• Glenn Russell | Brooke Bousquet

The Adirondack Mountains are more than just a pretty Whiteface. The northern New York region's 6 million acres are full of countless mountains, lakes, rivers, towns and cities — and stories. So each year, Seven Days ventures west to find them. After fueling up with lakeside eats in Essex, we visited Viall's Crossing in Westport, where hiking, history and farming grow community spirit. Just down the road, jazz trumpeter Taylor Haskins practices a new kind of sonic sorcery. Weird science is afoot in the pristine waters of Lake George that could one day help keep Lake Champlain clean. That would please Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read as he puts the "lake" back in Lake City. It's hard to say what would please Sandy Lewis, "the most ornery man in the Adirondacks," as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Bandler discovered.