Tupper Lake, New York //
Deep in the heart of the Adirondacks lies Follensby Pond, a shimmering expanse of cold, deep water surrounded by 14,600 acres of interlinked forest, streams, wetlands and rare silver maple floodplains that has remained relatively untouched for more than 100 years. Situated in Haudenosaunee and Abenaki homelands, Follensby — which is actually a lake the size of Central Park — was the site of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s ‘Philosophers’ Camp’ in 1858, which popularized a spiritual connection to nature and wilderness preservation philosophy, a new concept and perspective for most Europeans.
In 2024, The Nature Conservancy — which purchased the land from a private owner in 2008 — sold two conservation easements to the state of New York, opening a small part of the parcel to recreation and designating the rest of it as a freshwater research preserve with managed public access for the first time. The easement is also the first in New York history to provide for exclusively Indigenous access to the land for the harvesting of plants and certain tree species, but also seeking to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into the scientific understanding of the preserve.
photographed for The Nature Conservancy
