No Man’s Land: Tupper Lake

Darlenne Cazarin Berrios & Callie Richards
September 8, 2023

Hey Siri, play…wait a minute. “Crank the radio up! We can’t hear it in the back!” shouts one of us among the excited chatter of twelve Arcadians tightly packed in a rickety St. Lawrence University van. (Imagine a sleeping bag stuffed into a compression sack; that would be us.)

We were whipping by the Adirondack scenery at speeds that none of us had experienced in a few weeks (canoes don’t go as fast as cars). “If you look to your left,” announced one of our assistant directors, Nate Trachte. “You’ll see our previous paddle route, Dead Creek!”

A few weeks earlier, Dead Creek, a labyrinth of a route, proved to be one of the most difficult parts of the paddle trip that begin our semester, providing twists, brambles, false paths, and beaver dams all throughout. Not only was it hard to navigate, it was the last challenge before our final destination and the dream of many days: Arcadia. Now, while riding in a van toward Tupper Lake, as a response to our previous hardships, we all turn to our left as we whiz by the river with our fists tight and middle fingers erected in the air. This little instance provides a peek into our group’s sense of community as all throughout the inaugural paddle trip we shared joys, jokes, frustrations, judgment calls, and last but not least, so many appreciations. Over the past few weeks, as we’ve learned and adapted to one another’s habits, we’ve come to unknowingly realize that when one person is “storming,” we all “storm.” Once our joking frustrations pass, we begin to marvel at how hours of canoeing and wading through stinking muck have turned into minutes in the car. As we enter Tupper Lake (“The epicenter of the world,” jokes fellow Arcadian Berit Brecke), our excitement increases for small-town shopping.

Now you may be wondering why these twelve Arcadians were compressed in a sweltering van (and if you weren’t, you must be now). It was our first town run, a bi-weekly event that includes stops at Kinney’s, the Tupper Lake Public Library, and an iconic, high-end fashion store, Thrifty Nifty. Town offers us so much, especially considering our way of living at Arcadia. At the public library, we find choices in music (outside of CDs) and information at our fingertips. Snacks that would be considered rare commodities (e.g., Nutella) at our home in the woods, are quickly bought and labeled with individuals’ names to be stashed away in the “mine” drawer located in our kitchen. One of the best sights in the public library has to be their porcelain sculpture, luminated beneath soft lights that bounce off grout-lined tiles. With its lid and handle that flushes running water to its bowl, this elaborate mechanism can only be a real, flushing toilet. In all seriousness, these are common daily items that we never thought we’d miss until we suddenly didn’t have them anymore.

The way that Arcadian life is set up every year encourages and pushes the students on the Adirondack Semester to live a more materialistically simple life through packing limits and simple yurt storage. As Arcadian Sam Voter states during one of our weekly community meetings, “Even though we each are here for different reasons, we can all agree we’re here to live more minimally.” Not only do students live simply, but this lifestyle is emphasized and demonstrated within the workings of the yurt village itself. Arcadia has little electricity, which comes from a small solar array, and no running water. Our water source, the lake, is shared by many of our neighbors, such as our swimming friends and forest critters. More specifically, we collect lake and rainwater in jugs and use it for drinking, doing dishes, and handwashing. This makes regular chores and seemingly simple daily tasks more challenging as they require more steps and planning. These tasks help to build the structure of Arcadian life, adding a supporting level of intention in living that is difficult to achieve elsewhere. This intentional way of life can even be considered a “slow-paced” life, which is what many who enroll in the semester imagine. While town runs offer more choices, more excitement (debatable), and things our village doesn’t have, they also differ in a variety of ways by providing more distractions, a faster pace, and a busier landscape. Where town has people filling its sidewalks and cars occupying the road alongside occasional geese, our Arcadian paths are busy and rich with garter snakes, amphibians, chipmunks, and squirrels.

After the first town run, we found ourselves irritated, overwhelmed, and maybe even a little stormy. The one hour of our reintroduction to civilized life proved to be more than what anyone had expected. Though everyone had access to their phones and laptops, our relationship with our technology had changed. Over the course of weeks, we had become less reliant on the use of digital technology and had grown more aware of its stress on our everyday lives. All this time we spent unplugged gave many of us a different perspective, leading us to choose not to use our phones and laptops again throughout the semester. However, even with this conscious decision, we still receive comments from older generations asking how we can bear to be without our phones and remarking that it must be “difficult” for us. As we inform them that it is a factor we appreciate, many shake their heads in disbelief because, my friends, most people think that it is ludicrous to appreciate doing without technology.

When the time comes to return to our home, we stuff our bags and arms with trinkets (thrifted essentials), gadgets (books), and treasures (snacks) and all cram, once again, into the rickety van. People race and trip over one another, calling “dibs” on driving and “shotgun” for the front seat, with the occasional dig, “Are you even van certified?” The car, once filled with driving insults and tense bodies, becomes one of embrace with legs tangled and heads on shoulders as exhaustion hits from the day. The comfort of being with each other lays a warm blanket of air over us, and the van traps it like a glistening bubble. While we joke that Arcadia is a fictitious land outside of time, we enter back into the wardrobe (a wardrobe filled with rain gear, bear canisters, and hella mouse traps) of our own little piece of Narnia. It is a place that requires all (even visiting professors) to cross a threshold by trekking across water or driving a long dirt road and walking on a foot trail in order to enter the bubble of our special and unique community, bringing with them news and lessons to spark different avenues of our collective mind. The community bubble, while having the set place of Arcadia, also follows us around in our travels and adventures, both in and out of the classroom. If you look close enough, you’ll be able to see a trail of bubbles following our tails, as we bicker about what kind of tree species that one over there is (courtesy of Sue Willson’s class, Natural History and Ecology of the Adirondacks), cracking inside jokes like “Meg, no thank you,” and “Apex predator Darlenne.” Keeping in mind that Arcadia (much like its own secluded kingdom) has its resource limits, we fill our space with music sheets and recipe printouts, paying close attention to radio weather reports between jamming to our favorite songs, with comments by Arcadian Cooper Anderson such as, “Yo, turn that s*** up! Weather alert just dropped!”

After we canoe back across the lake to our own little niche, we settle in for the night. While some trudge back to their yurts to tuck away trinkets and gadgets, others pull out their music sheets and guitars, and the background fills with the clanging of pots and pans as the next cook group starts its shift in the kitchen.

Now, as we reflect back on the few minutes when we passed Dead Creek, we realize that minutes to some can mean hours, days, and even a week of memories. Our community persists because of a lack of technology, a simple lifestyle, and intentional living. Our bubble is not only created by the interpersonal connections of the individuals, but those connections we make with the place of Arcadia and the Adirondacks. The pieces of home that we take with us soon become entangled with our lives and will continue to follow each Arcadian to their next Arcadia in the future.