Explore OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2018 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM
Tales of the Catskills
Fall in the Valley
2 • October - November, 2018
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Fall in the Valley 2018 Table of contents Rail explorers By Jodi La Marco ............................6 Oh, rats By Sue Pilla .................................... 12 Addiction By Susan Barnett ........................... 14 Wave your freak flag high By Harry Matthews ...................... 20 The sporting life By Will Dendis .............................. 26
October - November, 2018 • 3
EVENTS IN THE CATSKILLS
October 6 Hudson Valley Dance Festival at the Historic Catskill Point www.dradance.org October 6 Annual Harvest Festival, Cairo 518-610-3332 October 6 & 7 Windham’s 23rd Annual Autumn Affair www.windhamchamber.org
October 6 & 7, 13 & 14 Oktoberfest at Hunter Mountain www.huntermtn.com October 13 & 14 World War II Living History Weekend www.crystalbrook.com October 20 Schlachtfest at Crystal Brook Mountain Brauhaus www.crystalbrook.com
Grasshopper’s advice By Elisabeth Henry ...................... 30 It’s the water, folks By Elisabeth Henry ...................... 34 Toxic mold By Jennifer Brizzi ......................... 38
For a complete listing of all events in The Great Northern Catskills visit
www.GreatCatskillEvents.com IT’S A WORLD AWAY… AND CLOSER THAN YOU THINK
Dr. Gregg By Susan Barnett .......................... 44
Nestled in the scenic Catskill Mountains, our vineyard overlooks Windham Mountain and its surrounding year-round beauty.
We redo the kitchen By Dan Barton .............................. 46 Four favorite New Paltz hikes By Erin Quinn................................ 51 Coming to terms with Airbnb By Violet Snow...............................54
TASTING ROOM We source the best-rated wines that New York State has to offer from the Finger Lakes all the way down to the renowned North & South Forks of Long Island- all under one roof.
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4 • October - November, 2018
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Ulster Publishing Co.
Welcome to our region
D
oes it upset the visitors who flock to our fair region for the beautiful autumn landscape to see the obituaries if so many young people who die of drug overdoses? Will they be turn a blind eye to the poverty, the dismal job choices, the substandard housing and the inadequate social services in our midst? Do they want to hear only the good news, look to the gorgeous scenery? Or are they ready for the whole story of the human condition as played out in our little backwater, warts and all? In this issue of Fall in the Valley, Susan Barnett, Elisabeth Henry and our other writers try to tell more of the whole exhilarating story. Our region is special because we share a dedication to telling as much of the whole story as we can. I’m proud that we do that. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I
remember reading as a kid the Homeric epics, the classical texts, Shakespeare’s plays, Turgenev’s short stories, Milton’s prose, Eliot’s and Yeats’ poetry and Joyce’s novels. I was most inspired
Fall in the Valley October - November 2018 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Susan Barnett, Dan Barton, Jennifer Brizzi, Will Dendis, Elisabeth Henry, Jodi La Marco, Harry Matthews, Sue Pilla, Erin Quinn, Violet Snow EDITOR: Geddy Sveikauskas with Brian Hollander LAYOUT: Joe Morgan Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle,
Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate
Fall in the Valley is one of four Explore Hudson Valley supplements Ulster Publishing puts out each year. It is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com. For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.
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by their desire to communicate about the lives around them as best they could. It was absurd to think I could do it anywhere as near as well as they did, but the important thing was to try anyway. I don’t mind that people make fun of me for this overweening ambition. Just because it’s silly and quixotic doesn’t bother me. For the most part I have failed, but that’s not the important thing. Every once in a while I come across a piece or several pieces that reach into the territory of what I am looking for. Here are three from this special section. “Was Woodstock still that shining
beacon of freedom in the wild that I had always seen it as and that I imagined it purported itself to be?” writes Harry Matthews. “To some degree, it was. But it seemed also just as money-hungry and mildly desperate as anywhere else.” “Given the amount of innovation and creative breakthroughs that originated here, it could just be that there is something in the water,” quite sensibly writes Elisabeth Henry about the Catskills watershed.
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nd yes, young people’s hopeless addictions are part of our story.
Art
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders: The Trans List THE
DORSKY
Curated by Anastasia James
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Laverne Cox, 2015, inkjet print, courtesy the artist
August 29 – December 9, 2018
Through December 9, 2018 Opening reception: Saturday, September 15, 5–7 p.m. SAMUEL DORSKY MUSEUM OF ART STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT NEW PALTZ
www.newpaltz.edu/museum Open Wed. – Sun. 11 am – 5 pm | 845/257-3844
October - November, 2018 • 5
“Jackie’s son has had mental-health issues all his life,” writes Susan Barnett. “He is addicted to heroin. Every day, every night, she waits for the phone call she dreads. The one where someone calls to tell her he has died.” Perhaps the problem of our region is that we don’t believe in ourselves. So much ability, so much beauty, so little money.
Geddy Sveikaukas
6 • October - November, 2018
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Ulster Publishing Co.
Biking the rails Rail Explorers brings a new use to a familiar resource By Jodi La Marco
M
ary Joy Lu, CEO of Rail Explorers, found inspiration for her business in an unlikely place. “We were in New York City, and we were working in advertising. My husband and I had our own company on Fifth Avenue,” said Lu. To escape the pressure and long hours of her work life, Lu would watch Korean television dramas during her down time. “On one of the TV dramas that I watched, there was this couple, and they were riding this sort of bicycle thing on the railroad tracks. And I thought, What the heck is that?” Lu discovered that the contraption she had seen was a rail bike. “I thought, The image of the rail bike from Fire Towers of the Catskills by Martin Podskock is used ‘This is it. This is our next by courtesy of the Empire State Railway Museum, Lonnie Gale Collection. life.’” Lu had to overcome a number of obstacles. There were the lease of the track. And there were the bikes’ Korean designer and manufacturer expected hurdles, such as negotiating a unanticipated ones as well. Getting the rail on-board with her plan took some doing. “I didn’t speak Korean, and he didn’t speak English,” said Lu. The business deal FAMILY OWNED FOR 30+ YEARS was subject to cultural factors uncommon GROUP DISCOUNT RATES in the United States. “It’s not just about business, it’s about a lot of traditional eti100+ TV channels, free wireless internet, quette. We knew we finally had a deal the fitness area and guest laundry. night we went karaoke singing in South Free Continental Breakfast. Korea. It was 4 a.m. He had outdrunk us and outsung us and we finally said, Handicap accessible rooms available. ‘Okay, enough!’ We signed contracts the 1/4 mile to NYS Thruway. next day.” Two years after Lu’s first glimpse of a rail All local police, firefighters, and EMTs bike, Rail Explorers was up and running 15% off with valid ID. at Saranac Lake in New York’s Adirondack 7 Terwilliger Lane, New Paltz • 845-255-8865 • www.abviofnewpaltz.com Mountains. New outposts have since come
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ACTORS & WRITERS
TEN-MINUTE PLAY FESTIVAL!
staged readings of original short plays
Saturday, October 20, at 8pm ASK ~ Arts Society of Kingston 97 Broadway, Kingston 12401~ www.askforarts.org
to Las Vegas, Delaware and Rhode Island. This past May, the company opened its Catskills location in Phoenicia. Railroads stitch together the geographic fabric of Ulster County, and rail bikes are not new to our area. Rail bikes were a way of getting around. Early versions of these pedal-powered machines once traversed the same tracks now used by Rail Explorers. Beginning in the 1920s, fire patrolmen would follow trains, scanning for fires started by sparks from smokestacks. The Catskills rail-bike tour runs along a four-mile stretch of the defunct Ulster and Delaware Railroad line. These tracks once carried locals and New York City tourists to points north and south, and freight in and out of the Catskills. iking the rails is invigorating. Riders are immediately struck by the wind-in-the-hair joy of cruising down the track, and the familiar clack, clack of wheels passing over rails. Passengers chug along a beautiful stretch of the Esopus Creek, which is in view for most of the ride. In spring wildflowers huddle in swaths along the route, and in autumn the changing leaves create a wonderland of color. Now that autumn is reaching its peak, the track is surrounded by a wonderland of color. Riders move through a kaleidoscope of saturated hues. Deep gold, rich crimson, holdouts of summer green, and the rest of fall’s glorious tones sail by the viewer in rapid succession. Unlike the experience of riding a traditional bicycle, rail bikers can spend their time immersed in the
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printing packing designing mailboxing shredding notarizing copying faxing receiving boxing direct-mailing delivering returning freighting
October - November, 2018 • 9
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Ulster Publishing Co. sights around them rather than minding the road. Each bike is equipped with brakes, but does not need to be steered. The track does the work for you. Think of it as Biking 2.0. There’s also the satisfaction of stopping traffic on Route 28 (if only for a moment). After crossing the highway — a task the staff takes great care in accomplishing — the ride comes to its midpoint. At a former track washout in Mount Tremper, passengers disembark while the bikes are turned around. Right next to the riverbank of the Esopus Creek, this is a great spot to take a breather or have a snack. Although the journey back to the ticket office is slightly uphill, bikes are equipped with an electric pedal-assist feature. “When you pedal, it kicks in just like an e-bike, but it only helps you so much. When you don’t pedal, it doesn’t operate. It just makes that journey back available to people of all ages and abilities,” explained Lu. “We’re very much committed to that.” Each bike is equipped with brakes, but does not need to be steered. The track does the work for you. Passengers can choose from either a four-seat or two-seat bike, which can be coupled for larger groups that want to stick together. Piloted by staff in the lead bike, all nine rail bikes travel in a loose caravan between lead and caboose bikes.
November 3rd from 7:00 to 11:00 The Château in Kingston Auctioneer, Bob Siracusano Auction Chair, Deborah Sinon
Ulster Publishing Co. atskill Rail Explorers’ ticket office is next door to the Empire State Railway Museum in Phoenicia. “On weekends when the museum is open, we encourage all of our guests to visit,” said Lu. “They’ve been able to modernize some of their operations, including the exhibits, through the impetus of having 200 to 300 visitors every weekend,” says Lu. “It’s been a really great partnership for us as well because we’ve learned a lot about the historical significance of the railroad tracks.” The Phoenicia branch of Rail Explorers was bringing tourism dollars to surrounding businesses as well, said Lu. Since opening day on May 26 through September 13, the Catskill division of Rail Explorers had hosted 7523 passengers. Rail Explorers will operate in Phoenicia until the end of October. The attraction is open Thursdays through Mondays. On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, there are more departure times, including a 6:30 p.m. night tour.
