Vanderwhacker Firetower Hike
The hike to the Vanderwhacker Mountain Fire Tower starts about a mile beyond where Moose Club Road crosses Vanderwhacker Brook, roughly 3.1 miles from NY 28N at Boreas River. The road is not maintained in the winter and can be very soft past Vanderwhacker Brook and Railroad Tracks.
The trail starts out following an ol logging road, that winds through birch, beech, and maple trees, crossing several small streams. There are some small wooden bridges, however this part of the trail can be muddy. Then as you start the first real ascent of trail, where you reach an old long abandoned Fire Observer Cabin and dump. There also is an a historical marker that reminds visitors of the wilderness rangers who once lived on the mountain full-time to safeguard the surrounding valley from forest fires. The trail switches back, the real mountain climb starts.
Over the course of the final mile, hikers must navigate a staircase of exposed tree roots, loose rocks, and large stone slabs that require careful footwork and steady pacing. As the elevation increases, the surrounding hardwood forest transitions into a dense boreal ecosystem dominated by fragrant balsam fir and red spruce. The air grows noticeably cooler, and the physical exertion intensifies, making the occasional flat ledge a welcome spot to pause, catch one’s breath, and glimpse the surrounding valleys through the thickening trees. You are close to the submit, with about a half mile gentle climb to the top.
When you emerge at the base of the tower, there are no views. But the short, relatively recently restored 35-foot tower is just high enough to get you an excellent view of the surrounding country. Outstanding views of the High Peaks are looming to the north, the sprawling Boreas Ponds tract below, and countless rolling green ridges fading into the blue horizon as you look to the rolling wild forest to the south and east.
Frugality as a Life Well-Spent
Is being frugal a good thing? In a hyper-consumerist society that measures personal worth by the size of a mortgage, the shine of a grill, and the constant stream of new deliveries, choosing to live small can feel like a quiet rebellion. At times, it can even bring a wave of intense self-doubt. When everyone around you has advice, and the cultural narrative insists that spending equals success, rejecting the consumer lifestyle can make you feel temporarily impoverished or like you are falling behind.
But true frugality is not about deprivation; it is about alignment. It is the intentional, strategic optimization of resources so that you can pour your time and capital into the things that actually matter. When viewed through the lens of a life lived deliberately, frugality is not just a good thing—it is a foundational framework for freedom, authenticity, and long-term fulfillment.
At its core, frugality requires understanding a concept often used in economic planning: the irreversible commitment of resources. Every dollar spent today on a passing whim is a dollar that cannot grow in an investment account tomorrow. But the equation runs deeper than money. Time is the ultimate finite resource. The hours we spend working to pay for things we do not strictly need are hours permanently bartered away. Frugality recognizes that while we can save money and we can live deeply, nothing in this world is free. Compromises must be made. By cutting back ruthlessly on the cultural “must-haves”—whether that means skipping the television subscription, keeping the thermostat low in the winter, or opting for a public transit and bicycle commute over a daily stop-and-go driving routine—we buy back our future autonomy.
This trade-off becomes increasingly poignant from the perspective of mid-40s adulthood. Standing roughly a decade and a half from retirement, the horizon comes into sharper focus. At this stage of life, the strategic accumulation of assets via regular, disciplined investments behaves like a quiet engine running in the background. Frugality allows for the maximization of these contributions, shifting focus away from temporary status symbols and toward long-term security. The goal changes from owning the biggest house on the block to building a bulletproof foundation for the next chapter of life.
Furthermore, a frugal mindset fosters a deep appreciation for utility, simplicity, and authenticity. It manifests in buying high-quality, durable goods built for the long haul rather than flashier alternatives laden with excessive, fragile technology. There is a distinct satisfaction in items that are utilitarian and straightforward—things you can maintain yourself, built on reliable platforms that serve a clear purpose. This approach extends seamlessly to personal habits, such as preparing your own food, sourcing clothing with an eye toward durability and environmental impact, and prioritizing self-reliance over outsourced conveniences.
The ultimate reward of a frugal lifestyle is the freedom it gives you to spend generously on your true passions. Frugality means saving where it doesn’t matter so you can invest in what does. It means having the cash reserves to fully fund a major, long-term recreational asset—like a reliable, heavy-duty truck setup for backcountry travel—without a shred of debt. When you choose a simple daily life, you earn the right to hit the open road, leave the crowded campgrounds behind, and spend your weekends completely unplugged in the absolute quiet of the wilderness.
