Summer in the valley 2018 composite

Explore Summer in the Valley

JUNE-SEPT. 2018 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • WWW.HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM

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Summer’s a time for great flea markets and lawn and garage sales, including the longstanding Mower’s Market in Woodstock, painted here by renowned artist Hongnian Zhang. It’s also great for catching up with one’s community, including the many who call it home only in summer.

Plaints and lamentations Summer’s fun, but it’s a lot of work, too

By Paul Smart

Y

ou know that it’s summer when it’s time to drag the air conditioner up from the basement. You start checking everyone for ticks, and wake in the middle of the night when you sense something crawling across your body. You’re waiting for the first lettuces to grow large enough to eat, and hungrily eye the swollen peapods. You wonder whether you might have planted too much zucchini. What garden scourges will assault your garden in the coming months?

Someone tells you that gin-and-tonics cut the effects of springtime allergies. You find when it’s no longer spring that those G&Ts remain on your list of daily medicines.

You start inviting new neighbors over to

hang out in the yard, and you get invited to others’ yards. You find yourself waking each morning with inane summer pop tunes, past and present, alive in your mind. “It’s a Beautiful Morning,” indeed.

If kids are part of your household, you’ve either signed them up for weeks of camp and other activities over the coming summer, or you’re eying those places that will take stragglers, those young ‘uns who

won’t make up their minds until they find themselves suddenly bored playing Fortnite or Minecraft day in and day out.

You make lists of the alternatives, and wonder how you’re going to deliver the kids to them while you’re supposed to be at work.

You’ve made lists of places to go swimming, where to take visiting friends, and special events you don’t want to miss.

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you’re juggling two much?

The lawn will need mowing, the garden weeding, the woodpile stacking. The bears need deterrence. And you must have fun,

You’re figuring out how to enjoy the coming months as you once did while maintaining all the work you’ve piled up to make your life more enjoyable. Maybe

Table of contents Plaints and lamentations

in these hills by Violet Snow ............. 30

Summer’s fun, but it’s a lot of work, too

by Paul Smart........................................... 3

Summer sports Fishing and golf. Tennis and softball.

by Chris Rowley .....................................34

Summer fashions You never know who you’ll meet

by Elisabeth Henry .................................. 6

Keeping cool Searching for water fun remains this explorer’s adventure by Paul Smart ....42

The sky’s the limit Dining al fresco in the Hudson Valley

by Harry Matthews ............................... 12

Fire tower hiking The five remaining Catskills structures offer a variety of experiences

by Jodi La Marco .................................. 44

Picnic Some traditions need never die

by Paul Smart ....................................... 14

Making do Summer is a kids’ treasure box

by Roxanne Ferber................................ 48

All summer long So many music destinations, so little time

by John Burdick ........................................ 18

Even I can love camping How nature can work its charm on us all

by Abbe Aronson .....................................50

The arts of summer Seasonal events in the Hudson Valley

by Sparrow ..............................................25

Not so long ago The sultriness of summer memories

by Tad Wise.............................................54

Showtime!

There’s a longstanding stage tradition

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and show you’re doing so in style. Have you been trying on your summer wear to see what still fits. Is it fashionable enough?

You just don’t feel right growing a beard and assuming the au-courant AmishBrooklyn look, wearing plaid at all times.

Many will try to get away from here at some point over the summer months. Alas, such engagements take time and planning.

How far people will go may depend on how far they can afford to go. Have you noticed the gas prices and rising airfares?

Looked at lodging prices on the West Coast lately? Maybe the resort getaways right here in the Catskills and Hudson Valley feel inviting and affordable in comparison. And hey, there’s more Europe in the Hudson Valley these days, restaurants, the arts and other kinds of culture.

The relaxed season will come again with the first snow.

Summer in the Valley June - August, 2018 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Abbe Aronson, John Burdick, Roxanne Ferber, Elisabeth Henry, Jodi La Marco, Harry Matthews, Chris Rowley, Paul Smart, Sparrow, Violet Snow, Tad Wise EDITOR: Paul Smart COVER: Woodstock fireworks by Dion Ogust Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Jackie Polisar Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman

glenn deWitt photography @

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Summer 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 845334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

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Summer fashions You never know who you’ll meet

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A man needs a hat, especially if he’s starting to grow short of hair on top.

By Elisabeth Henry t’s not Fashion Week, not the Oscars After Party, but fashion is on the mind. Few things feel as much like freedom as when we drop layers.

We shed pounds. Our skin breathes. We have full use of our limbs.

Everywhere we look we see green. First daffodils, then lilacs, then peonies. We want to keep looking, looking at each other. Utilitarian plain grey and black coats are replaced by pastels and white

and patterns and polka dots, by shorts, skirts and dresses, by loose shirts and peep toes. These can be as utilitarian as the stout coats of the “ber” and “ary” months, but wholly more delightful.

Curmudgeons may deny it as much as they like, but it does matter how we are turned out, as much for

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All one really needs to make a summer fashion statement is a pair of decent sunglasses.

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visual pleasure as for public decency. And for other reasons.

Most of us care not a whit about Fashion Week or the world of haute couture. Even though my first office of my first office job was down the aisle from the fashion department, I never understood! I gazed at photos of girls in (what seemed to me) outlandish get-ups, but just dismissed it as whimsy.

It is not.

“Couturier designers create statement pieces,” a young woman who moves in those circles tells me. “Such a piece is as much work of art as it is garment. It is an exclusive luxury item, like wearing a Van Gogh. Yes, it is unusual. Yes, it is

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exceptional, and not for everyone. But it may inspire ready-to-wear designers to use elements from it that become favorites in the open marketplace. A sleeve. A pattern. A color. It’s trickle-down style and

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relevance. There is a purpose.”

Don’t we learn something new every day! Fashion Girl averts her eyes from my worn New Balance sneakers, 17-year-old Dickie work pants and flannel shirt. I

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doubt she would have talked to me had not I been introduced by the owner of the restaurant that served her that morning’s salmon fume. word of caution about those haute couture pieces. I reviewed the Oscar After Party photos and saw some women in clothing right off the runway. The best way to wear them is to

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be born to parents who are six-foot ectomorphs with really healthy hair. The after-party women are not, and so one’s puzzlement over the design of the ensembles is compounded. What may look like an interesting application of taffeta and geometry on Ulla from Slovenia just looks like you buttoned yourself up the wrong way if you are, say, just me. (I am protecting the poor muffin who hoped

to make a statement on her first redcarpet walk. She did well in the awards.

She’ll get better stylists some day.)

This is the year for Pulsating Primary Colors, according to Marie Claire. That’s because we all need a lift after, and during, all this depressing political news. Overthe-top tassels and fringe help to achieve the same level of distraction.

