Paradox Lake.

Paradox Lake earned its name honestly. When Schroon Lake to the south runs high — typically in spring melt — the connecting channel between the two bodies of water reverses, and Paradox temporarily flows backward into itself. It was first noted in nineteenth-century geographic surveys; it remains the rare named lake in New York whose identity is a documented hydrological quirk.

The lake itself is small and quiet, four miles long, mostly state-owned shoreline, with the Paradox Lake State Campground anchoring the north end. It sits five miles east of Schroon Lake the village, just off Route 74 on the way to Crown Point and Ticonderoga, and the campground is one of the best-loved family campgrounds in the southeastern Park. Severance Mountain hiking, Brant Pond paddling, and the small-but-real Paradox Brewery are all within ten minutes.

What Paradox Lake offers, that the bigger lakes nearby cannot, is intimacy. There are no resorts. No public marina. No real village center. It is a small lake, in a small region, doing one thing well. The audience that finds it tends to come back every year for a generation.