“Its bite is not severe, nor is it ordinarily poisonous … beside the bite of the mosquito it is comparatively mild and harmless. … I regard it as one of the most harmless and least vexatious of the insect family. … The blackfly, … like the Gorgon of old, is a myth, —a monster existing only in men’s feverish imaginations.”
—W. H. H. Murray Adventures in the Wilderness
love that I have come back to the Adirondacks, now with a place of my own at the edge of the wilderness. I grew up and attended high school not far from here, in the then “smallest incorporated village in New York State,” Galway, about two hours from the High Peaks. I later attended St. Lawrence University, in Canton, about two
