The first time I saw Cali Brooks it was 1999 and she rose like a yellow-haired spirit out of the vegetable garden at the Blue Mountain Center, the former central Adirondack Great Camp turned writers’ retreat.
It was only my third or fourth day in the Adirondacks. I was utterly lost. Brushing her dirty hands on her blue jeans, Brooks put me at ease with a laugh (I asked, she has no memory of this meeting) and sent me in the right direction.
“It was like an endless summer,” Brooks told me recently, recalling her time working in Blue Mountain Lake. “It was magic. I swam across the lake every day.”
A quarter century later, the woman in the garden has emerged as one of the most influential behind-the-scenes power brokers and agenda-setters in the Adirondacks.
As president and CEO of the Adiron-dack Foundation, Brooks, now 53, wields quiet influence in Albany and in small towns across the park, while serving as a conduit between local needs and wealthy second homeowners who make up most of the region’s donor class. Last year alone, her organization distributed early $7 million in grants.
“It’s been such a slow evolution,” Brooks said of her growing role in the park, as we