Ultimately, frugality is a highly personal balancing act between saving for tomorrow and living for today. It requires you to look past the criticism of peers and the noisy updates of social media to focus on your own metrics of success. When you align your spending with your core values, the self-doubt fades. You realize you aren’t falling behind at all; you are actually coming out ahead in career stability, financial health, and genuine well-being. By rejecting the empty promises of consumerism, you gain the freedom to fund your specific dreams—whether that is a peaceful retirement, an off-grid homestead, or simply the next long drive down a quiet country road.
Like a landfill in the sky 🏭
A few years back I was driving in the upcountry outside of Otisco Lake in south western Onondaga County, and you could see the bloom of smoke – mostly water vapor and carbon dioxide – rising up from the garbage incinerator in Rock Cut south of Syracuse, burning all manors of things from office paper and food wrappers to smashed up television sets, sofa beds and discarded computers. With a variety of scrubbers and careful temperature control, it’s said to be quite clean if you ignore the plume rising up into the sky.
At times at home, I look at the colorful wrappers, the shinny finishes, the aluminimized packaging designed to both showcase the product (buy me!! at the store), and product the contents of the product. I am well read up on dangers of backyard trash burning, the dioxins and furans, the arsenic, lead and cadium that even just burning common packaging releases into the air and ground, both from original components in the packaging and how the long-chains of chemicals when heated or burned in completely. Yet, I burn most of my garbage. Have for years, despite the law up in wilderness. For the most part, those wrappers get put into the the big white plastic garbage in kitchen, tossed in the back of my truck, taken up to th woods, I pour lighter fluid and sticks on the top, and I quickly have a hot campfire burning, all that plastic rapidly oxidizing and getting the fuel wood soon enough into a good roaring fire.
It’s not to say I don’t sometimes keep out a plastic bottle or some other packaging to watch burn seperately. It is kind of fun sometimes to actually watch as a specific piece of trash goes up into smoke. Notice the properties of smoke, the way it melts and collapses on itself, how it blackens and bursts into flames and breaks down to nothing. Garbage sacks, packed full of weeks of discarded packaging and broken stuff are reduced down to a bit of metal foil, metal debris and other unburnable shit, which I carefully clean out in the morning. Occasionally, a bit of plastic makes it to the morning, and acrid smell strings my nose until I can snuff it out and save it for the next roaring fire – but normally when I burn – most trash quickly breaks down with minimal smell or odor but I rip roaring fire. It’s not like a smoldering burn barrel when I sned my trash up into the landfill in the sky.
But what about the chemicals I’m leaching out into the earth and into the sky? Those invisible toxins I can’t see but are very much still there. On the other hand, man has already made the pollution, burning it gets rid of it, turning it into carbon dioxide and other compounds which to a certain extent is reassorbed back into nature. I do pick up litter and always leave fire pits cleaner then when I found them. And I am not contributing nearly as much to that mighty mound in the Pine Bush. Instead, I’m just sending it up into smoke, creating a mighty nice fire in the process.
Moving forward on a Monday 🚵♀️
The bike made it to the office okay this morning, 🚴♀️ a bit of skipping on the gears and I think I do want to do further adjustments and tighten up the shift cable, but it’s definitely ride-able. ⚙ It was a beautiful and relaxing ride in it, beats the bus or fighting traffic. I should be able to get home on the bike, and stop at the store this evening. Tomorrow though it might be too hot. 😅 I guess it depends on the temperature in the morning, and how well the bike does on the evening commute, I could always put the bike on the bus at the end of the day. Still tired but I think I am starting to feel better.
Big Red is listed and somebody is going to be looking at it tonight. 🚚 It will be nice to have the money if it sells so I can restore my savings account to the place where I want to keep it. I liked Big Red, but I am also ready to get rid of him and move on with the F-350 SuperDuty. Once the SuperDuty was built and gear moved over, Big Red kind of lost his lust. Also have other Facebook messages to go through, and see who else is interested. I think the sub-$5,000 price helps but the rust is not cheap to fix unless you’re a welder. 👩🔧