| Paddling Through
History
When outdoors writer Roger Fulton moved to Glens Falls about a year ago, he didn ’t know much about the region ’s French and Indian War history. “To be honest with you, I wasn ’t sure who fought in the French and Indian War, ” he said. “So if I ’d been out of school for 40 years, I figured other people might have been out of school for 40 years, too. ” As part of his education, Fulton is traveling on a 300-mile canoe voyage of historic waterways in the region this summer. The trek began June 23 in Albany and will end Sept. 21 at Rogers Island in Fort Edward. Advertisement The conclusion coincides with his 60th birthday. “So I wanted to do this while I was still young enough, ” the retired state trooper said. Fulton, dressed in period clothing, will travel stretches of the Hudson River and connecting canals, Lake Champlain, Lake George and the St. Lawrence River in increments as weather permits, criss-crossing the region. “We ’re only about 73 miles into the 300-mile trip, ” he said during an interview Wednesday at the South Glens Falls boat launch. He ’s making public presentations at various stops along the way, including a lecture at 7 p.m. tonight at the John Hancock House museum in Ticonderoga. At 3 p.m. Sunday, he will appear at the visitors center at the Crown Point State Historical Site. A schedule of appearances is available on his Web site, www.RogerFulton.com. Click on “events. ” There also is a link to blog he is writing about the journey. The trip is intended in part to promote the “Common Man ” series of outdoor and travel guides he writes with Mike Carpenter. Fulton said his apparel, including a three-cornered hat and elk-skin moccasins, is that of a “common man ” in the 1750s, not that of a soldier. “I ’m not a re-enactor. I ’m just dressed in period clothes, ” he said. “Re-enactors are much better historians. ” ulton said the trip so far has made him cognizant of how long it took to travel in the 18th century. “When you do it by canoe, you get a new measure of distance, ” he said. “Albany seems close to Glens Falls in your routine life. It ’s not. ” Fulton has co-written more than a dozen books about outdoor activities in the Lake George/Saratoga and Thousand Islands/St. Lawrence regions, and also Florida. He currently is researching and writing a guide to cultural sites in the region, and he said he might write a book based on his canoe trek. “I ’ll see what I do when I get done with the trip, ” he said.
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