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“Each bike has its own headlight and taillight,” explained deputy operations manager Michelle Davis. “Pedaling through the woods in the pitch black is so much fun. The stars are viewable on clear nights, which makes for a pretty spectacular ride.” Once Rail Explorers closes for the season, its Catskill fleet will be shipped out west. “This will be our second winter season in Las Vegas,” says Lu. “We’re working with a not-for-profit out there called the Nevada Southern Railroad Museum. We bring a new demographic to the rails, which has been part of the most important and fabulous consequence of Rail Explorers.” “We’re bringing significant numbers to the community, and they’re people who are quality visitors. They’re spending money, they’re staying in hotels,” Lu says. “Business owners from Woodstock Brewing Company, Bite Me Bakery, Brio’s Restaurant, and the Emerson have all seen unique visitations and money-spending because of Rail Explorers. And that’s been
Highland
October - November, 2018 • 11
part of the purpose, to make a sustainable economic impact.” Visit www.railexplorers.net, or call 877833-8588.
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Oh, rats! The rodent road is long and winding By Sue Pilla
H
ere we go again. I’ve come around to believing they really don’t mean much mischief. It’s not really their fault. Rats were born that way, it’s part of their drive to survive. I can’t help but conjure up images of those sweet little characters from Disney’s Ratatouille or imagine Mickey Mouse chomping on a piece of cheese. Resilient and clever little creatures, rats spread disease, filth and destruction in their pursuit of happiness. I was horrified to learn that we had been invaded once again, the third time in five years, And in summer, no less, Conversations around town and especially in the checkout line at the local Dollar General store on Route 28 yielded some preliminary insights into the situation. “How come there are so many rodents this year?” the chipper clerk asked me as she rang up my order, which included bleach, vinegar, disposable glue traps (which claim to trap rats, mice and insects), rat poison (both pet- and childsafe), bait station refills, and other items. “We’re selling a lot of this stuff.” The guy behind me volunteered that it has been an unusually wet summer and now autumn. We’ve had record rainfalls, saturated ground (to the point where trees are falling on power lines), flooded lowlands and roads, seasonal streams turning year-round, and minor waterways overrunning their banks. Apparently, he said, there’s been a significant increase in home-dwelling rodents. The little buggers just wanted to be snug and dry, I thought. They wanted to escape the oppressive heat and humidity we’d been experiencing for what seemed weeks on end. Why not invade any homes they could? It was better than spending the summer in the woods.
And how about all those youngsters just waiting to be born? Wouldn’t a basement, garage or outbuilding provide a nurturing environment?
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pondered these ideas as I drove home. As I’ve become more obsessed with the rat situation, other thoughts pop in: What about rats in urban settings? How are municipalities handling pest control? Isn’t that a lovely idea, that we might actually be able to control our pests? I stumbled on a wonderful book when my son and I were dropping off a load of reusable goods at our local Tibetan thrift shop the other day. As I compulsively starting reshelving some books to make myself useful, I came across Robert Sullivan’s New York Times bestseller, Rats — Observations on the History & Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants. Was this karma? How did that happen? I’d been thinking about writing installment number three of this series of rat stories shortly after I discovered we’d been invaded again. Here was just the book I needed to spark my overactive imagination.
The book piqued even more curiosity and flights of fancy. I wanted to do some hands-on observations just like my new hero, Robert Sullivan, had done. What research he had done. How inspiring! How kind of him to provide so many insights on the situation. Just when my spirits were getting a tad low. The thought of running down to the local sporting goods store to purchase night-vision glasses with the prospect of sitting in our ancient fieldstone walled basement was almost irresistible. I would sit there quietly, watch and listen. Perhaps I’d get to actually see the little buggers climbing in and out between stones, scrambling along the water pipes, or even setting a little table with a red checkered tablecloth and settling into a scrumptious meal. I would wear a face mask for added protection. The heavy rains had brought minor flooding. Now mold was now growing down there, too. (The dehumidifier had broken a week earlier, allowing those miniscule spores to take hold. But wait, that’s another story) I wondered how many rats we had. As just about everyone knows, the rodent population and related species procreate prodigiously. First you have one, two and then 27. Rat procreation details are particularly scary.
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sing what my sister fondly refers to as the “Google machine,” I discovered just about everything I ever wanted to know about rats. You can search and read for days on end if
Ulster Publishing Co. you’re in the mood. Been there. Done that. Sullivan’s book provides an in-depth history of the rat situation in New York City over time. He tells us that the brown rat, or Rattus Norvegicus, rode the boats from the old world to the new back in the day. These are what are known as the common street, sewer, water, or wharf rats. Recently, PBS aired an informative program on pests, particularly rats, that mentioned a new and innovative approach to killing rats in urban settings. Someone had discovered what was touted as a humane way of quickly exterminating rats from your grounds. Dry ice! How? Easy. Find the burrows around your grounds. Throw some dry ice down into the nest. Cover the hole to keep the rats from escaping. Voila! The creatures die a quick death from asphyxiation. The big takeaway here is you must get rid of your rats swiftly and by any means necessary. Educate yourself, buy supplies, take action, reach out for help. If you’re too squeamish to dispose of the dead bodies yourself, make sure you have a true friend who will rise to the task. A little lime goes a long way. Pick some up at the hardware store in the gardening section. Sprinkle it on the carcasses liberally. It does wonder for rotting bodies. Or pay an exterminator to come back frequently. Finally, try to find and plug all the entry holes. If you don’t, they’ll be back. Just remember this is nothing to be ashamed of. Reach out. Your community
Car care
October - November, 2018 • 13
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Addiction ‘Nobody loves him as much as I do’ By Susan Barnett
J
ackie Galietta remembers it like it was yesterday. “I went to a local lunch counter with one of my students and I heard the woman behind the counter talking about us as we ate,” she said. “I don’t know what she’s doing working with kids,” the woman behind the counter said. “She can’t even raise her own son.” That was twelve years ago. It still stings. Jackie’s son has had mental-health issues all his life. He is addicted to heroin. Every day, every night, she waits for the phone call she dreads. The one where someone calls to tell her he has died. This is a love story, and a story of almost unendurable pain. Like all love stories, it is both universal and unique. When I met Jackie, she said it was a story she wanted to tell.
“I want people to know. The stigma, it’s just so powerful. No one wants to talk about it. No one wants to hear about it.” Jamie is 31 now. He lives in a rental owned by a family member, and he’s about to be evicted. “It kills me,” his mother said. “It just kills me. It’s like throwing him out into a flood with a blow-up toy and tell him to hang on as you wish him good luck.” She’s going to have to be the one to tell him about his eviction. Jamie’s problems started as a child. His mother said he was inconsolable at birth, and didn’t talk until he was two. He tried to kill himself for the first time when he was in first or second grade, she said. “He got into a fight on the playground, and he didn’t think I’d punished him enough, so he decided to punish himself.” He tried to hang himself. She had to call 911. Jamie’s parade of counselors and therapy and hospitalizations began. He was in the hospital for a month that time. He wasn’t even ten years old. “No one was supposed to know,” Jackie said. Her ex-husband’s wife told Jamie’s
teacher, It’s a very small town. “The stigma started then,” Jackie remembered. “And that’s when I started walking on eggshells, always fearing losing him to death.” amie was in and out of trouble all through school. The only thing that brought him joy was playing football. But when he was a junior in high school he was kicked off the team for good. His behavior cut him off again. Jackie said she asked the principal point-blank if he was sacrificing her son for the good of everybody else, knowing this was the only happiness he had. The principal said yes. Jackie is a slight, soft-spoken woman. She was traumatized every time she had to deal with that principal. Every time she felt humiliated, frustrated and angry. Every time she tried to fight for her son. Jamie’s issues were soon compounded by substance abuse. When he was in fifth or sixth grade, a friend called Jackie to let her know she’d found Jamie passed out drunk on the railroad tracks on a school morning. She moved him to safety and then called his mother.
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Jamie started cycling through juvenile court, even into a foster home, where he was judged a danger to himself at home. Because he wasn’t yet 18, there was no firm diagnosis. “Their best guess was Obsessive Defiant Disorder, maybe Bipolar Disorder, and definitely depression,” Jackie said. “I have three college degrees,” she said, “and I had no idea what the right thing to do was.” One of her degrees is in drug and alcohol counseling. But it’s different when it’s your own son. ary Rosenthal is executive director of ADAC, the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council of Delaware County, a non-profit funded mostly by grants from the state. “Until recently,” Mary said, “opioids were the problem here...heroin, suboxone, prescription meds. But now it’s cocaine and meth. Government’s still focused on opioids, and that’s great, but that’s really not the biggest threat here now.” Why? Addicts, she said, are making a conscious decision to get hooked on something that’s less painful for them to stop. “The detox and withdrawal off cocaine and meth is way easier,” Mary said. “It blew my mind. In 24 years I never saw this happen before.” Meth in Delaware County, she said, is stronger than “normal” meth. “Meth eats you from the inside out,” she said. “You can see it happen. And it’s all so frustrating to see. We have an opioid crisis, but overall we have substance abuse. We need to consciously fight all of it.” ADAC’s in-school and after-school programs are aimed at teaching kids life
skills and trying to involve families and the community in helping. Treatment Court and Family Treatment Court serve as an alternative to incarceration. Mary said
October - November, 2018 • 15
she’s seeing younger people than she used to in those courts, people in their twenties instead of the stereotypical prescription med abuser in his or her forties.
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“Some are self-medicating. They’ve got mental-health issues, or they’ve had trauma.” The challenge in a rural county is economic. “There are no jobs, no public transportation, and education, I hate to say it, is a problem, too,” Mary said. “There’s a lack of skills.” And a shortage of hope. “We aren’t keeping young people here,” she said. “What’s here for them?” ackie’s son finally had to withdraw from high school and got his GED. He had a goal. He wanted to join the Army. “Jamie lied to the recruiter and he got in,” she remembers. “When we went to his graduation from boot camp, it was the happiest I’ve ever seen him.” “It’s the first time I ever graduated from anything!” Jamie exclaimed proudly. He was deployed to South Korea, where, she says, he served under a sergeant who took him gambling and to prostitutes. Then he came back to base camp in Hawaii, where he got into trouble and was confined until being deployed to Afghanistan. Jamie was deployed in 2011. He was in field artillery and became a sharpshooter. He won awards. He was promoted to sergeant. One day, Jackie got a phone call from overseas. “Ma, I just don’t feel right,” Jamie said. “That was the beginning of the out-ofyour-mind behavior,” Jackie says. He was sent to Hawaii, where Jackie got a call from the psychiatric ward. Jamie had had a psychotic break. “It turned out when he went for help with his undiagnosed depression in Afghanistan, they gave him Adderall,” Jackie said.
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“It’s why I won all those awards,” Jamie told her. “I could go all day!” When she first talked on the phone with Jamie, she started to shake. Her son was so angry, so abusive. “It was all my fault, right down to his conception,” she remembered. “And two hours later he called and it was ‘Hi, Mom. How ya doin’?’ Like that other call never happened. That’s when I hooked up with a counselor again.”
