On Paths
A path or trail is an expression of relationship, an accord between those who use it—and thereby maintain it—and the region it traverses. Paths made by deer and fox express something different from those...
Category: Landmarks Revisited
The Ghost of a Waterfall
This might be a fish story—you know, about the one that got away. Or it might be a tale of buried treasure. Either way, because it happened in the old air of the Catskill...
Marker 123
It has been said—by a scholar who studies such things—that the function of a picture postcard is to make the unnoticed noticed. If nothing else, a postcard is a kind of mailable landmark—with graffiti...
The Forgotten Gas Well of Fox Hollow
It happened on a February night in 1955, in the heart of the Catskill Mountains. A large group of locals had gathered in Fox Hollow in the town of Shandaken. They stood in a...
Penetrable Olana
Hoping to investigate matters pertaining to landscape and art, I drive down from the Mountaintop, cross the Hudson via the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, and arrive at Frederic Church’s place, Olana, which sits above...
Thomas Cole’s Last Mountain
The artist Thomas Cole died at home in the village of Catskill on February 11, 1848. He had just turned forty-seven years old. Even by 19th-century standards, this seems young. Consider, for example, Cole’s...
Remembering Charles Dornbusch
You can still see it there along the side of a seldom-traveled road in the hamlet of Cornwallville, a haunted house of sorts, or rather a low shed “with a history,” green-shingled and isolate,...
Of Men and Wolves
The year 1815 was a difficult one here on the Mountaintop, both for human beings and for wolves. At least that’s the sense one gets from reading Reverend Henry Prout’s Old Times in Windham....
The Return of Rip Van Winkle
The most prominent landmark in the Catskills is not a mountain but a character by the name of Rip Van Winkle. It’s surprising how many take him to be an historical figure as opposed...
Names on the Mountains
The map, they say, is not the territory, but a map does come in handy when trying to find your way around the territory. The region of the highest peaks in the Catskills—including all...