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Too!) Choose pastels and saris. Wear an Eighties look as an homage to the twentieth anniversary of the death of Princess Di. And just in time for summer, fashionforward tailoring will finish at the knee for power shorts as part of the power suit. At last! These are just a few of the dictates.

Who will follow these dictates? I don’t know. I do know that designers watch what kids on the street come up with as much as they plumb their own imaginations and tweak past fashion faves.

Speaking of which. “Well-Dressed in Victorian Albany: 19th-Century Fashion from the Albany Institute Collection,” an exhibit that closed in May, was an absorbing and ambitious project. It featured at

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least 30 dresses, hand-sewn, of pricey fabric and exquisite detail, custom-made for a handful of wealthy and remarkably tiny ladies of Victorian-Age Albany. Each dress must have cost a pretty penny then, and would be difficult if not impossible to re-create today. The seam work. The dozens of buttons, frog closures, yards off piping. The lace. Complicated sleeves and necklines. Bustles. Hoops. And who would want to be trussed up like that?

Fashion Girl looked steadily into my eyes to make sure I got the message. “Those dresses are exactly what I described before. Works of art. One of a kind. Meant to be looked at. Those women mostly sat in them, after a stately walk when being

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presented. Just for the very, very wealthy.”

I got the message. ut there’s more to this fashion thing than statements of style, and implied messages of class structure.

There are those of us who don’t care what our clothing says. We care what it does.

Function can mean durability and comfort, but it can also have meaning we miss.

For instance, cowboy boots have pointed toes so that one can slip into the stirrup easily. They have heels so that one does not slip out of the stirrup. The toque is a chef ’s hat that dates back to the 16th century.

Different heights may indicate rank within a kitchen, and they are designed to prevent hair from falling into the food when cooking. The 100 folds of the toque are said to represent the many different ways a chef knows to cook an egg.

A shoeing apron is worn by farriers. It needs to be as tough as nails. It has to repel dirt, sweat, manure and just about everything else that comes into contact with it, while at the same time feel as comfortable as a second skin since the

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dignity that says, “I know what’s sexy, and this is it.” They do not search the room for approval.

This look is usually accompanied by generous applications of eye liner to both top and bottom lid. Lipstick is optional.

Once, as I exited my car in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart Super Center, I noticed a very overweight young woman walking ahead of me. She wore only a black tunic dress, very short, and obviously no undergarments of any kind. The dress had a cowl back, and her large tantric PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO tattoo was promiThe key to fashion come summer are light fabrics and splashes of color, unless, of course, nently featured. Her one is planning to be working outdoors. hair was dyed many shades of magenta and was unwashed.

There were many have brunch with Fashion Girl.

This may farrier will likely be wearing it for untold piercings. Her flipflops slapped emphatiinvite callous laughter. hours — day in and day out. A good apron cally on the hot tarmac. can last ten years or more, and can be I stopped at the cart station to get a cart, made of anything from leather, cotton e non-couturier types know but struggled to free the last one on line. duck to nylon, although almost all will all about disposable fashion, esIn an instant, that young woman was at have natural rawhide patches of buffalo, pecially if we raised kids in The Gap, my side, helping me get a cart. Flawless mule skin or chrome-tanned leather over American Eagle, Hollister heydays. skin, kind warm eyes, her countenance as the areas where farriers usually support It can be stylish, but it’s also cheap to lovely as springtime. Whatever judgment a hoof. manufacture, and the sheer volume of I may have had for her fashion choice Aprons also come in full or half styles and it hurts the environment. See Elizabeth quickly dissolved in my comprehension with buckles, snaps or Velcro fasteners.

Cline’s book, “OverDressed.” of her sweet and generous spirit.

They may have pockets on one or both The coolness factor never fooled me.

“Don’t you want a cart?” I asked her as sides, with magnets sewn in handy places My daughters delighted in “tissue tees,” she backed away smiling. for holding nails or a hoof pick. which I knew cost maybe fifty cents to “Nah,” she grinned. “I don’t need one.”

Actors have black trousers and black create but fifteen dollars to purchase. I The message is not that we should not sweaters and black long- and short-sleeve was the ultimate buzzkill. I say, buy that judge a book by its cover, but that we tees in non-wrinkling material. This is so stuff at thrift stores. And use it for wash should understand the cover as well as that when they go to all those auditions rags when the thrill is gone. the book. Fashion can be a reflection of after working a twelve-hour restaurant We must reflect here on that all-imwho we want people to think we are. And shift they don’t have to think too much portant fashion statement: individual usually we are vulnerable, hairless and about what to wear. Also, stains don’t style. There are those who rock this with hungry, with no fangs or tusks or claws, show. undeniable aplomb. And there are those so we take cover in the garments our Everyone who must stand a lot for work who simply rock it, oblivious to the shock imagination dictates. wears clogs, but I must warn people that and awe of those who first view. I am But where we live — here — is kinda like clogs are lethal on ice. People who do hard, thinking of individuals whose penchant Eden. It’s summertime. The livin’ is easy. heavy work like Carhartt pants and jackets for tight, iridescent Capezio pants ignore The best thing might be to strip it all down, because they are durable. One might be the passage of years, and the addition of recline on a big flat rock by a stream, and advised not to wear such clothing if the pounds. Often bra-less, these women, let our skin and our soul unmask. sum of one’s exertion is to flag a taxi to or men, carry themselves with a type of

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COURTESY OF THE BEAR

The Bear Café in Woodstock has long been a locus for streamside dining.

The sky’s the limit Dining al fresco in the Hudson Valley

by Harry Matthews

commonly used in the modern lexicon. But I digress.

The idea of putting a few tables ny restaurant out on a city street didn’t really in the Hudson take off in this country until Valley or Catsometime in the 1990s. Even skills worth its in New York, the city (with the salt (and pepper) and has the exception of the now-shuttered space can do no better than Tavern on the Green) was consetting up a few tables outsidered hardly clean enough for side for summertime al frespeople to want to dine outside. co dining. Whether you’re Then came the wide, sweeping nestled amidst the mounclean-ups by such city terrors as tains at Brio’s back patio up the ever-increasingly-deranged in Phoenicia, sitting by the Rudy Giuliani, who assumed the waterfall at Diamond Mills mayoralty in 1993. Through his in Saugerties, or lounging on and his police commissioner the porch at Terrapin ResWilliam Bratton’s highly racist taurant in Rhinebeck, there’s broken-windows campaign, the no better way to enjoy a cool city was thoroughly wiped clean summer evening than doing of much of what had given it its it outdoors.

