AMC Outdoors, November 2003

By Katharine Wroth

Just a few miles from Joe Gardner’s home in Delmar, N.Y., the Hudson River winds past Albany. They say the explorer Henry Hudson, on a quest for the Northwest Passage in 1609, turned around when he reached this shallow stretch. But Gardner, on his own riparian quest, does not turn back.

For the last five years, this Mohawk Hudson Chapter member has represented the AMC in Friends of a Clean Hudson, a coalition of environmental groups dedicated to ridding the waterway of PCBs. Gardner, also the chapter’s Conservation chair, is now keeping an eye on the Environmental Protection Agency-ordered cleanup by General Electric, the corporation responsible. “We’re holding our breath” that it will proceed as planned, he says, especially given the recent changes at the helm of the EPA.

Gardner, 78, says he spends “at least some time each day” on that issue. But the former engineer — who worked for the Federal Highway Administration in Mississippi, N.C., and New York after serving in the Navy during World War II — keeps busy outdoors as well. Since spring, he has been leading a series of section hikes on the Appalachian Trail in New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

These shorter hikes, he notes, are not the kind he used to take. He began hiking after retiring 21 years ago, reaching all the Catskills 3,500-footers by his sixth year and returning to summit them in winter. He then tackled the Adirondacks and New England. “I got interested in AMC when I started hiking the New England high peaks” in 1994, he says, “because they had a lot of nice maps and guidebooks.” Gardner completed all 111 of the Northeast’s high peaks by 1998.

And always, he hikes with a purpose. In addition to his Hudson work, he has recently been trained as an AMC air-quality Visibility Volunteer. Of the current political and environmental situation, Gardner says, “These are challenging days, for sure. But that’s what keeps us optimistic and ambitious, and it’s what keeps us doing our darnedest.”

—Katharine Wroth is Senior Editor of AMC Outdoors.