Buildings can tell us about who we are. The architecture of place tells us, too, where we have been.

Last week, we felt fortunate to talk to two men with a passion for preservation.

We spoke with Alan Kowlowitz who chairs the Historic Preservation Commission, supported by both the village of Voorheesville and the town of New Scotland.

The commission has been awarded a $10,000 grant from the Preservation League of New York State that it will use for a cultural resource survey to document the historic structures in two of the town’s hamlets — New Scotland and New Salem — as well as in the village of Voorheesville.

Kowlowitz sees the rail trail that runs from Albany to Voorheesville as “a new railroad — a different type of engine for development.”

He says the two hamlets and the village, with a diversity of historic buildings and rural landscapes, are tied together through a shared railroad history and as launching points for historic Helderberg vacationers.

My husband and I raised our children in New Salem, restoring a house built there in the early part of the 19th Century. Like many hamlets in and around the Helderbergs, the buildings are clustered closely around  the Dutch Reformed Church on land the patroon had allowed to be developed.

Poring through huge volumes of old hand-written deeds kept by the county, I learned our house had once served the hamlet as a smithy. A century later, judging by the hand-painted sign that had been pressed into service as a side to our coal bin, our house had once been a sandwich shop.

The closeness of homes in the neighborhood with woods and fields stretching out behind helped to shape the way we lived. Our children had nearby playmates and plenty of space to explore nature.

The cultural resource survey, according to the grant application, will help identify the character-defining features of the village and the town’s hamlets so that each may put policies in place to support sustainable, sensitive development while preserving what makes each unique.

“We wanted a grant tied to the town and village master plans,” said Kowlowitz. “Each has a component of historic preservation and appropriate economic and leisure development.”

Kowlowitz is particularly interested in linking historic preservation with open space. He gave the example of the Bender Melon Farm, now with a conservation easement, and the Hilton barn, saved from demolition.

We, too, are a proponent of this and have written many times on this page about the importance — in this era of devastating climate change and mass species extinction — of preserving what we can of our natural world.

But here we are writing about something distinct, about how the structures we have inherited shape the way we live — as the close cluster of homes in New Salem shaped my family — and also remind us who we are and what we come from as a people.

That brings me to the second man I spoke with last week who was passionate about preservation. William Hein, the new manager of John Boyd Thacher State Park, brought tears to my eyes last Thursday as he spoke of Alice Waterhouse.

The park, he said, is focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion, and restoring the old lean-to built by the Helderberg Ski Club would highlight a trailblazing woman like Waterhouse “when in years’ past she broke down barriers in a time when it wasn’t expected.”

Alice was a dear friend of my family growing up. Every Sunday, my father, my mother, my two sisters, and I would drive to the county slope off of Beaver Dam Road to ski. The club had a school affiliated with the United States Eastern Amateur Ski Association and the first National Ski Patrol in the area.

I remember the long ski in from the road, across the wind-swept flats to the county slope. And then came the climb that at first seemed daunting. Alice Waterhouse taught me how to herringbone and how to sidestep to get up the hill.

“You just put one foot in front of the other,” she said.

With the herringbone, the skis are angled, leaving a track that resembles the tweed. Sidestepping, the skis are parallel, and their edges hold when it’s steep and slippery.

Alice taught the beginners how to snowplough — how to make a firm wedge with our skis so we could control our run down the hill, how to lean to the left and weight our left ski to turn right, or lean to the right and weight our right ski to turn left. To me, Alice always seemed in control — deliberate and purposeful just like the snowplough wedge.

Alice must have been old even then, but that never occurred to me at the time. She was a sprite of a woman with a strong will. She lived independently and pursued a career in chemistry at a time when most women confined themselves to home. She was among the first to climb all 46 Adirondack High Peaks and I admired her greatly. 

You couldn’t whine around Alice, not because she forbade it, simply because she didn’t do it. Her “one foot in front of the other” philosophy got me up more than mountains; it got me through childbirth, and doctoral exams, and tough news stories. Years later, I brought flowers to her hospital room as she lay dying, so she could smell them although she could no longer see or hear. I lay next to her curled, shrunken body and wondered where the next foot would lead her. She taught me to keep going.