COURTESY OF OLE SAVANNAH charm. Meanwhile, the jails and Al fresco dining has a long prisons were increasingly filled history, particularly through- As it gentrifies, Kingston is becoming home to with non criminals. The city out Europe, where the idea of increasing numbers of outdoor tables. became a more gentrified and meeting up with friends in the gentler place to live and eat. And voila, used in modern Italian for dining outside. fresh air of a local square for a drink or a al fresco NYC was born!

It is used for referring to someone in meal goes back hundreds if not thousands Over the past few years, more and more jail. According to Wikipedia, the term of years. Interestingly, the term “al fresco”, eateries in our region are finding that din“all-aperto” or “fuori” would be more which translates to “in the cool air,” is not

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ers appreciate the beauty and relaxation of sitting at a table on a sidewalk, a back porch, a patio, or even around a blazing fire pit, like the very cool one outside of Commune Saloon out in Bearsville.

The whole mini-village that makes up the Bearsville scene, including The Bear Cafe, The Little Bear, The Commune Saloon, and The Bearsville Theatre. provides a nice venue for a summer evening. Any of the three dining spots is worth a visit for the food and beverage, but the possibility of adding a national act at the Bearsville Theatre, ranging from the likes of reggae legend Freddie McGregor to blues giant John Mayall, makes the evening all that much finer. A handmade cocktail from the mixologist at Commune Saloon served around the fire pit outside provides perfect summer-evening harmony.

One of my personal favorite spots for a bite and a drink outside would have to include The Station Bar in Woodstock, where you can nosh on some of their delicious sandwiches, sip local brews, and listen to some of the best local jazz musicians get down under the old train depot roof. Popping into Nancy’s Artisanal Creamery next door for some of the best handcrafted ice cream around only makes the whole experience that much sweeter.

Many places now allow people to bring their dogs with them, which in my opinion can’t help but enhance one’s dining pleasure. Picture here a large floppy-eared basset hound drooling over the burger you’re trying to inhale. One of my dear friends has a pup that has separation issues which make it very difficult for the family to go out to dinner. With so many establishments now letting in the dogs, they have lost that excuse not to meet up with us.

Another great option would have to be The Garden Cafe on the village green in Woodstock. With tits wooden tables, soft music, and fairy lighting, the scene is very chilled out. The vegan dishes they serve are outstanding.

In Kingston there are any number of nice spots down in the Strand neighborhood for on-the-sidewalk dining, often with nice views of the harbor and the boats of the maritime museum. In the Stockade, Boitson’s very nice rooftop bar offers comfortable couches. It’s a great place to grab a drink.

In Dutchess County several of Rhinebeck’s lovely farm-to table restaurants spill out onto the streets or onto patios and

the like. And in Rhinecliff the eponymous restaurant offers stunning views across the Hudson and out to the Catskills.

Among many options in New Paltz, The Gilded Otter Brewery offers a serene dining experience in a stunning setting near the Wallkill River. And great beer to boot.

The local beer scene seems to be expanding on a daily basis. Check out the wonderful new operation that Crossroads Brewery has set up in Catskill, and the entire Catskills beverage trail, which includes wineries, ciders and breweries throughout the mountains and valleys of our area.

Let us not forget our amazing local food trucks. From the divinely inspired

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pleasure of a local hot dog from Pippy’s hot-dog truck in Palenville and Catskill, to ‘Cue out of Saugerties, and to Gracie’s, from Leeds, these meals-on-wheels operations offer some of the best food around.

In the end, the best al fresco dining experience might just be to pack a nice lunch yourself, grab a sack of hot dogs from Pippy’s or some sandwiches from the terrific Circle W in Palenville, and head out to a waterfall, a riverside park, or your favorite mountaintop. There, you can enjoy nature in all her scented splendor while simultaneously filling your belly with the food of your choice.

The options are seemingly endless. As they say, the sky’s the limit! Buon appetito!

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Picnic Some traditions need never die

By Paul Smart icnics may be a thing of our pasts. They may be as much a part of an earlier America as rabbit ears on televisions showing all of three channels, entire towns reading the same newspapers everyday, the concept of everyone voting each election day and keeping their choices to themselves.

Not so long ago, family trips meant coolers packed with sandwiches and eyes open to roadside pull-offs with picnic tables, occasionally an historic marker as well.

Drinks came in large gallon mixes: iced tea and Kool Aid, occasionally lemonade (back before that became a mix too).

We traveled a lot in Europe during the 1960s and 70s, when you could tell the nationality of campers simply by how they ate. The French and Italians spread

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What makes for a great community picnic? Hot dogs, corn, and watermelon are hard to beat.

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blankets with loads of bread loafs, cheese and charcuterie, wine, fruit, and usually a few sleeping folk littered around the scene under trees, hats over their faces.

Brits had folding tables and chairs, table cloths, tea settings and little sandwiches.

Germans ate in restaurants.

Then there were the rich. Remember that scene in Citizen Kane where the title character, in his dotage, drags a caravan of friends across the Everglades to a beachside set-up with waiters, cooks, tents, entertainers, and forced smiles on everyone’s faces. Or the slightly less rigid but chilly picnics that fill each season of the big royal television series of more recent years, where Victoria or Elizabeth, or the inhabitants of Downton Abbey.

Here in the Hudson Valley, our most famous picnic may be the one Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt threw for the King and Queen of England, introducing the royals to hot dogs. corn on the cob, ice cream, lager beer and other traditional American fare. Unless one counts the dining options at that Woodstock Festival whose anniversary we’ll be celebrating next summer.

Now, you’re most likely to see picnickers with fancy hampers and fold-out chairs and tables at outdoor concert events. Or the beach. At camping grounds. Or in very large groups near park grills for birthday parties, or on national holidays.

Spend time in more urban settings, and one starts to notice both backyard and on-the-sidewalk dining options. Many of our local towns have parks that are filled with group picnics regularly. Or hody town-wide picnics. We’re not suggesting that you crash such events. Mimic them, instead, and don’t be shy about setting up your own spot among the many. Or, for that matter, getting offered to join in by them.

And if you look carefully, you’ll spot other picnickers about. Or start to take up regular picnicking oneself.

Think of places to eat outside with your own family or special loved one, and a host of options arise. Check out those great sweeping lawns that lead down towards the Hudson from our region’s great mansions. Or any place with a view, including quiet cemeteries. Head up trails into the woods, or out across fields to sylvan groves.

Yes, things are more complex than they once were when all you had to do was make sure no ants were in view when you started your repast. Now you have to also

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while you’re at it. You want to be able to carry plates, drinking vessels, and cutlery (real china, glassware and silverware can be nice), and not forget serving platters and forks/spoons, as well as cutting knives… and a corkscrew/bottle opener.

