Anne LaBastille

She was honored by the World Wildlife Fund and the Explorers Club for her pioneering work in wildlife ecology in the United States and Guatemala. LaBastille also took many wildlife photographs, many of which were published in nature publications.

• Name — Mariette Anne LaBastille • Born — 20 November 1933 • Birthplace — Montclair, New Jersey • Died — 1 July 2011 • Place of death — Plattsburgh, New York • Other Names — Anne LaBastille Bowes • Workplaces — Adirondack Park Agency • Education — Ph.D. Wildlife Ecology, 1969 • Alma Mater — Cornell University (Ph.D.; B.S.); Colorado State University (M.S.) • Thesis1 Title — The life history, ecology, and management of the giant pied-billed grebe (Podilymbus gigas), Lake Atitlán, Guatemala • Thesis1 Year — 1969 • Thesis2 Title — An ecological analysis of mule deer winter range, Cache la Poudre Canyon, Colorado • Thesis2 Year — 1958 • Known for — The Woodswoman series • Spouse — C.V. “Major” Bowes

LaBastille was born in Montclair, New Jersey, the only child of Ferdinand LaBastille – a professor, and Irma Goebel – a concert pianist, stage actress and musician. Her full name was Mariette Anne LaBastille, though she never used her first name. While her date of birth is often listed as Nov 20, 1935, her true date of birth was November 20, 1933, which Valerie J. Nelson of the Los Angeles Times discovered while preparing LaBastille's obituary. LaBastille was married for seven years to C.V. “Major” Bowes (born 29 Apr 1919; died 25 Oct 2012), the owner of the Covewood Lodge on Big Moose Lake, New York. They had no children.

LaBastille received her Ph.D. in Wildlife Ecology from Cornell University in 1969. She also had an M.S. in Wildlife Management from the Colorado State University (1958), and a B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources from Cornell (1955). LaBastille started out as a contributing writer to several wildlife magazines, including Sierra Club and National Geographic. She became a licensed New York State Guide in the 1970s and offered guide services for backpacking and canoe trips into the Adirondacks. She gave wilderness workshops and lectures for over forty years, joined several New York Adirondack Mountains conservation organizations, and was on the Adirondack Park Agency Board of Commissioners for 17 years. She traveled around the world and worked with many non-profit organizations to study and alleviate the destructive effects of acid rain and pollution on lakes and wildlife.

LaBastille's most popular books, the Woodswoman series, were a set of four memoirs spanning four decades of her life in the Adirondack Mountains and chronicled her relationship with the wilderness. Inspired by Henry David Thoreau's Walden, LaBastille purchased land on the edge of a mountain lake in the Adirondacks, where she built a log cabin in 1964. At the beginning of her first book, Woodswoman (1976), she documented the process of obtaining materials and building the cabin with the help of a pair of local carpenters. To avoid cutting old growth forest on the property, she purchased pre-cut logs from a local sawmill and used store-bought lumber to build the floor joists, roof, door frames, and window frames. The remainder of Woodswoman records her adventures living in this log cabin without comforts such as electricity or running water, as well as her explorations into the wilderness of the Adirondacks. In her second book, Beyond Black Bear Lake (1987), she described how she built her smaller second cabin, Thoreau II, on a more remote area of her property in order to obtain a more Walden-like experience. Both the first and second books explored her friendships, romances, her previous marriage, her close bonds to her German Shepherd dogs, the ebb and flow of nature, and her conservation efforts. She conducted research on the endangered, and eventually extinct, giant pied-bill grebe bird. The final two books of the series, Woodswoman III (1997) and Woodswoman IIII (2003), were published by LaBastille's publishing company, "West of the Wind Publications, Inc". In both volumes, LaBastille included stories illustrating the increasing difficulty of juggling a multifaceted career consisting of freelance writing, academic teaching, and conservation consulting work, with her ever-present desire to retreat into the wilderness. In Woodswoman III, she also discussed how pollutants were contaminating her remote lake; her only source of drinking water. Because of this, she purchased a farmstead near the hamlet of Wadhams in the Town of Westport near the western shore of Lake Champlain. The farmstead had modern conveniences such as phone and electricity, but was within the boundaries of the Adirondack Park. She writes in Woodswoman IIII how her adamant stance against the development of the Adirondack Park had created contention and enemies. She received death threats, her remote cabin was broken into and a barn on her Westport property was burned down. It has been rumored that Anne began working on Woodswoman V shortly after Woodswoman IIII was published; however, no draft has ever been found. She stated how self-publishing was more lucrative, but took away valuable time she needed for writing.

LaBastille was part of the Documerica Project developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). From 1971 to 1977, the EPA hired freelance photographers to photograph areas with environmental problems, EPA activities, and the outdoors. LaBastille's photos were mostly taken in upstate New York and show a variety of subjects, including natural beauty and wildlife, environmental problems, urban sprawl, and everyday life in small towns. • Illustration — North branch of the Moose River seen from the bridge at Thendara, Sunset, 1973 • Illustration — Remains of a summer cottage which collapsed under the weight of the winter's snow, 1973 • Illustration — Cull logs stacked for sale at Big Moose, 1973 • Illustration — Creek beside trail up Algonquin Peak, 1973 • Illustration — Summit of Mount Marcy, New York, 1973 • Illustration — Sunset seen from the top of Algonquin Peak, 1973

In her later years, LaBastille began spending less and less time at her mountain retreat. In Woodswoman IIII and in an interview with the Cornell Alumni Magazine, LaBastille noted that rising global temperatures had transformed her lakeside property from a year-round home into a seasonal retreat. Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, a thick sheet of ice formed on the lake, thus allowing snowshoeing across its surface from late November through late April. But in subsequent years warmer winter temperatures and February rain showers led to thinner lake ice, making trips across the lake treacherous and unpredictable. Without year-round neighbors or a phone in cases of emergency, LaBastille elected to stop spending winters at the cabin. She instead spent more time at her farmstead near Lake Champlain. Nevertheless, she wrote that she kept her mountain retreat as her place for "refuge, quiet, as a peaceful place to write and contemplate...". In 2007, she was still living part-time in her lakeside cabin. In 2008, LaBastille became ill and was unable to care for herself at home. John Davis, Conservation Director for the Adirondack Council, writing about his trip through the Adirondacks in 2008 wrote, "Dear friend and Park champion for decades, Anne LaBastille is for first time in memory missing a summer at her beloved cabin north of here, due to health concerns.". LaBastille died of Alzheimer's disease at a nursing home in Plattsburgh, New York on July 1, 2011.