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18 • October - November, 2018 When Jamie came home with an “other than honorable” discharge, he started doing crack. Then he met a woman and married her within a week. He started doing meth. “It wasn’t until 2016 that I understood he had a drug problem,” his mother says. “I always thought it was mental health.
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It took me a long time to come to terms.” he remembers telling her son “I don’t want to lose you.” “I’ve been gone since 2012,” he replied. Jamie has committed himself and has talked about or tried rehab multiple times. He’s been in and out of trouble with the police. And the more his problems escalated, Jackie said, the more people isolated her.
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When she talks to family, the advice she hears is “Don’t enable him,” “Cut him off.” She is angry. “I just want someone to listen and understand the vast range of painful emotions that come with seeing my son hungry, dirty, strung-out and incoherent. And you tell me I can’t feed him?” Jackie said she started shutting down. She wakes up every day, not knowing what is going to come. “Stress, for me, comes out as illness and immobilizing pain because I just can’t talk about it.” She said her own medical history for the past few years has been piled high. She’s recently been diagnosed with earlystage emphysema. She knows she should quit smoking, but “cigarettes don’t let me down. They’ve always been there for me.” “Please stop smoking,” Jamie said. “You don’t want to die of that.” When Jamie announced he was going to rehab one Mother’s Day, she allowed
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herself to hope. She cleaned the car she’d drive him in. She got snacks. When he changed his mind at three in the morning the day he was scheduled to go, she crashed. “I sank into depression for months,” she said. “I still feel like a robot. I am so numb. I’m empty. I haven’t cried since December. I cannot explain how painful this is.” hat she needs beyond the hope of a future for her son is to share her story with people. But not many people ask. “A few people will ask, ‘How’s your son?’ I try not to give too much information, but that means so much.”
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She described her son and his friends collecting cigarette butts from around town, then carefully twisting out the tobacco and rolling their own. They can’t afford to buy a pack. There’s a whole world I know nothing about. “You don’t want to,” Jackie replied. Jackie hasn’t given up. “I may be hanging on with a 50-year-old thread that could break any minute, but I never gave up.
October - November, 2018 • 19
Nobody loves him as much as I do.” She paused. “I did pray to God to take his life,” she said. “To let his pain end. To put him out of his misery. But then I apologized. I still feel that way, but it’s wrong to impose what I think his destiny should be.”
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DION OGUST
Tourists trudge over Tannery Brook on Tinker Street in Woodstock.
Wave your freak flag high By the time we got to Woodstock it had turned into East Hampton By Harry Matthews
A
regular refrain I’ve heard over the past few years, surprising at first but with repeated consistency spoken
of as actual fact, was that Woodstock was fast becoming the next Hamptons. It seemed to me at first little more than the irony found at the heart of a bad joke, something maybe along the lines of “Hey, did you hear that they’ve gentrified
Soho?” The latter irony was that most of Soho was hardly ever a neighborhood but more a center of sweatshops and factories churning and pumping out manufactured goods. In a similar vein, one that I wrote about
DION OGUST
The village green in Woodstock has retained its familiar shape for over a century.
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in these very pages, was which Hudson river town would end up becoming the
next Williamsburg North. I shudder to think…What that spells, ultimately, is a
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Ulster Publishing Co. level of success with a focus on money. The augmented repetition of the Hamptons line coming from all sides did start to make me wonder and look at Woodstock in a different way, possibly with more deeply probing eyes tuned to changes happening right under our very noses. Was that really a Lamborghini that I saw driving down Tinker Street the other day? Was that Kanye and Elton huddled conspiratorially over martinis at the Bear Cafe? (The first was true, the second merely a nightmare.) Woodstock, for all of its charm and rock and roll, has long presented itself as a place of tolerance, a community that would protect its far-left ideologies to the death. It seemed to have a heartfelt commitment to an almost-anything-goes-if-you’re-anartist mentality. Over the years, it has been a safe harbor for those of us who want to wave our freak flags high, dress how the hell we want to dress, and generally get our groove on, whatever our groove might be. What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Nothing, nothing at all, except for the fact that a village has to survive. Very little of freak flags flying and grooves being gotten on helps bring in that demon seed of progress and survival; cold hard cash. One can’t live on love alone, though one can live on Bread Alone alone, that is if you have the bread to buy the Bread Alone bread. Woodstock is by far the most well-known town in the Catskills. If say, while in some other part of the world, far-flung or not, someone asks you where live, you might mention another local town. That does little beyond causing a look of complete bewilderment across the asker’s face. You follow it up with, “It’s near Woodstock”. They inevitably ask “Do you mean that Woodstock?” You nod. They smile. Mystery solved. Apart from sharing a region, a mountain range and with hope a little bit of inspiration, there is very little else that Woodstock has in common with the rest of this beautiful area. Though Woodstock has over the years done its fair share of rubbing off on places like Phoenicia, Rosendale, Kingston, Saugerties and even that old stick-in-the-mud Catskill, none of these other places have ever been called the Sixth Borough of New York City, something that I’ve heard said about Woodstock, more often than not jokingly, but on so regular a basis as to start to believe it. By referencing Woodstock as
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an upstate continuation of New York City, one cannot be sure whether the township is aware of the potential for alienating itself from its neighbors all around. Or if it even cares. The fact that the majority of the population are city transplants is harmless enough, but it also means that few multigenerational deep roots exist here, the same roots that often define a community. Feeling as though I barely had any roots anywhere myself, Woodstock beckoned to me like only India ever had in the past. And don’t you know, after moving to Woodstock one day almost exactly ten years ago, I awoke one morning to the glaring realization that I was in a place that I actually fit right into. My qualifications were simple. I was a not too successful artist still seeking something to do with my life, and thus I sought out like-minded people. Woodstock seemed perfect. I was a New Yorker, or “cidiot,� as one youngster described me, as in “Speed up or get the hell out of the way, ya damn cidiot!� He said it while passing my not-sofast-and-slightly dysfunctional Subaru. Woodstock was perfect for me in many
ways at that time. It was at the beginning of autumn, with deep winter a few months away. Things can get pretty quiet in Woodstock once the fall comes blowing in and peaks again for a bit as the
leafpeepers pass through on their annual migration. Then things get really quiet as the snowbirds pack up and head south. Luckily I slipped in just before the Airbnb craze. I’ve heard that since then
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it’s no longer so easy to find a place to rent around the hamlet these days. Airbnb has both helped and hurt many communities, Woodstock included. It has made it near-impossible for many longtimers to find anywhere to live. It has allowed many absentee homeowners to rent out their houses while they’re away, which often has in turn encouraged rowdy parties that do little to engender community spirit but greatly annoy the neighbors. Now Airbnb and its ilk seem to be thriving throughout the Catskills, a boon to many who can greatly use the extra cash. For a township the size of Woodstock, over 600 Airbnb rentals is disproportionate in the extreme.
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fter I lived about two years in Woodstock neighborhoods like Shady and Yerry Hill, I had the opportunity to buy a house in a small hamlet 20 minutes away. I jumped at it. I had moved to the area to be in Woodstock, but the deal was just too fortuitous to pass up. “It’s only 20 minutes away,” I thought. It seemed a whole different world than where I’d spent the previous two years. Gone were the snowbirds, the celebrity sightings (not that I really cared but…), the sixth-borough vibe that I had grown to like, the hippie shops, the hippies. I was suddenly living somewhere in upstate New York where there were families that had been here for over a century years, where they went to church, had pie-baking contests, chili cookoffs and pancake breakfasts at the local firehouse.
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October - November, 2018 • 25
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Lamborghinis (I only ever saw one), more affordable housing, the swimming holes kept free for all to enjoy whether people are clothed or not, and maybe a few less Airbnbs. I’m no one to talk, as I live off Airbnb. In the end we could all be a little more real and a little less angry. Remember, it’s not all about money. Some of it is all about love.
will all be great as long as I don’t discuss politics or religion. I’m glad that Woodstock is only 20 minutes away, that there is a place, real or not, that mostly shares and holds my politics dear, a place still likes a good march for a cause, and has one of the best damned community Thanksgivings I’ve ever experienced, where I can talk politics and religion the entire time!. In the end I would prefer to see fewer
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The sporting life Want to really go paleo? First you’ll need a permit
By Will Dendis
F
all’s first chill; another summer gone, and soon, another year. The realization is a passing bit of melancholy for many, but not for hunters. Since well before recorded history — before steel, agriculture, even fire — changing seasons meant different wild game would be on the move. For big-game hunters in the Northeast, that usually means whitetailed deer, when the fall breeding season drives otherwise wary bucks out of deep cover into the open. Hunting isn’t as popular as it once was. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, about five percent of Americans aged 16 and older hunt. Twice as many hunted 50 years ago. When they were
young, older hunters say, about half the boys in a high-school class would skip school for opening day of deer season. More hunters in the woods weren’t a problem. Because more hunters caused deer to move around, they were actually helpful. Today. a diminishing number of older hunters walk quieter woods. The sport may be on the decline, but you wouldn’t know it from browsing the registration site for the safety course required for all new hunters. At any given time over the last several months,
dozens of classes were offered within 50 miles of the mid-Hudson Valley. Most of them filled up quickly. I attended one in mid-September at a sportsmen’s club in Hurley. Over the course of eight hours, my classmates and I were led through the rules of gun handling and given an overview of the role hunting plays in conservation. We were inculcated with the sportsman’s ethos. In the afternoon, after a lunch of very modestly priced hamburgers and hot dogs, we received basic firearms training:
Is it possible to love something and kill it? Hunters say yes.
Ulster Publishing Co. target shooting with a .22 rifle (which is a very small caliber) and trap shooting with a 20-gauge shotgun. Then we took a written a test. Everyone passed. I was expecting the class to consist of myself and a couple of dozen 16-year-old boys, but it was more diverse. About a quarter of my classmates were female, and there were at least a few representatives from nearly every decade of adulthood. Some of the older attendees had been hunting before and had lost their huntersafety course certificates. Or at least that was their story. The course centers on safety. At the end of eight hours, we were all suitably aware of the dangers posed by a loaded firearm, which can inflict injuries to one’s self and others in myriad ways. Apparently, crossing a fence is especially perilous. The proper procedure was spelled out both verbally by our instructors and in a video. Later, we all took turns crossing a makeshift fence outside the club. The cover of the coursebook shows not a magnificent twelve-point buck scenting the wind in a November cornfield, nor an eager young hunter with his proud papa preparing to take his first shot. The cover was of two hunters on either side of a fence, passing an unloaded firearm over the top. You don’t learn much about hunting tactics. What kind of gun should I get? Where are the deer? Where should you be? How do you field-dress wild game? But there is only so much ground the instructors can cover in a single-day session. Given the choice between safe but ineffective hunters and the inverse, though, I can’t argue with their priorities.