Bring something to carry your waste and dirty dishes away in. How about napkins (cloth, preferred).

What to eat and drink? There are shelves of bookshelves and loads of websites filled

keep an alert up for ticks.

But hey, both are still better, in many ways, than chiggers and seagulls.

What to bring for a picnic?

Start with the foundations. Many people love folding canvas chairs these days.

There’s still more elegance to a great big blanket, in many minds. How about a hamper? You can pick them up at many yard sales, if not into buying all things new. Keep your eye out for portable bars

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with recipes: the key is to make things simple and special.

Good breads, wines, beers, cheeses, fruits, and charcuterie can never miss. Things you can eat cold, unless you’re okay with grilling in a public place.

Various salads are grand, as are quiches, frittatas. What about a watermelon? Or, if that grill’s up and running, a good old FDR-inspired wiener roast.

Then again, sandwiches are still fine for many, especially when kids are along.

How to plan such things?

Depends on the purpose. Is it a way of getting many people outside for a big meal? Or a form of courtship. A holiday celebration or a birthday?

Dress code shifts accordingly.

I wooed the woman who would become my wife by bringing along surprise picnics on our early dates, and then sleuthing out great picnic spots to whisk her off to. Sometimes that ended up eating

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well, all dressed up, in a steamy car. More often, we witnesses and achieved a form of Hudson Valley bliss, bugs, ants and all (not to forget the later tick searches).

My kid and his friends all say they hate picnics. Unless we’re at a place they can swim or play ball or just explore.

Or, for that matter, recall the recent class trip I chaperoned where we made time driving out to the Midwest looking

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for roadside picnic tables, coolers full of sandwich wings (and Buffalo wings from Buffalo, one memorable afternoon) at the ready.

Yes, many of those old picnic tables still sit by our blue highways, and even in rest areas along Interstates. They nestle in by beaches, in public parks, and in many

June - August, 2018 • 17

places where there are views.

Maybe picnicking isn’t a thing of the past, after all. I still keep a hamper and blanket in my car just in case. What’s better than really enjoying the outdoors this time of year?

And don’t some still talk about how all food tastes better outside?

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• June - August, 2018

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All summer long So many music destinations, so little time

By John Burdick

I

n late spring and summer, music moves outside for a great many reasons including but not limited to: mountains, rivers, sky, sun, fresh air, and the tattered, suffering remains of the noble ideal of “time off.” As a community incomparably rich in both these primary resources — musical programming and nature — the Hudson Valley is a natural hotspot, perhaps not as iconic a summer music destination as the neighboring Berkshires, but probably more diverse on the actual ground and — with Bard

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The Phoenicia Festival of the Voice, in late July and early August, draws top operatic talents to one of the Catskills’ more scenic hamlets for a truly outdoor summer experience.

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• June - August, 2018

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culture will continue to prosper; and if we don’t, it won’t), take one moment to think about musicians and what the season means to them.

Summer music is a complex proposition for players. Sure, the work is abundant and the crowds are good, but the playing experience itself is ambiguous and discomfiting. There is

The Summer Hoot at the Ashokan Center in Olive is one of a growing number of newer summer music festivals and concert series offering up folk, jazz, rock, and classical music on a steady basis.

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July 8 – 14 Annual Catskills Irish Arts Week, East Durham www.catskillsirishartsweek.com July 14 Athens Street Festival www.athensstreetfestival.org

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something exposed and even undignified about outdoor playing, like playing in shorts. With no walls and lighting rig forcing attention to the front, outdoor performances can feel incidental, auxiliary, and, most of all, demystified. Players feel less like the event itself and more like the help.

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sonic domain as well. Wind plays across the microphones as set lists take wing. No sound bounces back at you in the ways you are accustomed to, and you can’t escape the feeling that your message is not coming across in a concentrated and appreciable way. Trucks and motorcycles compete, and win.

Outdoor and especially daylight shows drive home an awareness that musicians try to keep at bay: music, for most people, is incidental, a pretty design on the walls of passing time, a reason to bop your head a little as you head to the beer tent.

Remember that, in the world of summer music, only the headliners get the lighting rig; the dark hours of wonder; and the heightened, threatening night sky with its streaks of lightning. That’s for Jack White and Pattie LaBelle. Not for you.

A liberated, non-captive audience under blue skies is in some ways the serious musician’s worst nightmare.

T

he warning shots of the festival season are already upon us. Mountain Jam to the north, with its lavishly

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• June - August, 2018

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contemporized lineup scrubbed of the last remaining residue of “jam,” happens to coincide, awkwardly, with the righted ship of the Clearwater Festival to the south on the weekend of June 16. Back when one of these festivals meant Les Pauls and the other meant hammered dulcimers, the conflict might have been negligible, but ask yourself this: which festival do you think They Might Be Giants, Jeff Tweedy, and Beth Orton are playing this year?

Grey Fox (July 19-22) and Falcon Ridge (August 3-5) remain festivals that “know what they are,” and always will. The former is a reverent but current, highly focused and inarguably best-of-breed, folk and bluegrass festival, the latter an irreverent, inclusive, hippified but still all-roots version of same. Meltasia’s Great Meltdown Funnabration in Phoenicia (July 27-28) fills some of the void created in the hearts of hipsters when the blindingly hip All Tomorrow’s Parties affair closed its run in Monticello many years ago, and we all missed our chance to see Pavement, Guided by Voices, Belle & Sebastian and My Bloody Valentine on the same bill.

From single-site, multi-stage bacchanalia in big fields (please check for ticks), let us move now to the festivals that, like the Grand Prix, bring the danger right into our streets and neighborhoods. After a hiatus related to village infrastructure and deliberations upon same, the Rosendale Street Festival — an emphatic yearly demonstration of the local talent pool that so often crosses paths with the “national” that I am not sure I can tell the difference any more — returns on the weekend of July 21. Look, I can’t really tell you what Secret City is, and its website is little help.

What I can tell you is that it is national, and cool, and it takes over the same streets of Woodstock that have been taken over so many times for a century from July 26 through July 29.

A novel, new model festival that originated right in our breadbasket, the O+ Festival has spread to other cities now.

Kingston’s flagship event is trying its hand in Poughkeepsie again this year on August 3 and 4. And what about the great drummer Brian Farmer’s (Futu Futu) underpublicized achievement as a series promoter? The Rail Trail Café’s outdoor live music series on the trail in New Paltz approaches three seasons worth of world-accented performance

of a very high caliber.

S

erious (also known as classical) music ramps up its game at Christmas and in the summer (often with orchestral fireworks and actual fireworks).

Anchoring the scene locally is the Maverick’s unparalleled season of chamber music in its unique West Hurley hall.

