Walden in the Catskills
The writer Henry David Thoreau is famous for a hut he built with his own hands on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. To be more precise, he is famous for the...
Tagged: Catskill Mountains
Mountain Landscape with Plane Wreck
The wreckage is still there, high on one of the higher peaks in the Catskills, just below its summit, in balsam-brake and moss, close by Rip Van Winkle’s depleted spring. Broken wings, battered fuselage,...
Our Banner in the Woods
It hangs conspicuously in an inconspicuous spot. Measuring twelve by eighteen feet, the flag is suspended between a pair of trees at the edge of the woods where Maplecrest Road meets County Route 23C...
Art Trail
Here in the Land of Rip Van Winkle, an art trail begins or ends at everybody’s front door. Innumerable are such trails, and infinite the vistas. After all, to live in this place is...
Red Apple Rest
Red Apple Rest was a famous highway stop along Route 17 in Tuxedo, New York. The cafeteria-style eatery opened in 1931 and for decades did a booming business. Several generations of vacationers regarded this...
The House in the Woods
The Land of Rip Van Winkle is well-supplied with haunted houses. At least one of these places is the subject of a book. At the time of its publication—in 1904—no mention was made of...
Catskill Game Farm
According to the handwriting on its faded blue cardboard mount, the slide was “Taken at Game Farm in Catskills, July 1954.” An item acquired off eBay for a few dollars. It was included among...
Resorts of the Catskills
He showed up in Windham—with his camera—sometime after Labor Day in 1977. That was the time of year he preferred to work. Most of the summer vacationers were back home by then, at their...
Kindred Spirits
The painting is called Kindred Spirits. It was created by Asher B. Durand in 1849 to memorialize his close friend and fellow landscape artist Thomas Cole, who died unexpectedly the previous year. The two...
Saint Mary of the Mountain
The old cemetery sits on a small rise above the highway just east of the village of Hunter. Well over a century has passed since the last interment. The monuments—some of which are still...