A
surprising amount of attention was given to the importance of maintaining a good reputation among the non-hunting public. We were told that about five percent of Americans hunt, five percent are anti-hunting, and the rest are indifferent. But that could change. Hunters driving around with deer carcasses strapped to the hood of their trucks, who take shots near homes, or hunt on posted private property, sully the image of sportsmen everywhere. Hunting isn’t a right, we’re told. If the public turns against the practice, it could be forbidden someday. Really? I thought. I know plenty of animal-lovers, and I never heard them
October - November, 2018 • 27
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express opposition to hunters who eat what they kill. If anything, there’s usually a note of respect, even from vegetarians. After all, assuming you are going to eat meat, as 97 percent of Americans do, it’s hard to argue that killing and eating wild animals who live as nature intended is less virtuous than consuming beef raised on a feedlot hundreds of miles away.
That said, many would prefer hunters carry out their work solemnly; even say a sort of prayer, as we’re told huntergatherers did. “I ask the Great Deer Spirit to sacrifice one of your number so that I may feed my family.” In reality a successful hunt is exhilarating sport, like scoring a touchdown, not grim business. Hunters rejoice after
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Ulster Publishing Co. killing. Some find this troubling. Perhaps the International Hunter Education Association should advise hunters who make videos to leave out the end-zone celebration. Is it possible to love something and kill it? Hunters say yes. They say no one does more to protect wild habitat. Taxes on licenses, firearms and other hunting equipment fund conservation. Even bigticket trophy hunts in Africa, which seem to have few public defenders, are probably the only hope for the continued wild existence of many species. With a growing population demanding more land for homes and agriculture, there’s simply no other reason that makes financial sense. In our neck of the woods, where the population of white-tailed deer is doing just fine, hunters argue that they’re taking the place of predators. If deer weren’t hunted, their populations would be subject to cycles of boom and bust, with years of plenty followed by years of disease and starvation. My reasons to take part are a mix of family bonding, clean meat and curiosity. I wonder: Is hunting as simple and dull as I’d always assumed? It consists of more than sitting in a treestand freezing your ass off and then taking a shot a defenseless ungulate, followed by the messy work of gutting and processing, all just for 30 to 40 pounds of lean, sometimes tough meat? Is it possible we have a primordial switch inside, waiting to be flipped when we enter the woods in search of quarry? There’s only one way to find out.
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Ulster Publishing Co. Search “Hunter Safety Course New York” for a link to local course registrations. There are still some openings as of this writing. Opening day for regular deer season this year is November 17. More details on the New York State DEC site.
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A grasshopper’s advice Practical preparations for seasonal change By Elisabeth Henry
I
write this on the sort of hot day that melts your ice pop for full-flavor enhancement. It’s dog-days decadent, and then some. It’s so easy,
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easy to sit in a doorway, lean back, and think about that spiderweb. You will not notice that the evening primrose is gone. So, too, the iris, the daylily, the eastern tiger swallowtail. We have monarchs and black-eyed Susans
and the hydrangea, so voluptuous and fragrant that we can stop wishing it to be named B. Bardot and forgive the unfortunate moniker Pee Gee. The sky is blue, the clouds billow. Oh, Lord, we could live like this forever.
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Ulster Publishing Co. Well, you’re not going to, unless you opt to chase those waves in an endlesssummer lifestyle. Otherwise, be sure to get in your wood. It’s a little late. You should have done this a year ago to guarantee dry wood. In any case, a reputable wood guy is essential. You’ll want good, dry, clean hardwoods like maple, oak, sycamore, cherry and walnut. Ash is good. Ash burns hot, but does not leave coals. Oak leaves coals. Prices vary. Someone I consulted figured a full cord should run you $200, a face cord $100. Late spring is the best buy time to buy pellets. The big-box stores want to make room for summer inventory, and the price is nice. August is too late for a good price, but you need to stock up. It happens that the stores run out in late winter. You don’t want to run that boiler. Oil futures make it tricky to stock up on fossil fuels. You could make a habit of eyeballing the market, and stock up when the price is down, but pegging the market is tough. Change the filters on your oil and kerosene tanks. Clean and inspect your chimneys. Stock up on salt and sand to combat the inevitable and dreaded ice. Before autumn turns frosty, drain the gas out of lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, and any tool or appliance with a small engine. If you use high-test fuel bought at Stewart’s, you don’t have to do this. It is the ethanol in the non-high-test stuff that will eat the rubber parts of your carburetor, fuel pump, etc. Make a contract with a snowplow guy now. They get booked up and should you plan to take each day as it comes you will pay. Contracts are usually of two types:
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per season or per storm. If you plan to do your own snow removal, inspect your vehicle, your plow and your snowblower. peaking of snow, get your snow tires affixed by Halloween. Delay, and you will face long hours in the car guy’s waiting room reading dog-eared copies of The Enquirer or Tag Sale Classified. There’s always a last-minute rush. If you have an older car, check the battery. If you drive diesel, buy 911 now, or you won’t get it once winter comes. It’s an anti-gel additive. Check windows and doors for weather stripping. Make sure there’s no way a squirrel family can gnaw into the eaves of your house. Likewise, check that skunks, wood chucks and possums can’t squat in the basement, under the deck or the piers. Skunks will be particularly unwelcome in February. That’s mating season, and each one is on his or her last nerve. Mice, maybe rats, will come in. Gird your loins and set traps, or get a cat. Nothing works like a cat. Be sure to get a scrappy, scrawny streetwise character that’s been rescued from a barn. Not only does he or she know what her job is but, more importantly, he or she knows what hunger is. Do not put out bird feeders until December, or later. Otherwise the bear moves in.
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His hunger is much harder to dissuade, plus you are teaching these very willing students to regard human habitation as a convenient buffet. This leads to tragedy. Wholly preventable tragedy. As Missy Runyon chants “Let Wild Be Wild.� I’ve heard bird expert Rich Guthrie reassure WAMC listeners that the birds will survive without the feeders. But if you enjoy watching them and feel better making sure there is food in the bitter days provide feeders, but not too early. Put away lawn furniture. Pick up anything that might become frozen to the ground and covered in snow. This may become the subject of the story you tell the emergency-room doctor as your femur is being taped. Or cast. Likewise, locate your snow shovels, ice choppers and scrapers and position them accordingly. hink ahead about what winter will be like for your pets. Find a good place in the house for your birds and aquatic friends. Optimally, this should not be near windows. If eaves hang over the door you use to let out your dog or cat, remember to check for a snow load about to let go. Maybe put a
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32 • October - November, 2018 post-it there, as a reminder. Dog and cat pads suffer with ice salt, so be ready to attend to that. Do not tie out your dog. This practice will not only guarantee that the dog jumps on you, your friends, your ancient ancestors. It could also kill the animal. Horses will require water all winter. If your child is nagging you about buying a horse, don’t do it until Darling can pick up a five-gallon bucket of water and walk it at least 50 feet. Unless you yourself like doing that. Horses require lots of water, always. And that stuff freezes in these parts. If your horse stops drinking water, soak the feed and hay. Cold water might be the problem. Get a heated bucket and stand there and watch him drink. Keep the small pets inside as much as you can, and supervise outdoor activity. Coyotes are hungry in winter. Bring in all the plants you want to overwinter. It’s a shocking move, and doing it now prevents harm. Plant your garlic, flower bulbs, green manure. Wrap your
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fig tree and protect your more delicate shrubs. Wind will harm as much as frost. Once all the leaves have dropped on your shrubs (like spirea), you can prune.
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Compost the fallen deciduous leaves. Or make leaf mulch to add to your garden in spring. To make leaf mulch, you must shred the dry, fallen leaves with a leaf shredder or wood chopper. Place twelve-inch- to-18inch layers of this in a bin, or just a pile. On top of each layer, add a handful of urea, bone meal, ammonium nitrate or (if you have ’em) grass clippings. Mix the leaves and nitrogen additive with water, but do not saturate. Wet the leaves while adding the additive. Repeat the layering until all the leaves are processed, or your bin is full. Cover with a tarp or plastic lid over winter, and add to your garden in spring. After the leaves fall, clean out your gutters and check your leaders. Thank whomever you do not live in the Carolinas. My son was cleaning a bend in a clogged leader and a six-inch coiled snake of unknown variety jumped out at him and missed his face by a hair. You will find out now that the threat of the moth is real, unless you safeguarded every woolen thing in a rubber tubby with a tight lid. I don’t use mothballs. Who can live with that stink? This is a good moment to reiterate the advice about the cat. Mousies seem to love linen. They chew horrid little holes in the very best things, and then line their horrid, smelly little nests with the chewed bits. And another thing. We almost lost our entire enterprise here when we discovered that mice had packed every electrical junction box with nest material cemented by horrid little crushed mousie poop. Packed.
Ulster Publishing Co. And just waiting to ignite. I know that much of what I write makes me a scold. It is the voice I use to myself, though, because I love summer so, so much. I am the grasshopper. I must force myself to follow my own advice. So in case all this has been one big buzz kill let me offer this exquisite piece by Mary Oliver. Hers are beautiful words.
Lines written in the days of growing darkness by Mary Oliver Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of what was is married to the vitality of what will be? I don’t say it’s easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed.
Halloween
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October 6 HHS Cider Tasting & Market at Applestock October 12, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 27 & 28 Haunted Huguenot Street
October - November, 2018 • 33
October 31 Trick or Treat on Huguenot Street November 30 Community Tree Lighting November 30 to December 1 A Holiday on Huguenot Street 81 Huguenot Street, New Paltz (845) 255-1660 | huguenotstreet.org
34 • October - November, 2018
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It’s the water, folks Why else would so much inspiration have come from so empty a place? By Elisabeth Henry
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eep in the Catskills there are waterfalls and swimming holes and rock springs and hidden lakes that have names and locations known only to the locals. You are tempted right now to turn the page. Don’t. Forgive me, Elmore Leonard, but one cannot write about the Catskills without writing about the actual “place.” And the pure, clear water. Perhaps that’s why New York City became a mecca for art. Given the amount of innovation and creative breakthroughs that originated here, it could just be that there is some-
Halloween
The Saugerties Lighthouse, where the Hudson River meets the Esopus Creek. thing in the water. Nature’s alchemy makes it so that from these lonely peaks and tiny towns all of
New York City’s thirst is quenched by the watershed waters — waters that spill profusely from the a rocky aquifer (some of the most ancient stone on the planet) carpeted and camouflaged by fairytale forest and then pour, unfiltered, into the tunnels and aqueducts of The Big Apple. Oh, sure you want some dish on the coolest filmmaker that just moved here. Or his muse. Or hers. They are here. But, unlike in other getaway destinations, celebrities come here to disappear. Celebrities have been coming here as long as the New World has produced celebrities. (Please note: Even if you glommed the “best …” at Sundance, wear those Gucci flip-flops up the climb to Kaaterskill Falls and you might really disappear and become yet another Catskill Ghost Story. You’ve been warned.) Let’s not confuse that truth with the much-mentioned Golden Years of The Borscht Belt. I have no facts to cite, but perhaps those places thrived due to the proximity to New York City and, perhaps, relatively cheaper real estate. People who come here must really want to come here. It’s not easy. And it gets harder as the moons progress. But that’s part of the charm. It’s empty.
