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Experimental Archaeology and Ancient Arts, Martial and Domestic
500 BC to 1815 AD
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18th Century Trek
The essential act of our lives as living historians is the 18th century trek. Every year, more than a dozen men and women from the United States and Canada take a week out of their lives to live and work using only period techniques, period tools, and period clothes. We recreate the lives of soldiers and refugees in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York,
some of the wildest land in the eastern half of the United States.
Over the past fifteen years, we have canoed, bateaux'd, and walked over five hundred miles, exploring some forgotten areas of the region, like Metcalf Lake, and even worked on trail improvement (with period tools!) to simulate the road building that was part of everyday life in America in the 18th century.
The trek taught us that there is a yawning chasm between research and reality--that equipment which is not made to be used in a rainstorm
is merely costume, and that friends are people you want to be with after five days of pouring rain and fifty miles of walking.
The trek caused us to confront how much of "reenactment" is merely pageant. Living history begins when you can live in the kit you are wearing. If you can't walk, can't cook, and can't carry everything you need with you on the trail, you can never teach the public about the life of a refugee — or a soldier.
We welcome any person from any unit with the kit to make the trip to join us. Our treks will broaden to include new periods, but it is unlikely that we will soon cease to do our 18th century trek.