Among my breed, Bard SummerScape is known for both immaculately organized and proofread 4000-word press releases that read like (good) literature, and for dazzling multi-venue programming at the Fisher Center, including the Spiegeltent, one of the choicest venues anywhere. Phoenicia Festival of the Voice (August 3 – 5) combines classical with pop and jazz.

Many festivals are, like Maverick, episodic and summer. A new player in the game, Ellenville’s excellent Music on Market series, also focused on classical music. New Paltz’ Tuesday night Water Street Market series features folk and rock mostly, and local talent. SUNY

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• June - August, 2018

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New Paltz’s PianoSummer is part school, part concert series. It runs from July 9 to July 27.

The Wassaic Project art-centric programming runs year round, but the colorful festival goes down on August 4.

Mining a similar vein of multi-media with experimental leanings, The Mt. Tremper Arts Festival will change your mind about the arts all summer long.

If you are still with me, we have reached the obligatory umbrella apology for everything not mentioned—and it is quite a lot. In additional to seasonal events, the regular venues — Colony, Falcon, BSP, the big theaters, Bethel Woods, stop me now — are piping hot in the summer months.

Do yourself and the greater good a favor.

Commit to getting out three or four times this season. It keeps you young.

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The arts of summer Seasonal events in the Hudson Valley

The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz opens a major overview of Hudson Valley art each summer. With many art world luminaries spending summers in the area, the venue is a popular destination this time of year.

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• June - August, 2018

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rassic World: Fallen Kingdom. But there are also “small,” delicate movies — I mean films — such as Nico, 1988, a re-creation of the last days of the gloomy German avant-punk singer, Nico. My pick for best movie of the summer: Incredibles 2. (I must warn you — it’s animated.)

But the best film I’ll actually see will be at the Green Kill series of local filmmakers.

I’ve been going to these showings, on the third Tuesday of every month at the Green Kill Gallery in Kingston, and I’m never disappointed. On June 19 Susan Ray will introduce her documentary Don’t Expect Too Much, about the life and art of her late husband Nicholas Ray. (Ray was a pivotal Hollywood director best known for Rebel Without a Cause.) July 17: Shadowman, Oren Jacoby’s documentary about Richard Hambleton, one of the originators of 1980s street art.

While you’re at Green Kill, don’t forget to look at the walls. In June there’s a group show, of largely local artists. The only name I recognize is Scott Ackerman, whose angular monstrous cartoony drawings I’m tempted to call “rural graffiti.”

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COURTESY WASSAIC PROJECT

The Wassaic Project in eastern Dutchess County has become a destination for those seeking the cutting edge in music, visual arts and performance each summer.

And I have faith in Green Kill’s director, David Schell, who has an eye for angelic dissension.

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tographs remain at the Dorsky Museum in New Paltz until July 15. Especially affecting are images of Martha Graham dancers — including Graham herself — from the late 1930s. The figures, often with hidden faces, have a boiling intensity that we now associate only with superheroes like The Hulk and Wonder Woman. “Dancers are the messengers of the gods,” quoth Martha Graham, and Morgan translated those god-envoys into photography.

When it comes to actual living dancers, I recommend “Baira, The Illustrious Blacks” at Mount Tremper Arts (August 11), a unique DJ-improv/movementpoetry hybrid.

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merry, high-walled room full of modern surprises. “Melissa Meyer: On Paper” (June 8-July 1) features colorful works that resemble drunken letters of the alphabet massed together in elevators.

Jen Dragon, director of the gallery, also curates Windows at Newberry, sculpture and art installations in the ten-foot store windows of the former J. J. Newberry’s on Main Street.

I live in Phoenicia, where the yearly Festival of the Voice is the local extravaganza, like the circus coming to town — but with svelte sopranos and torrid tenors in place of sword swallowers and tightrope walkers. In fact, I work at the festival as a volunteer. You’ll find me, in my brandnew PFOTV t-shirt, directing bewildered tourists to the restrooms.

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Butterfly was my breakthrough, and now I’m beginning to comprehend this delirious art form — an Italian premonition of vocal jazz. This year, on August 4, the Festival of the Voice presents Bizet’s opera Carmen, in a production set during the Spanish Civil War. From its opening notes, the rolling, joyous music lifts the audience like a winch.

Carmen is the kind of opera you can bring your 17-year-old EDM-loving kid to, plus your Patti Page-whistling mother.

Like its titular gypsy character, the opera is effortlessly seductive. Carmen is the happiest of tragedies. [EDM = “electronic dance music”] While you’re at the Festival of the Voice, don’t miss the Bronson Eden show at the Phoenicia Arts & Events Space (60 Main Street). Bronson studied at the

June - August, 2018 • 27

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School of Visual Arts in the late 1960s with Eva Hesse. Later he joined the Colab collective. Bronson works in a variety of media, sometimes combining digital mechanisms with painting in a style I call

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“electric pirate dystopia.” eanwhile, the Bard Music Festival offers Anton Rubinstein’s Demon, a pestilential opera from 1875 based on a Mikhail Lermontov poem that was banned as sacrilegious. The title character is a devilish being who

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grows infatuated with the youthful Tamara, as she awaits her marriage to Prince Sinodal. Demon was Rubinstein’s most popular opera, but is rarely performed in America today. (Incidentally, Rubinstein was Tchaikovsky’s teacher.)

The Hessel Museum at Bard presents “The Conditions of Being Art,” a show of artists connected to two New York City showcases: the Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. Beginning June 23, this exhibition displays the work of over 40 artists, including Ana Mendieta, Mariko Mori, the Bernadette Corporation, and Joan Jonas. (Pat Hearn and Colin de Land, director of American Fine Arts, were wife and husband.) Our definition of art changes quickly in modern times, partly due to the daring and fierce intuition of gallerists like Hearn and de Land. udson Valley theatre is profuse in summertime. The Woodstock Shakespeare Festival offers The Merchant of Venice (July 14-August 6). Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is at the Byrdcliffe Theatre in Woodstock July 12-29.

The Bridge Street Theatre in Catskill presents The Revenge of the Space Pan-

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das by David Mamet (July 12-22). The Center for Performing Arts at Rhinebeck stages Fun Home (June 1-24). Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan runs at Bard College from June 28 to July 22. And there’s lots more!

What about the hot new books coming out this summer? I asked my research partner Eli Tapuchi to choose one to review. He picked Girl With a Gun: An Annie Oakley Mystery by Kari Bovée. “This debut novel tells the story of Annie Oakley, with enough guns and violence to keep children of all ages entertained,” Eli writes.

Summer is also traditionally a time to read great books you’ve neglected. I recommend: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice by Janet Malcolm, The Uncommon Sense of the Immortal Mullah Nasruddin.