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opular-culture action started early. The American naturalists John Bartram and his son William came to the Catskills in 1753 as part of their explorations into the region’s plant life, focus-
Ulster Publishing Co. ing particularly on the balsam fir, known among the colonists as balm of Gilead fir and believed by both them and the Indians to have curative powers. While their explorations were not extensive, the elder Bartram’s short account of the adventure, A Journey to Ye Cat Skill Mountains with Billy, was widely read and appreciated both in America and abroad. It is the first literary appreciation of the Catskills as a natural environment. Washington Irving carved out a successful writing career in 1819 based on a collection of short stories that contains The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. Irving cashed in on the mystery of “The Blue Mountains,” the summits which when viewed from a distance seem to disappear in a veil of clouds. To his contemporary readers, the harsh landscape and plentiful wildlife was as much threat as escape. Spooky. The forest was most certainly enchanted. When considering attractions, let’s not overlook the major body of water, the mighty Hudson. It was a trip up the Hudson River in the autumn of 1825 that proved to be a dazzling turning point in the life of the young Englishman Thomas Cole. He marveled at the colorful fall foliage surrounding the unspoiled river banks. Compared to the churning wheels
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October - November, 2018 • 35
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of production and industrial steel found in British cities, New York’s pastoral landscape was an untamed riot of color that led into a vast and unspoiled wilderness. In that year he painted a few land-
scapes, sold them out of a bookstore in the city, and thus founded The Hudson River School of Painting. It wasn’t long before art stars like Frederic Church and Bierstadt and Asher Durand arrived with
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36 • October - November, 2018 brushes, canvas and paint, attracted by the wild, romantic world Cole depicted. Many others followed. One can see many of these works at the permanent collect in the Museum of Art and History in Albany. One should also see the current work of young Lauren Sansaricq, whose beautiful landscapes are mounted in the Hawthorne Gallery in Manhattan, making her the youngest artist so honored. Sansaricq grew up in Columbia County and lives an authentic artist’s life, often perched on rocky ledges, painting plein-air. And she sings, too. She was recently featured on WDST.
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n 1860, young John Burroughs, the seventh child of a farmer in Roxbury, New York, was published in The Atlantic Monthly. His essay drew the attention of the editor, who suspected it had been plagiarized from the work of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. Burroughs went on to become an important writer. He
was a celebrity author, as famous then as the literary, political and industrial luminaries with whom he consorted, men like Jay Gould, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Edison, John Muir, Walt Whitman, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Ford. By 1912, special editions of his nature essays were used as reading primers in almost every school district in the country. In the words of his biographer Edward Renehan, Burroughs’ special identity was less that of a scientific naturalist than that of “a literary naturalist with a duty to record his own unique perceptions of the natural world.” The result was a body of work whose resonance with the tone of its cultural moment explains both its popularity at that time and its relative obscurity since. Can you imagine the squalls of animal-rights activists when it is learned that a portrait of Burroughs took much longer to complete than anticipated due to the fact that the great man often broke his pose to jump off the stump he occupied to shoot woodchucks?
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n 1883, Candace Wheeler, an expert in textiles and interiors, purchased land on Parker Mountain near to Hunter Mountain. She sought to carve out a “wild life” (in summer only, of course) amid rugged surroundings, in a “realm of unknown beauty.” Mrs. Wheeler was a founder of the Society of Decorative Arts. She partnered with Louis Comfort Tiffany and in 1883 established her own design firm, Associated Artists. Many of the early residents of the community that grew around her vision were professional women, particularly writers, according to the biography, Can-
dace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875 and 1900 by Amelia Peck and Carol Irish. A number of the working women were single, and while their presence in other 19th-century summer colonies may not have been as welcome, the women were “accepted and admired” in heeler’s circle, according to the book. While not a radical, Wheeler consistently worked to help other women achieve financial independence. Mark Twain was one of the famous male vacationers to Mrs. Wheeler’s summer colony. He sat outside his cottage spinning tales to all who would listen — elite literati and locals alike. This was 1890. The community chose the name Onteora, which was said to come from a Delaware Indian word for the area meaning “hills of the sky.” Upon closer scrutiny of historic documents, we learn that “Onteora” is a made-up name preferred by Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, a geographer, geologist, and ethnographer, whose ear was offended by the guttural Germanic names common in the area. He re-baptized many places and things to better suit his own brand of lyricism. These names were always purported to be Native American, which served both to sound melodic and to defy common curiosity. This sort of mining of the naiveté of newcomers is nothing to sneeze at. Make note. As in, when your car skids into a building on Main Street during a blizzard, and you weep to the attending local police officers and the tow truck operator, “But I purposely purchased a car good in snow. A BMW!” “Duly noted,” they answer and smile as they continue to dash off many citations and hoist your crumpled ride onto the massive bed with screeching chains.
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Right around this time, the American stage was dominated by a woman named Maude Adams. She was the greatest actress of her time and rivaled Sarah Bernhardt, 20 years her senior, in international celebrity. Visiting the Catskill High Peaks. Ms. Adams was inspired to buy land and build a home within Mrs. Wheeler’s community. The estate remains intact today. Exquisite onstage but purposely unremarkable-looking offstage, she had a keen intellect. She invented color film photography at GE in Schenectady, and donated the technology to said company. That, she said, was her greatest regret. She was the muse for Sir James Barrie, and was the inspiration for Peter, in Peter Pan. Despite her enormous success as the era’s “Perfect Woman,” she stated that Peter was her favorite role, a role she had developed in the Catskill forest, drifting through the shadowy glades, climbing trees, skipping stones into creeks, and riding her horse down the bridle paths.
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he Catskills are often referred to as America’s First Wilderness because scholars trace the beginnings of the environmental conservation movement to this beautiful area. The history of New York State’s Catskill Forest Preserve (established 1885) and 1100-square-mile
Catskill Park (established 1904) is one of the earliest experiments in conservation in the United States, wherein wild lands coexist with private property within the blue line of the Catskill Park. It is an interesting coincidence that Barrie’s masterpiece and Adams’s role in it came to epitomize the spirit of innocent wildness and childlike wonder at precisely the same time this enchanted forest came to be forever wild. Forever protected. Forever. People come here when it’s decided that their needs are very simple. The water is clean. The air is pure. Life is good. Camp Woodland near Phoenicia was a summer camp that sought to help children understand the democratic roots of their country by exposing them to the traditions and tradition bearers of the Catskills. The camp grew out of New Deal programs that provided work for artists. Under the direction of Norman Studer, with the help of Herbert Haufrecht and Norman Cazden, youngsters collected folk songs and stories, learned traditional crafts, and documented the disappearing traditions of the region’s people. The camp’s integrated population and celebration of local tradition-bearers seemed subversive to some. With its director under pressure, it closed in 1962.
October - November, 2018 • 37
Its legacy lives on in the former campers who were inspired to make their life’s work in folklore. Pete Seeger was a counselor there, and is the place that inspired his writing of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” Thank you, Pete, for reclaiming the river. The flowers are still here.
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Stopping the monster Some molds are toxic and others ain’t, but all should be eradicated, if possible By Jennifer Brizzi his sneaky beast is one thing on which no two people seem to be able to agree. How can you tell if your house has mold? Which strain is the worst? What do household molds do to the human body? Are they even “toxic” at all? If you have them, what should you do about them? Ugly and smelly they are, for sure. Not long ago, my young son smelled strongly of mold when I picked him up after he was hanging out in a friend’s basement a couple of times. With his allergies and mild asthma, I was concerned. Fortunately, the situation has since been fixed. The apartment downstairs from me has had black mold for years (or so I’ve been told by other tenants in the building — I’m not a professional mold identifier). That apartment has had many renovations between tenants. A lot of drywall has been replaced directly below my office/bedroom. The wall behind the under-sink cabinet in my kitchen, where I spend several hours daily cooking and washing dishes, has a pesky, stubborn patch of mold. So do
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Mold on the ceiling of a house. various locations in my bathroom, which has no window or fan for ventilation. For that, all I can do is keep spraying with an anti-mold and mildew product, which erases it temporarily. Or I could move. Molds of all types have has been thriving
with this seemingly interminable damp weather we’ve been having in the past few months. It seems we just can’t get rid of it. Some of us have been weakening under the strain. Because so little is definitively known about the danger to our health from molds, it’s become a
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Ulster Publishing Co. subject where extreme opinions seem to have hatched. And who can definitely say they are wrong? One blogger, at charliessong.wordpress. com, blames mold for the stillbirth of her son Charlie and three miscarriages, as well as her own continuous severe health problems, including a cancer diagnosis. She said she consulted â&#x20AC;&#x153;a mold doctorâ&#x20AC;? and moved her family to a new house within 24 hours of learning her home had toxic mold. She wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t taking any chances. However, the Centers for Disease Control maintains that â&#x20AC;&#x153;at present there is no test that proves an association between Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) and particular health symptoms. Individuals with persistent symptoms should see their physician. However, if Stachybotrys chartarum (Stachybotrys atra) or other molds are found in a building, prudent practice recommends that they be removed.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;We knew there was potential that if we moved our things into a new home,â&#x20AC;? the blogger continued. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The microscopic mycotoxins that mold creates would crosscontaminate any new place. It was like movingâ&#x20AC;Świth lice. Every single thing we moved had to be wiped down with Clorox wipes, and every single piece of clothing had to be washed in ammonia twice before moving. And we moved knowing that we still may not get to keep any of our thingsâ&#x20AC;ŚOur doctor assured us that the only way I will improve is to literally eliminate all of our porous material possessions because those contaminated possessions cannot be sufficiently cleaned and will
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October - November, 2018 â&#x20AC;˘ 39
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Everything.” The house had no visible mold. Her physician tested her urine for mycotoxins for $800, and found “double the detectable limit of the mycotoxins produced by stachybotrys.” The blogger was told that she had clearly been exposed long-term to stachybotrys chartarum in the trichothecene group of mycotoxins, a.k.a. “toxic black mold.” “[It’s] typically found in water-damaged buildings,” she added, “like those found [after] Hurricane Katrina. It is also the same mycotoxins used in biological warfare.” She claimed that the mold in her house had destroyed her immune function and that molds cause “neurological and reproductive problems, thyroid and respiratory problems, and sadly even cancer.” The CDC concedes mold is associated with certain health problems. “In 2004 the Institute of Medicine (IOM) found there was sufficient evidence to link indoor exposure to mold with upper respiratory tract symptoms, cough and wheeze in otherwise healthy people; with asthma symptoms in people with asthma; and with hypersensitivity pneumonitis in individuals susceptible to that immunemediated condition,” the CDC reported. “Certain individuals with chronic respiratory disease (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, asthma) may experience difficulty breathing. Individuals with immune suppression may be at increased
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October - November, 2018 • 41
INAUGURAL S E A S O N
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42 • October - November, 2018 risk for infection from molds.”
