Woman makes stand for nature

WESTPORT - The petite woman in the lumberjack shirt leads her German shepherd straight into the cafe, saying it's cold out and they should let the dog stay.“I'm always for trying stuff,” Anne LaBastille says, passing the no pets sign and opening the door. After decades living in the wilderness cabin she built, field research in Central American jungles, a divorce, a science Ph.D. from Cornell, turbulent years on the Adirondack Park Agency board, a career writing books and articles, consulting and guiding in the outdoors, she also tends to stand her ground.

In 1997's “Woodswoman III,” the autobiography covering her third decade living in a cabin in the woods, she urged older women, those of her generation, to follow: “Become a fierce eco-feminist and care for Planet Earth.”That was her response to the arsonist, never caught, who torched her barns five years earlier, presumably because of her environmentalist positions on the Adirondack Park Agency.

Right now, her only project is selling the house in Westport, with its pond and 42 acres of farmland that are “a lot to take care of.” She wants to get back to the cabin, though not in winter anymore.