So enjoy your books, films, dance, paintings, drama — and remember to play a little badminton!

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June - August, 2018 • 29

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Showtime!

There’s a longstanding stage tradition in these hills

By Violet Snow

T

he Catskills have been home to theater magic since Hervey White put together the Maverick Festivals in Woodstock during the first half of the previous century, inviting bohemians in outlandish costumes to cavort and carry on. The mountains have provided work havens for playwrights such as

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Thornton Wilder and Horton Foote, while Cole Porter composed for musicals at the Durham retreat of theater critic Brooks Atkinson. From the Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown to the comedians of the Borsht Belt, the region has nourished performers and audiences for generations.

Theatrical opportunities continue to flourish, with the Catskills and the Hudson Valley supporting theater companies with a wide range of tastes and strengths.

The following survey is necessarily weighted towards my stomping ground of Woodstock and Phoenicia, but I will include a smattering of farther-flung theaters known for excellence and spirit.

Growing out of the Maverick experiments in art and performance, the Woodstock Playhouse was established in 1938 at the entrance to town. Among the actors gracing its stage over the decades have been Lillian Gish, Eva Le Gallienne, Diane Keaton, Lee Marvin, Chevy Chase and other luminaries. After the theater

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COURTESY OF SHADOWLAND STAGES

Shadowland Theatre in Ellenville is the Hudson Valley’s main Actors’ Equity venue, running classic new Broadway productions and usually premiering one new work each season.

54th year, eschews Agatha Christie and other crowd-pleasing staples of smalltown theater, leaning instead toward the

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A century ago, Woodstock’s Maverick Festivals staged new plays and a season-ending pageant each summer. Its spirit lives on. burned down in 1988, it was rebuilt and returned to hosting theater companies.

In the 1960s, in reaction to the Playhouse custom of casting professionals in leading

roles, a group of Woodstockers decided to provide a creative outlet for the town’s many talented amateur actors. Performing Arts of Woodstock (PAW), now in its

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Shakespeare productions have been a summer fixture in Woodstock since 1995.

Audiences hear the Bard’s immortal words for free (with donations encouraged), often while picnicking on the lawn, in front of the outdoor stage at the Comeau property, right near the center of town. Elli Michaels and David Aston-Reese produce and direct most of the productions, which are performed in either full Elizabethan costume or the dress of a selected time and

avant-garde (Jean Genet, Harold Pinter), contemporary playwrights (John Patrick Shanley, David Lindsay-Abaire), and the occasional classic, such as this year’s production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

Despite not having a dedicated theater to call home, and having to present shows at the town hall, or more recently, the community center, PAW productions are finely crafted and well-received.

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place (Havana in the 1940s, Brooklyn in the 1990s), chosen for a fun twist.

The Voice Theater, founded in 1988 by director Shauna Kanter, has moved gradually from Manhattan to Woodstock over the past decade, settling down at last in the historic Byrdcliffe Theater. The largely professional casts, augmented by talented local amateurs, have performed comedies by such playwrights as Noel Coward and Alan Ayckbourn, and challenging works like Samuel Beckett’s End Game. They often gravitate toward plays that make political statements, including Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth and works written by Kanter. This July, they’ll be mounting All My Sons by Arthur Miller.

Also producing at Byrdcliffe is the New Genesis Productions Youth Theatre, which specializes in Shakespeare. This year’s production was Julius Caesar.

Director Lesley Sawhill has developed a savvy company of young actors who get plenty of training and script analysis, creating a tight ensemble. The company is based in Olive, where Shakespeare summer camps are held, culminating in performances at the Little Globe Outdoor Stage in West Shokan.

Two new companies have landed in Woodstock this year. In May, Rabbit Hole Ensemble presented a staged reading of Disappearing Act by company founder and director Edward Elefterion, who pushes the edges of theater conventions in a play about the act of acting. Tony Giaimo, an accomplished film actor, created Actors Theatre of Woodstock to produce his play Curtains for Myron, a dark comedy based on his own family. Giaimo plays opposite three stage veterans, including a former star of Evita on Broadway. The show runs weekends through June 24 at the Bearsville Theater.

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in the Hunter-Tannersville area Kaaterskill Actors Theater and the Schoharie Creek Players. For high-level professional theater, look to the colleges. Vassar College in Poughkeepsie has the renowned Powerhouse Theater, and the Bard College Fisher Center has featured outstanding productions such as the Gate Theater of Dublin doing Waiting for Godot.

This year’s Bard SummerScape festival includes opera, theater, dance, cabaret,

film, and music, loosely organized around the world of composer Rimsky-Korsakov.

The Boscobel estate in Garrison hosts the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, a critically acclaimed professional theater company. This summer they’ll be doing Richard II, Taming of the Shrew, and several plays for children.

Whatever your taste in theater, you’ll find magic to celebrate in the Catskills region this summer.

Recreation

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T

he hamlet of Phoenicia has had a theater company since 1976, when a group of residents put together a skit for the nation’s bicentennial in the hallowed “Let’s put on a show!” tradition. By the time they took over the former Odd Fellows Hall as their base, the Shandaken Theatrical Society was putting on two to four shows a year, the highlight being the spring musical, which gave ensemble parts to just about anyone interested in hoofing it onstage, while former or current professionals who live locally often took on roles, as they still do.

As the board of directors changes composition, it periodically decides to heighten the professionalism of the shows.

The current board has gone the farthest yet, changing the name to Phoenicia Playhouse and raising money to renovate the vintage theater. We’ll be watching to see if they succeed in their goals while maintaining the community spirit that has kept the theater going for over 40 years. Mamma Mia! will be up this July.

In addition to an assortment of self-produced comedies, dramas, and musicals, Phoenicia Playhouse hosts a production for the annual Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice. The festival, organized by opera singers, brings world-class vocalists of many traditions to town on the first weekend of August, with the highlight being a semi-staged opera on Saturday night. This year’s opera will be Carmen.

Other community theaters in the region include Coach House Players in Kingston, Bridge Street Theater in Catskill, Center for the Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, and

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Summer sports Fishing and golf. Tennis and softball

By Chris Rowley

S

ummertime, and the living is easy ... unless, of course, you are a sports enthusiast, someone with a yen for golf, or softball or perhaps cycling. Tennis, anyone?

Summer is here. This is the time for triumph, or more likely an alternative outcome.

Summer sports come in two primary varieties. One involves considerable exertion, a lot of sweat, agony, and a certain amount of regret (as in “why am I here?”).