The Helderberg Ski Club was founded in 1934 by Bob St. Louis with help from Otto Schmeck, who had skied with his family in Germany.

During World War II, 55 club members, both men and women, served in the armed forces, several in the mountain infantry. The ski club sent news to them in “The Gelandesprung” throughout the war. Bob St. Louis never came home from the war. He was killed in action as a member of the 10th Mountain Division; three other club members were killed in the war, too.

As a baby boomer, born after my own father returned home safely from the war, I saw how wounds were healed through a shared love of skiing.

I remember Joe Riedle yodeling as he skied with wild abandon through the glade at the top of the county slope. He was German and had fought in World War II on the German side. I remember, too, Stan Heidenreich, tall and imposing as he headed the ski school and demonstrated perfect stem christianias. He had fought in the same war on the other side, in the United States Army’s 10th Mountain Division.

What I learned in watching these two men ski together or enjoy each other’s company during the warm meals afterwards is that human likenesses can transcend even deep divides.

“The Helderberg Ski Club is one of those pieces of history that show global community, show we are all part of this together,” Hein told me.

We hope he is able to restore the lean-to. The land is still there, of course, although without the annual brush-clearing once done by the ski club members it has no doubt grown up.

Maybe a restored lean-to will serve as a beacon for people to once again come and enjoy the simple pleasures of nature, the joy of climbing up a hill to ski down.

The lessons we learned there went beyond the ski school. I remember Gus Angst with his long wooden skis, used to carve telemark turns; I remember his white, white hair and his other-worldly gaze. I was a child, and it seemed to me that Gus could talk to the birds. I knew some of the commonest calls — the whippoorwill said its name, and the white-throated sparrow was forever lamenting “Poor Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody.”  Those sounds, though, were linked to human words that I knew and could remember. The birds never answered my calls.

But Gus — Gus was different; he could make the birds sing. He’d call and they would answer. My favorite book when I was 8 or 9 years old was about Dr. Doolittle who talked to the animals, and I imagined Gus did the same with birds. This flight of fancy left me with a reverence for nature and for a human being who could know a part of it so well that it seemed he could transcend the limitations that left the rest of us confined to human speech.

I also learned about the warmth that comes from sharing. It was a lesson that was repeated on countless family trips into the wilderness. Once, I remember being lost with my family on a trailless peak. As darkness fell, we decided to bivouac. That night we stayed warm by sharing the one tarp we had; we nestled together like spoons, my mother, my father, my two sisters and I.

But the act of kindness I remember most vividly came from the sort of sharing that involved self-sacrifice. I remember a Helderberg Ski Club trip led by Bob Campbell. He had a simple rule: Stay together.

A group of us were skiing in the Adirondacks. We had skins on our skis that would help grip the snow as we climbed to Marcy Dam from Heart Lake. The same skins would flatten in the other direction as we headed downhill, allowing us to glide.

I slipped by the edge of a brook, breaking through the ice, getting one of my skins wet as well as one of my mittens. The skin was useless now — an icy runner rather than an aid. And my hand was cold to the point of numbness. I began to feel desperate and hopeless as I struggled to keep up.

Bob Campbell noticed my plight and, without a word, he took off his own mitten and gave it to me. It was warm. He waved away my feeble protestations, then replaced my worthless skin with his own. He sacrificed his own well-being for mine. When I objected, he said only, “We all stay together.” Now he would be cold, and behind, and hopeless, I worried. But, no.

A strong man, he was unfazed. He moved me to the head of the line, and skied right behind me. I felt the kind of euphoria people describe when they’ve witnessed a miracle. I surged on with new purpose, and have never forgotten his generosity. I have looked for chances to repay it in kind; I am still searching.

All of the ski club members I have recalled here are dead. I’ve been honored to write some of their obituaries. But a restored lean-to would be a better tribute. It would not just tell their stories, with the plaques Hein envisions, but would serve as a structure to welcome a new generation to learn the lessons taught when nature and people come together.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer, editor