How do you find them? How do you uncover molds that may lurk in your home or potential home? The 100,000 species of molds (only some produce mycotoxins) can be visible as black, brown, gray, greenish or whitish, creepy-looking splotches, clusters or threads. Black molds aren’t necessarily toxic, and toxic molds can come in other colors besides black. Often molds are not visible to the naked eye and can lurk behind drywall, wallpaper, insulation,
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carpet, upholstery or any other porous surfaces like paper, cardboard or wood. They get in the house in the first place when spores cling to our clothes, shoes and even pets. Although “There is always a little mold e v e r y w h e r e ,” notes the CDC, aggressive household molds are encour-
aged to grow prolifically in high humidity or in moist places like near leaks (pipe or ceiling) or after flooding. To figure out if you have mold or not, first look at potentially damp areas like under sinks for obvious signs of it. Inspect walls for suspicious discoloration, stains and spots. Mold has a distinctive, icky, musty smell. Do the sniff test in every room. Also, if you have allergic symptoms like itchy red eyes, nasal congestion or sneezing that bother you only when you are at home but not elsewhere, or if your asthma gets worse, those are potential signs. The CDC advises against testing for particular molds, either as a home test (generally considered unreliable) or by professionals (very pricey), because doing so doesn’t determine health risks, and any type should be removed if it’s causing health problems.
The CDC concedes mold is associated with certain health problems.
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How do you get rid of mold? First, fix any moisture problems. Repair any leaks and dry out any moist areas, because if not, the mold will just come back that much faster. Next, if it’s a small visible area on a hard surface, you can clean it with commercial mold removal products or a bleach solution of one part bleach to 15 parts water. Mixing bleach with ammonia will create toxic fumes. The EPA recommends using detergent rather than bleach. There must be good ventilation, i.e. windows open, with fans to redirect the spores outside. Wear non-porous gloves, safety glasses and a face mask (N-95 or equivalent per the EPA). Any sponges or rags you use must be disposed of immediately in a sealed bag. Mold in or on carpeting, insulation and drywall or other wall boards means those items must be replaced. Scrubbing won’t do it. The CDC recommends you look up the U.S. Environmental Protec-
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October - November, 2018 • 43
tion Agency (EPA)’s guide Mold Remediation in Schools and Commercial Buildings if the moldy area is over ten square feet. Although local mold inspectors and removers didn’t respond to my requests for contact for this article, I think it’s a good idea to get professionals in for mold detection and removal. They have equipment like moisture meters and fiber optics that most of us don’t have in our toolboxes. They can detect and eradicate mold patches you might miss. And I’d suggest more than one bid. Scams are out there. As much as bloggers, homeowners, restoration companies and federal health agencies may disagree on the toxicity of mold, all conclude that the monster should be dealt with. No matter the type of mold or if it seems to be affecting anyone in the household or not, we are better off eradicating it — if we can.
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Saturday, November 10th at 7:30pm “In Nature” at The Woodstock Playhouse Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna, Von Suppe In the Steppes of Central Asia, Borodin The Moldau, Smetana • Pastoral Symphony, no. 6, Beethoven
Saturday, January 19th, 2019 at 7:30pm at The Woodstock Playhouse featuring the “Woodstock and Beyond Concerto Competition Winner” Also on the program will be the Symphony no. 2 by Jean Sibelius
Saturday, March 9th, 2019 at 7:30pm “Friendship” Olin Hall of Bard College Featuring TWSO’s own Allison Rubin, Oboe Concerto in C major by Haydn Also on the program, Enigma Variations by Edward Elgar, and more.
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68 Mountain Rest Rd. New Paltz, NY • (845) 255-1559
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Doctor Gregg We know the doc, but he’s not taking on new patients By Susan Barnett
M
y partner KB and I tend to get friendly with our doctors. We think it’s important to build a personal relationship with a healthcare provider. Okay. That’s not it, really. The truth is, it’s mainly because KB is accident-prone. We see doctors a lot. So we get to know them pretty well, pretty quickly. We stick with the ones we like. My guy broke his leg after a fall on the ice in a gallant effort to fulfill my wish for an Oreo cookie on a winter night. He poked himself in the eye with a surprisingly sharp ornamental grass. He’s thrown his back out building a stone sidewalk. Rolled a car in a snowstorm (no injuries that time but the car didn’t do so well), tore his meniscus (that’s in the knee) twice, and nearly removed a finger in a box-cutter incident. It was a frightening thing for him to leave his doctors behind when we moved. And it was soon frightening for me, too. We both needed a local doctor almost as soon as we moved into our new house. I’ll spare you the details but for KB, they involved a snow reflector and shards of plastic in his thumb. He had been trying to get the splinters out himself for a couple of weeks, and the pain had become impossible to ignore. We’d seen a sign for a local health clinic just around the corner from our house. We called. “He’s not taking new patients,” the receptionist said. “But what do you need?” KB explained what had happened, and before the day was out he was in the office of Gregg Kujawski, nurse-practitioner and the only local healthcare provider in our little one-horse town. I wasn’t home. So I heard all about this after the fact. “He’s great,” KB told me. “Not what I expected at all. Picture Martin Short with a Long Island accent.”
Gregg Kujawski, FNP-BC, it turns out, worked in an emergency room in a Long Island hospital before moving to the country. He has stories. He tells them in a machine-gun-quick, clipped downstate accent. “I love doing this stuff,” he confided to KB as he numbed the area prior to going to work with a scalpel. “I never get to do it.” Half an hour of minor surgery and two stitches later, Gregg gave it a 50-50 shot that a specialist would be in KB’s future. But we suddenly felt just a bit safer. We knew the local doc.
I
didn’t expect to meet Gregg any time soon. I wasn’t counting on my dog, whose name is Violet Wiggins, meeting the neighboring cows. We were out for a walk, and both the dog and I were admiring the cows. Mrs. Wiggins sat down, the better to admire them. I kept walking, and fell right over her in the middle of the road, breaking my fall with an outstretched hand and landing on one knee. She scampered out of the way with her usual worried expression. The cows were mildly surprised. I stood up before an oncoming dairy truck could flatten us and I assessed the damage. The knee had some gravel in it, but seemed to be okay. The arm, not so much. Everything seemed to be in the right place, but I tried it out and everything hurt. A lot. I remember thinking, This isn’t going to be good. I walked home with my arm in the air, as though I were begging to be called on by some unseen teacher. It felt better than letting it hang. KB carefully helped me clean up the scrapes. “I’m fine,” I insisted. Within a couple of hours, it was clear I wasn’t fine at all. We called Gregg. “He’s not taking new patients,” the receptionist reminded us. “But come on in.” I found myself in the waiting room of a small modular building on the top of a hill. A bright-eyed, wiry fellow who did in-
deed look remarkably like Martin Short popped his head out of a door and said, “What’d ya do?” I followed Gregg into an exam room and sat with my arm carefully held across my stomach. I told him the story, with full orchestration and five-part harmony. “We call that a Foosh,” he said happily. “Fall On Outstretched Hand. I saw a lot of them in the ER. You may have broken your hand, or your wrist, or your elbow, maybe even your shoulder. Or if you’re lucky you didn’t break anything and it’s just sore. We’ll get an X-ray. You can come back and we’ll figure out what’s next, or you can have them take care of it there.” I explained my insurance covers barely anything worth discussing. He told me the cheapest answer was to go get the X-ray, and then come back to him. “We try to work with people,” he assured me. “Nobody can afford to get sick any more!”
W
e drove to Oneonta, where the nearest hospital can be found. The first X-ray came back negative. No breaks. Gregg was surprised but happy I’d been so lucky. He advised a sling, a brace, anti-inflammatories, and to check back with him. The next day, a beat-up gray Jeep pulled into the driveway. It was Gregg. “I was out and wondered how you’re doing,” he told me. “I figured I’d check.” I decided I was a fan of our local doc. After four weeks, a period of time that Gregg thought should be sufficient for me to feel better, I didn’t feel better at all. Remember, please, that I am not his patient. He’s not taking new patients. But who else was I going to call? I called him. He ordered another X-ray. This time they found the break. It was my elbow. Fortunately, it was healing nicely. Gregg wanted another opinion. His staff, most of whom I believe are family members, spent a frantic day on the phone trying to find an orthopedist who would fit
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a lot more cocaine and meth. Gregg’s not seeing it. “The prescription-meds-abuse thing seems to have peaked, thanks to tougher state regulations. But I’m still seeing mostly heroin here.” It’s cheap, he says. “Cheaper than a six-pack of beer.” The biggest challenge for treating addiction, according to Gregg, is the inability to answer the demand for help with quitting. There is, he has seen, a lack of access and a lack of resources. “Once you get off the stuff, there’s really no place to go to help you stay sober. The one private-practice counselor I know? I just swamp her with referrals.” The same lack of resources affects his other patients as well. “The wait is just unbelievable for specialists around here. I take everybody. I don’t turn anybody away. But they sometimes have to wait a really long time for the next step.” The system, he says, is fragile. That leaves him being more reactive that proactive. But he’s all we’ve got. And he knows it. Helping is what seems to motivate him. Helping is what made him take in two new patients, even though he’s got no room for more.
Gregg Kujawski, nurse-practitioner me in. They called as far as Binghamton. I ended up seeing a fancy doctor at Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown. If you’ve ever wondered what a hospital for people with more money than you is like, I’m guessing it’s like Bassett. It is basically a lovely big building in the middle of an arboretum. I felt like I should be wearing a cocktail dress. Inside was nice, too. “Looks good,” Fancy Doctor said, upon examining the new X-rays. “I don’t think there’s a need for a cast. Just don’t push it for another couple of weeks.” Gregg called that afternoon. “No cast? What if you fall?” he asked. He didn’t sound happy. “I won’t fall,” I promised.