Say you’re 14 miles in on a 30-mile ride over the mountains. Your legs are already baked off, and you’re wishing you were floating in a swimming pool somewhere, and not pushing yourself to avoid embarrassment by coming in ten minutes behind everyone else. And wishing really hard that the sweat wouldn’t just pool in your eyes like that.

The other variety involves sports with less effort but with puzzling levels of frustration. Fishing, for example, is held up as the relaxing summer sport. Gather your rod, your lures, your baits, boats, fold up seats, whatever, and hie thee to the water. Cast or hurl your hook upon the waters. And … nothing. The wily vertebrates beneath the shiny surface have zero interest in the fly you draw so beguilingly above them. Your worm dangles there.

They ignore it. They already ate. Thanks but no thanks.

The invertebrates that swarm over the water have an opposite view. You are their food! Nothing could be nicer than to sink a proboscis into you, either on some foolishly exposed piece of skin, or just under your hat brim, or inside your collar, or that sneaky specialty of the black fly, up the sleeve to the inside of the elbow. Yikes!

That hurt, comes the cry, and it will itch, too, for about a week or so. If you are revenged and smush the little bugger, your shirt will carry the telltale blood stain for the rest of its days.

On bad days, when the air is muggy and

PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO

In addition to team sports, solo workouts from trail running to mountain biking have become all the rage in an increasingly health-conscious region. hot, and therefore buggy, the concept of making yourself a floating feast for what seems like millions of hellish little monsters can seem positively daft, crazy, completely insane. Who cares if there are reputedly enormous crappie in this lake, or legendary 40-pound pike, or ferocious stocked splake? They are safe, beneath the surface.

You, however, are not. You suffer relentless assault from gnats, midgies, skeeters and Satan’s special spawn, the black fly.

Then there are the tabanids, of whom nothing can be more shattering to calm contemplation and gentle angling. One moment you are watching your fly drift across the trout-infested pool, waiting to strike, enjoying the pastoral beauty. The next, a heavy inquisitive buzz disrupts the scene as a positively enormous horsefly circles you, contemplating your blood for her eggs. Concentrating on your fishing while one of those is concentrating on you is simply not possible. If you’ve been bitten by one of those monsters, you know why. Fishing now becomes an arduous test of your inner fortitude and mental conditioning.

T

alking of mental conditioning, there is also golf, a sport that causes millions to spend billions to drive the

small white balls across the greensward.

From afar, the physics of this are fascinating. The ball is small, the field of play enormous. Somewhere out there, marked by a flag on a pole, is the hole into which the ball will drop. You hope.

It will get there, you mutter to yourself, along with choice expletives, as you hunt through the poison ivy-rich woodland into which the ball has for some unknown reason sliced itself from your earnest stroke.

Well, that ball won’t be getting there, but another one will, which embarrassedly you drop to the grass while the other players forbear to joke and snicker. Once again you address the ball and swing, and watch forlornly as it sails away and then dips down to the right to vanish into an ominous sandy bunker.

“Oh, boy!” mutters your companion.

A further selection of the choicest expletives flits across your mind. Eager not to show that you are a bad sport, you keep them to yourself and ride to the bunker with hatred in your heart mounting toward all things Scottish, such as golf.

What possessed the wee silly buggers to invent this mad waste of time? You could be sitting by the pool nursing a cold one, but instead, with an audience of amused golf enthusiasts, you are now thrashing

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several inches of sand around while the ball, another of Satan’s little chums, merely jumps a few inches or ascends to the very lip of the bunker before rolling back to nestle next to your feet. “Try the six iron,� says a knowledgeable observer. “Bend the knees,� says another.

The ball eventually it reaches the magical green, from whence it must be putted.

Over that sad and sorry circus, we will draw the blinds.

June - August, 2018 • 35

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hat, and you were thus chosen. Despite New Year’s resolutions and desperate dieting, your physique remains a shade less than ideal. It’s the heart, not the size, that matters.

Your opponent, unfortunately, is the obnoxious fellow with the Eastern European accent. Unfortunately, he turns out to be a gym-honed lifter of weights who boasts of running five miles every morning. He has a spring in his step and considerable heft in his shoulder muscles.

He has form. He has a powerful serve.

“Ka-poKKK!” goes the ball, whistling past your astonished gaze. How can it move so fast?

“Forty-love,” says his bleached blonde girlfriend, who is happily keeping score on this incredible act of humiliation.

“Ka-poKKK!” goes the ball, with an occasional “ching!” as it slams into the chain-link fence behind you.

Game over, but it has barely just begun.

Now you must serve. You remember this art. You toss the ball up overhead, gather yourself, and swing your racquet up and over, trying not only to hit it over the net, but also into the allotted space on the other side. You swing. There is contact, but the ball is in the net.

You bounce the next ball a few times, trying hard to remember how to do this.

Again, up, and a modest “thwack!” sends the ball just over the net and down into the court. Your opponent is on it in a flash, and with a “SpaKKK!” whistles past you to go “Ching!”in the chain-link fence. “Love, fifteen,” says Blondie.

Six times the ritual of a “game” must be performed, a series of almost insultingly loud shots from your opponent’s gigantic racquet, countered by your increasingly hopeless returns. Once, perhaps twice, you got strings on the ball, but only to see the green sphere whisk away sideways on your side of the net.

The only mercy is that by the end nobody is watching the non-contest. Your opponent does not even crush your hand in his huge, hairy one. He is more interested in the hugs from his girlfriend. The next competitors march to the court while you seek refuge with Mr. Gin and Mrs. Tonic.

Of course the ultimate summer sport, at least in America, is softball. Which is baseball, but with a large and hard green ball. The venue can be Central Park, or any old park, and the office team drafted you because Gillian is away on a sales trip to Florida.

June - August, 2018 • 37

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s, dor Ven t Food r a Gre Fun fo ! and eryone ev

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• June - August, 2018

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“I barely know the rules” is insufficient an excuse. “It’s not serious,” they say. “Just

relax and enjoy yourself.”

Relax! That’s what they all say. And so

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to the field and throwing practice. The fat ball zips around the diamond while grown men and women shout absurd things to get pumped.

Were you ever any good at this? Did you ever manage to hit the ball? Like once? Some people swing the bat with a ferocious determination, and they often connect with a hearty crack and run like crazy for first base. You swing the bat and miss the huge, fat, green ball entirely. How is this possible?

“Battle!” screams your team. “Dig in, make it count.”

You try to make their pitcher throw strikes. She does, just like that, one-two.

Now you’re out.

So to fielding. We can do this, we can catch, we can throw. Keep saying this.

Morale is important.

Innings pass, occasionally one of their batters hits the ball out to center or right field, but not to you. When next you come up to bat, you actually hit the ball, straight to the first baseperson, and that’s that.

