greased the logs, and prepared to move the cabin.
The day after THAT they secured the cabin walls and roof extra tight so they wouldn't shift and be damaged in the move.
And then finally, on the fifth day, they moved the cabin. It took 8 hours to slide the cabin across the logs using only people power. Anne sat inside, anxiously waiting for something terrible to happen, while her 3 good friends moved her whole home 12 ½ feet away from the lake.
But nothing terrible happened! The cabin survived the move, and the new location created the opportunity to build a little guest room and a place for a bathtub! Everything worked out ok in the end, and Anne spent many years living happily in her tiny cabin on Black Bear Lake.
Thank goodness no one ever had to move Anne’s cabin again right? WRONG! Guess where Anne’s cabin is now!
Anne LaBastille’s cabin is here! At the Adirondack Experience! When Anne passed away in 2011, she hoped her cabin could become a retreat for writers. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible, so the executor of her estate donated the entire cabin to the Adirondack Experience. A few years later many of our friends here at the museum worked together and brought the whole thing to our Life in The Adirondacks exhibit.
Isn’t that incredible?! I think it's amazing.
So if you were listening and thinking to yourself how much you wished you could see Anne’s cabin for yourself, you can! And I have to admit, it's even cooler in person than it sounds.
If you want to learn more about Anne LaBastille and how she built her cabin, check out her book Woodswoman. That's where the excerpts for today's episode came from.
Special thanks to Penny, for helping us tell Anne's story.
TRANSITION - ADKX Podcast conclusion - Thank you for joining us for an episode of ADKX-tra Credit. This podcast is brought to you by Adirondack Experience, the museum on Blue Mountain Lake. Our mission is to expand understanding of Adirondack history and the relationship between people and the Adirondack wilderness, fostering informed choices for the future. If you want to learn more fun Adirondack history visit our website theadkx.org