G
regg has since driven by twice while I’ve been out walking the dog. He always stops and chats. “I should just go to Walmart and make you a cast,” he said the first time, eyeing my arm dubiously. “How’s it doing?” he asked the second time. I told him it was better. It is. Sort of. My last followup with Gregg gave us a chance to chat. I wasn’t in severe pain, and he had time. I’d already figured out he is a lifeline for this community. I saw a
October - November, 2018 • 45
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steady stream of people in and out of his office, and few stopped at the window to pay. Those who could, he later said, did. “I get paid a lot of zucchini and eggs and chicken,” Gregg said and shrugged. “What are you gonna do? People pay what they can. When we opened this practice, we figured if my wife and sister-in-law and a family friend handled the paperwork we could keep our overhead down.” He laughed. “It sounded like a good idea when we started.” He does a lot of work with addiction, particularly addictions to painkillers. He is a licensed provider of medical marijuana, which, in New York, is legal for a very limited but expanding set of medical issues. He said he specializes in working with chronic pain, and the people who become addicted to pain meds. That aspect of the practice is registered as Catskill Cannabis Solutions. “I’ve seen it help,” he told me. “It helps with pain. It doesn’t really get you high, but it helps with pain — nerve pain, chronic pain. And it helps with the withdrawal off the other stuff.” Law enforcement and social-services advocates say they’re seeing a lot less heroin and prescription-meds abuse, and
G
regg, like most people in this area, isn’t getting rich. He is, more than likely, just getting by. “You do what you love, it doesn’t necessarily pay,” he said on my last follow-up. “But can you imagine me working in some office?” I can’t. And it’s lucky for us that he doesn’t. Because he chose to treat patients in a poor, rural area, we got a professional who cares. I saw it when he dealt with us. And I saw it after my neighbor died suddenly in his home. “I got there right after they called me, all ready to do my thing,” Gregg said. “But he was gone. He must have died in his sleep. And I’d just seen him the day before. I couldn’t believe it.” He shook his head. “He was a good guy. A real character.” It’s a small community here in Delaware County. People are connected, no matter whether they’ve spoken in years or spoken just hours before. Gregg, like the old country doctor from the horse-and-buggy days, is connected to us all. But he’s still not my primary-care physician. He’s not taking new patients.
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We redo the kitchen But we’re befuddled by the many choices available By Dan Barton one is the summer of our massive kitchen and dining room renovation. We are celebrating glorious autumn with a brand-new kitchen and dining room. Until about four and a half years ago I had lived in rental property for all my adult (i.e., after I moved out of my parents’ house) life. When you rent, you get what you get for kitchen space, and since I lived in some of the very last affordable housing in northern Dutchess County, what I got was not a lot. But you adapt, work within your limits, and sometimes chop your veggies in the living room. Survivable, sure, but there were always the fantasies of infinite counter space, Star Trek-style appliances and cabinets of the finest and rarest woods. These were the visions that swirled around in my head while I was cooking up something on a stove that I am pretty sure dated back to the Kennedy administration. So, when the time came for my wife and me to redo the kitchen, it was exciting and a little terrifying (for me, anyway) to be confronted with a total blank canvas upon which to paint our dreams. My time
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Ulster Publishing Co. as a renter didn’t prepare me for the massive multitude of choices that had to be made — styles, materials, paint colors, what kinds of appliances, what kind of whatever you want the countertops to be, what kinds of thingies one puts on the cabinets (they’re called “pulls,” I had no idea), you name it. More decisions to be made than there are stars in the sky. In the world of today, there are groovy software tools that let you design a cyberkitchen, and then make printouts to show everybody. These also serve as prophetic scripture during the dark days when you’re eating microwave burritos for the third time in a week — a promise on paper of the better thing. Come, new kitchen, swiftly come. When I use the word “massive” to describe the reno, maybe I am being not hyperbolic enough — it was to the studs, and actually to the ground. The madmen who built the kitchen part of our house way back circa 1900 began (after, I presume, drinking some sketchy moonshine made from distilled raccoons and treating their advanced syphilis by snorting mercury) by placing wood beams on the literal actual ground. I remember having a moment looking at the rocks which hadn’t been looked at in 120 years and wouldn’t, I hope, be looked at again for at least another 40, 50 years, or until we at least sell the house. When renovating old houses, discoveries are made. While it was no dice on a bag of gold coins or a human skull, we did find an old hammer someone dropped in a disused chimney, and about 20 weird
October - November, 2018 • 47
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a conversation piece. One might expect this paragraph to be the one about what a nightmare the contractors were. They would show up, do some stuff for three or four days, then
metallic rod things that were apparently used as weights for curtains. All useful in their day, I suppose, but the gold coins would have been much more useful to help pay for it all, and the skull useful as
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Ulster Publishing Co. vanish as completely as Amelia Earhart or Judge Crater for a month-plus, then show up again. That didn’t happen. Our contractor came from the other side of New York (the part near Buffalo, where the wings are) for the express purpose of doing our job. I love to support local, but in this case the exception made a huge difference. The focus was relentless, even in the face of three or four heat waves and the wettest August in the history of rain. Demolition began the third week of July and the whole thing was done and ready to go by the second week of September. That’s pretty good, I think, especially since I hear some stories about kitchen jobs still ongoing that got started in the Eisenhower administration. Another way that not shopping local paid off for us was with the cabinets. We heart New York, sure, and in general we don’t kvetch about the taxes that much. After all, a state government as helpful,
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Ulster Publishing Co. efficient and morally upright as our own needs money for all the Excelsior. But a quick hop across the border to the People’s Republic of Bernie-stan saved us big in sales tax. (How a state as allegedly socialist as Vermont survives without slapping eight-plus percent on most transactions is, frankly, baffling. Next thing you’ll tell me is that half their legislative and gubernatorial leaders actually don’t get convicted of bribery. What?) o, as the autumnal equinox officially brought fall to our valley, we had a new kitchen. Clean, richly outletted and LED-lit to the nines, with some Edison bulbs for mood. Both we and our cats reacted to the undiscovered country in a similar fashion — walking around, smelling things, figuring out, trial and error, how to best use our new space and our new stuff. This process is ongoing, but I’m glad it happened in this season. There are probably seasons in other places as good as autumn in the Hudson Valley, but I refuse to believe there are seasons anywhere better than autumn in the Hudson Valley. The delightfully chillier temperatures,
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coming after the swelter when it’s all about keeping things cool, bring sublime joy to pretty simple stuff like making a pot of hot coffee or oatmeal. Or chili, which was the first major thing that got cooked in the kitchen. Everybody has their own take on the best chili. I like to use stew beef instead of ground, Penzey’s powder all the way and baked in the Le Creuset Dutch oven rather than bubbled in a pot on the stovetop. (Another plus of
Health
October - November, 2018 • 49
all this is that we finally get to deploy a lot of the kitchen stuff we got when we got married in 2014. There’s a waffle iron that’s been seriously underused and a blender that’s still in the box, for Christ’s sake.) Next thing I think is going to be some macaroni and cheese, and in about three days from this writing three bananas will be overripe enough for banana bread. I don’t know if we’re doing Thanksgiving here yet — we don’t have the dining-room
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table thing nailed down and it is just so much easier to go out and let other people handle it. I do want to do a dryrun turkey-with-trimmings dinner some time this month, though. Maybe pick a game the Giants might actually win so as to give thanks for the Giants actually winning a game? Colder weather and earlier sunsets drive the action inside this time of year. Very few of us are perfectly happy with our living spaces — we still have a lot to work on in ours. I know many people who, like those bacteria what dwell by thermal vents at the bottom of the ocean, really love the hot weather and mourn its passing. I neither am looking forward to being snowed upon, scraping ice off the car, and days with temperatures so low that I refer to them as “booger-freezing weather.” But what’s best, maybe, about fall is how it intensifies coziness and its related delights. And with our new kitchen as the epicenter, this is going to be our most intensely cozy autumn yet.
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October - November, 2018 • 51
Four favorite New Paltz hikes You enter a painting that you don’t want ever to escape By Erin Quinn “Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.” — Albert Camus
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here is nothing quite like the smell of mist rising and leaves falling and breezes being swept up to carry with it a scent of pine, like a promise, and curling leaves retreating in their sad decay. But as the sun shines on these autumnal days with the mountains drenched in color, trees line footpaths like a runway attempting to outdo another in their garish foliage display. It’s one of the greatest shows on earth and it’s playing all day, every day, right here in the Hudson Valley. Here are four of my favorite New Paltz area hiking highlights.
West-of-Wallkill with Mohonk Tower seen in the background.
Under Cliff/Over Cliff Loop: This five-mile carriage road loop constructed by hand in 1903 has become an iconic Hudson Valley hike in all seasons, but most impressionably in the fall. Part of the Mohonk Preserve, this loop is easily accessible by parking in the West Trapps trailhead parking lot, just a half mile passed the hairpin turn on Route 44/55 in Gardiner on the left. From there hikers, climbers, cyclists and simple sauntering folks climb up a fairly steep hill until they arrive at the beginning of the loop, marked by a larger-than-life talus boulder that often has people hanging from it in precarious Spiderman-like poses. There has always been a heated debate by runners as to which way is “faster.” Starting left on Overlook or right onto Undercliff. I suppose it’s all in the perspective of the runner — end on a slight downhill or on a slight uphill? Which do you prefer? I’m a big fan of starting towards the right, where one is quickly in the midst
of the hustle and bustle of rock climbers yelling “traverse,” “belay,” “take,” “rappel” or even “dyno!” There are mats and chalk dust and the clinking made by racks of metal objects used to help humans defy gravity and shimmy up hundred-foot rock faces. It’s a colorful, lively, subculture that one can pass through and observe without having to leave the safety of the carriage road. What feels like a juggernaut in the beginning with ropes and harnesses and bandana-clad dogs tied to trees soon thins out. The carriage road becomes quieter, the cliffs receding not in importance but in greater isolation. The more experienced climbers tend to venture there, engineering their ascents just out-of-view. That’s okay because one suddenly stops craning their neck upwards towards the cliffs and instead peers over their right shoulder towards the sprawling vistas that open up, showcasing the valley rife with farmlands
below. When the views close up on either side, the path envelops its visitor in a canopy of foliage that is like a companion, winding along quietly with you, not too bold and not too boring. Gentle. The slope has a slight downward trajectory. Just when it feels like you are deep into the woods there emerges a stunning view of the Mohonk Tower, standing up regally on an opposing cliff. After approximately 2.5 miles, there is a four-way intersection (any direction a fine choice) but for this story’s purpose one would just stay the course, bearing left towards a clearly marked sign that reads “Overcliff Road.” This will take fall-loving visitors to the backside of this section of the Shawangunk Ridge where the foliage views in contrast with the white conglomerate rocks and the outlines of the Catskill Mountains in the not-so-far distance will make one feel like they’ve just entered into a painting that they
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donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want ever to escape. This side of the loop is quiet, breathtaking at points and in the end leads you right back to where you started. Bonticou Crag at the Mohonk Preserve There are views and there are views. Bonticou Crag provides one of the most stunning views in all of the Hudson Valley, accessible by a challenging rockscramble or by winding up the backside on less precarious trail. Once atop of the mountain of white boulders one can see the foliage gracing the valleys below the contrast of the white against burnt orange and crimson red, making the richness of color that much more dramatic. The approximately three-mile hike begins at the Spring Farm trailhead, just past the entrance to the Mohonk Mountain House off of Mountain Rest Road in Alligerville. The path begins in a series of meadows with sweeping views of the Catskills and then traverses through some grassy knolls and into the woods where the canopy of ever-turning leaves provides some brushstroked shade. The hike eventually takes one to the base of Bonticou Crag, which takes some delicate foot maneuvering and agile leaps to hope and climb from boulder to boulder as one makes the ascent. Once on top there is a feeling of exposure that is invigorating with 360-degree views of the surrounding countryside that includes the Wallkill Valley and River, the Catskills, The Trapps and places beyond the periphery of vision. It is a delight and the perfect spot to soak in the fleeting moments of fall. Have a picnic, do a handstand (not too close to the edge), or simply admire being that close to the sky.
