Phil Terrie’s latest book cements his reputation as the premier comprehensive historian of the Adirondacks—“comprehensive” because while others are doing equally good work, their focus is more limited. Brad Edmondson, for example, concentrates on the past 65 years, more or less. Terrie covers it all.
And I do mean ALL, making “Wild Forest Lands” (Syracuse University Press, 2025) nearly impossible to categorize. It’s history, selective autobiography, confessional (regarding his disagreements with other environmental historians and even with his own previous writings), philosophy, backcountry bush-whacking, prediction. Terrie himself says of it, “‘It’s really a rather odd book, very much a ‘this is my last word.’ Part close reading of constitutional history, part memoir, part assessment of the snowmobile decision [declaring trails, and tree-cutting for them, unconstitutional] from the New York Court…