River-to-Ridge (r2r) in New Paltz A newly opened trail allows visitors to New Paltz to access so much of the agricultural bounty and autumnal beauty of the area without having to pay a dime, purchase a pass, point to a sticker or flash a bar code on an outdoor app. The trail begins on the Carmine Liberta Bridge across the Wallkill River just across from the Gilded Otter Restaurant, and then winds along the river, into the Wallkill Valley Farm cornfields, into green pastures and up over the Mohonk Preserve foothills that provide breathtaking views of the Shawangunk Ridge, the Mohonk Tower and the farmland that buttresses the mountain. Although not paved, this trail
Overlook Carriage Road, early fall. is wide and smooth enough for a family of cyclists to enjoy it, walkers of all ages and abilities as well as runners, dog-walkers and myriad painters and photographers who are in the midst of an autumn cornucopia with swelling pumpkins, golden tasseled cornstalks bowing and preening
with the slightest breeze, the lush sound of the North-flowing Wallkill off to the right and of course the mountains alive with fall foliage pressing its color against the sky. It is approximately 4.5 miles round trip but adventurous souls can take the r2r right to Pine Road where they can
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Minnewaska. continue their quest onto Duck Pond, and Preserve trails and carriage roads. For this trail there is ample parking off Huguenot Street by the water treatment plant or in various municipal spots downtown for visitors. Those living in the village can simply walk to the trail and those who are coming from Highland, Rosendale or Gardiner, if up for the challenge, can get there via the Wallkill Valley and the Hudson Valley rail -trails. Patterson’s Pellet at Minnewaska State Park There’s no way to really go wrong when you enter the gates of Minnewaska State Park. This 23,000-acre park is home to two sky-lakes, several waterfalls, ponds, cliffs, peregrine falcon nesting sides, wild blueberry and huckleberry bushes as well as a unique dwarf pine ecosystem at its higher altitudes and more exposed peaks. So where to start for a fall hike? Let’s start at the very beginning. If there is room, park in the upper lot and take the lakeside path either clockwise or counter-
clockwise and there will be nothing but light dancing on water, foliage streaking across the sky, the smell of pine needles crushed underfoot and damp leaves. At the opposite end of the lake from the parking lot there is a trail that leads hikers or cyclists to one of the more stunning autumnal passages — to Patterson’s Pellet and Gertrude’s Nose. There’s nothing quite like a large boulder that looks as if it’s been dropped from the sky like a meteor only to land perilously close to the edge of a cliff. Local geologists refer to this as a “glacial erratic,” rocks that were picked up by the glaciers during the last ice age. When the glaciers melted 10,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Hudson Valley, the rocks entrained within the ice simply dropped out. Some, like North Salem Balanced Rock and Patterson’s Pellet, dropped out in ways that almost have a science-fiction feel to them. But this path, besides having brushed alongside the magical Minnewaska sky lake and taken the Millbrook Carriage Road to
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the geological phenomenon of Patterson’s Pellet, offers sweeping fall vistas of trees just raging with color along Hamilton Carriage Road across the ravine, all the way to Gertrude’s Nose. It’s an eight-mile round trip which leaves one feeling as though they’re stepping towards the edge of the world, or at least the edge of the Hudson Valley. The scope and height and explosion of color a visceral experience that lasts with one much longer than the hike. For this is fall in the Hudson Valley. Put on your shoes, hop on your bike. If that’s too daunting, take a drive over Route 44/55 and park at some of the scenic pullouts. Soak in the ephemeral, fleeting autumnal beauty. There are endless of miles of old carriage roads and footpaths and repurposed rail-trails to explore in the Hudson Valley. These are only a few highlights. For more information on the Mohonk Preserve go to www.mohonkpreserve.org For Minnewaska State Park go to https://parks. ny.gov/parks For the Wallkill Valley Rail-Trail www.wvrta.org and for the River to Ridge (r2r) go to www.openspaceinstitute.org
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A part-time rental Coming to terms with Airbnb By Violet Snow enting your house out on Airbnb is no picnic. Yes, it’s great to have the extra cash, but not all your guests will have the same standards of cleanliness and home furnishing that you might have. Getting negative reviews on the Airbnb website can be devastating. Luckily, the feedback gives me the chance to make improvements, diminishing the chances of a future bad review. Airbnb even offers the option of private feedback, if a kindly guest wants to make a suggestion without a public flaying that might repel prospective customers. My husband and I have made many changes, often ones we did not expect, to satisfy our guests. First, I must mention that we rent out the house in which we live. It’s not a separate cottage or an extra home. If you are considering buying a house just to make money on short-term rentals, don’t do it. Locals are struggling to find affordable long-term rentals, due to people sucking up properties for services such as Airbnb and HomeAway. However, part-time rental of a home, or a room in your house, brings tourist money into the economy by offering convenient housing for visitors. I’ve used Airbnb a lot on my own travels. I would not have been able to afford my trips if I’d had to stay in hotels. I know some of you hate short-term rentals because the guests make noise and trespass and leave out garbage for the bears. I make sure my guests don’t do any of those things, except I did have a group of youngsters who made a bit of racket one night, according to my neighbor. But he wasn’t complaining. After that I added to the house rules that people mustn’t make noise at night.
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o what kinds of improvements have we made? I’m not talking big investments here. We don’t have that kind of money. The most radical change
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for us was getting a microwave. We’re purists, averse to spooky electronics messing with our food, but after the second time someone wistfully mentioned they missed having a microwave we broke down and got one. It was free, an extra that my cousin was getting rid of. We did pay $20 for a little wooden table to put it on, tucked away in a corner of the kitchen. I even nuke my own food once in a while. The coffee maker was another concession. We don’t drink coffee, but we already had a one-cup drip filter for when our daughter visits. However, the house accommodates up to seven people, and one group was understandably troubled by the coffee line. The minute they gently sug-
gested investing in more robust technology I went out and got a twelve-cup coffee maker, assuming serious coffee drinkers were likely to want two cups each. I have become more attentive to sheets, towels and blankets, to the extent of haunting the bedding section of Formerly Yours, the thrift shop at the Phoenicia Methodist Church. Someone observed that our blankets looked old, so I bought younger ones whenever the right kind came along. I even brought home a pretentious Baroque-style bedspread that I never would’ve considered if not for the renters. Once I sprang for a $25 set of sheets at the Dollar General on Route 28. Really, I did.
Airbnb by the numbers
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rom Memorial Day to Labor Day this summer, Airbnb projected that its business in New York State increased to 1,200,000 guest arrivals, up from 933,000 arrivals in the summer of 2017. More than 187,000 New York City residents used Airbnb to visit other parts of the state this summer. More than 39,000 New York hosts welcomed guests, up from 37,000 last summer, according to Airbnb data. A quarter of hosts were first-timers. Airbnb estimates that the typical host made approximately $4100 this summer, up from $3400 last summer. In total, New York Airbnb hosts grossed $296 million this summer as compared to $234 million last summer.
Ulster Publishing Co. he most challenging aspect of rental for us has been the cleaning. When we moved out of our final apartment before buying the house, our landlady was horrified by how dirty the place was. Now we have to clean the rooms from top to bottom every time we rent out the house. It’s actually lovely to have a clean house. I had no idea! But again, our standards are not always the same as those of our guests. It took time and a few ambivalent reviews to get us to pay attention to such areas as the refrigerator shelves, for instance. (Actually, I am still in denial about the fridge. My husband dutifully takes care of it. He’s also the one who remembers to check for hanging cobwebs.) I eventually learned to clean the tops of the books and the ceiling light fixture in the bedroom. One family complained about dust under the bed. Well, duh, of course there’s dust under the bed. That’s where dust lives. What’s wrong with that? Okay, their kid dropped a toy, and while retrieving it, they witnessed the dust, and they worry about allergies. And I have to admit, when I pulled the bed away from the wall and found about a gallon of dust I was grossed out. Now I make sure to at least sweep around the edges of the stuff I have stored under there. We haven’t had another such complaint, thank goodness. Traumatized by people griping about dust, we commiserated with a fellow Airbnb host and ended up following his example. I put a disclaimer on the website: This house is our home, not a rental cottage. We clean for hours before our guests arrive — using obsessively natural cleansers — but we are both writers, not hotelkeepers. If you are the finicky type, you might want to look for more upscale, pristine accommodations. The disclaimer seemed to help, although recently an English family was still appalled by our second-hand furniture and “mismatched crockery.” No one else seems to mind slightly shabby chairs, and I draw the line at buying a complete set of dishes. You are probably thinking by now that you are going to make sure you never rent Violet’s house. There’s dust under the bed, the crockery is mismatched, and she doesn’t even care. But I do care. I just have my limits. And Violet Snow is a pseudonym, so you won’t be able to tell which house is
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mine on the website because it’s under my real name. You will be compensated by the mountain in the back yard, the creek
across the street, and the seven-minute walk to town. Like most of our guests, you’ll have a grand time.
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IN EMERGENCY CARE, IT’S ABOUT EXPERIENCE. OURS AND YOURS. Another way we’re investing in you.
At HealthAlliance Hospital: Broadway Campus,
a member of the Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth), it’s all about experience. We’re board-certified in emergency medicine, nationally recognized for our stroke care and we use the latest in telemedicine to give our patients access to the region’s leading specialists. Our patients tell us we make their experience exceptional by treating them with the utmost respect and clearly communicating about every step of their care. The Emergency Department at HealthAlliance Hospital: Broadway Campus. Another way we’re Advancing Care. Here.
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