At last, with summer’s charms beginning to fade in a serious way, the siren call of Mr Gin is singing in your head. There’s a hearty “thwack,” and the ball comes hurtling out toward you. It’s coming right at you. You have to field this ball. You have to make the catch. Everyone is watching you.

You freeze. For a long, seemingly eternal split second, you gaze up on the onrushing green orb. You realize that if you don’t

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June - August, 2018 • 39

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move it’s going to hit you. It will hurt.

You concentrate. You open your glove and aim for the ball. Deep down, of course, you expect to blow this. The ball will either zoom past you or ruin your expensive orthodontics and leave you as one of those unfortunates you see on the subway that nobody looks at twice. But no, this time it goes straight into the glove with a solid slapping sound.

You hold on. It’s an out, and everyone cheers. You did it. There’s a momentary flush of pride and satisfaction.

It’s the top of the ninth. Your team might even win.

“See, you’re not so bad,” says the toughminded lady from sales whose name you can never remember.

The walk off the field this time is different. When you pull off the glove, trying to be nonchalant, your hands are shaking from the tension.

Later you find you’ve somehow pulled a muscle in your back. A night of excruciating agony follows, until dawn arrives and with it the opening of the chiropractor’s saloon.

Summertime, take it from me, it’s time to just relax.

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Keeping cool Searching for water fun remains this explorer’s adventure

By Paul Smart hen I first moved to the Catskills, I lived across from the Esopus Creek in Phoenicia. Tubing, describing itself as an industry, was its heyday. Those were days before cell phones and Internet, when even fax machines were hard to find.

I hid myself away from all but deadlines my first summer, seated in pools of chilly, rushing water reading paperbacks as screaming folks in giant inner tubes crashed past me between rocks. Their faces were often fixed in fearful agony.

I’d comb local library sales and buy several copies of the same work so it wouldn’t matter how wet my creek copy would get.

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rom the minute you drive down the long, long paved driveway and observe all the scenic 15.6 acres of the property you will know this is the property for you. From the picturesque pond to the manicured gardens you know you are home.

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Catskill Mountain Realty, Inc.

Catskill_Mountain_Realty@verizon.net (845) 331-5665

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On many trails you’ll find a place to nestle into a cooling creek, and maybe even your own private waterfall.

I moved up into a narrow mountain valley, where I found a path leading down a steep hill among ancient hemlocks

towards a wide pool created by a dam of rocks. Those who used the pool would maintain and add to the dam, the better to

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COURTESY OF KIM DO

The artist Kim Do has kept a home by one of the region’s great swimming home for decades, where he’s painted the scene’s changing moods almost daily. deepen the pool. There were spots where one could sit with streams of water all around, massaging different parts of the neck and back like a jacuzzi. It was idyllic.

The only time I didn’t have the place solo I found a good friend.

The rocks surrounding our pool were wide and warm. Richer people, several of them drawn to the area by the flyfishing, bought houses along the stream. They took to disassembling the dams we built.

An era ended.

I took to carrying trunks and a towel in my car as I traversed the area, looking for new swimming holes. They used to be all over the place back then. You’d spot a stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere with cars parked in a line, note where an entrance path was, and then return ona weekday. Sometimes I’d find my way down to some of the DEP reservoirs around the area, beyond the Ashokan, and take furtive quick dips.

Eventually, the cars started disappearing from many regular spots. Fences and No Trespassing signs popped up. The reservoirs were patrolled. Another era started to draw to a close.

I moved up into deeper mountain cloves in Greene County and found swimming holes where streams converged. Ones behind town highway garages had sandy beaches, created from winter road piles’ slippage. Over several summers, a group of us learned how to float wide-lipped wine goblets in the water as dusk slipped into evening. Eddying waters kept our wine chilled and circling in an arm’s length from us as baby trout nibbled our toes.

(DROP CAP) I eventually moved down to the Hudson Valley, where we had a

mosquito-blanketed stream behind us.

On several occasions I walked miles along the stream’s length past fancy homes, farm fields and old day camps to the bottom of a waterfall where I could swim across a deep pool and behind the rush of water to a room-like space. I started looking for and finding similar spots around the area. I found waterfall guides at book sales and online.

One summer my wife and I took her nieces and nephews on our creek hike.

We suggested they wear creek shoes, but they insisted flipflops were enough. The screaming teens jumped from rock to rock and cried, after their footwear floated off downstream. They still talk about coming back when their own kids are old enough for such adventure.

During our own kid’s younger years we found some nice sandy places like the village beach in Saugerties and the city beach in Kingston for him to play in. We walked on the flats out by the Saugerties lighthouse. We found several other spots farther up the river, quiet and away from people, where we could build things, wash and lose various plastic knights and animals, and carry various buckets around.

By then, we also had the Internet, and then travel phones. We could check water conditions before and as we went.

(DROP CAP) On weekday afternoons and evenings, my son and I would often sneak into several old resort hotel pools, in most cases after getting a seasonal okay from their owners. We’d take bunches of kids to Lake Taghkanic and Wilcox Park in Columbia and Dutchess counties.

Summer experiences involving loads of kids enjoying a beach together should be

June - August, 2018 • 43

part of everyone’s lives.

We discovered a wide creek filled with individual pools and waterfalls, a beach, and a wide swimming area upstream from a dam. The location could hold several hundred at one time, allowing everone space for their own swimming experiences.

A scene developed there over several years. One evening, catching kids (including my own) as they slid down a sluice to where I stood, I felt my wedding ring slip off my finger. I started to panic, trying to see where it could have dropped among the sand and many rocks. A man made his way across the water towards me. He was carrying a diver’s mask in his hand.

He asked me whether I wanted to borrow it. As soon as I put my face into the stream with it on, I saw my ring – like something out of Tolkien – seemingly suspended above a crevice. I grabbed it.

The surrounding town and county closed the place down, saying that there had been a fight. There was trash (even though we all picked it up each time we went), they said). Then word came down that it was polluted. The fences went up.

Everyone moved on to friends’ pools, the bigger public lakes.

My summer swimming is now as much an act of nostalgia as a means of keeping comfortable. I revisit old spots to see if they’re still crowd-free. Many aren’t accessible any more. But I find new spots each time I go out looking. . I keep returning to my spots along the Hudson.

I’m content, now, to simply sit in a babbling brook and splash a bit, to occasionally try out a new lake or public pool. I’m cool. I stay cool.

Colleen Fox President

82 Vineyard Avenue, Highland, NY 12528 845-691-6600 • 845-256-1300 845-331-7111 • 845-452-5000 845-566-5203 • FAX: 845-691-2447

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COURTESY NEW YORK NEW JERSEY TRAIL CONFERENCE

Fire towers that were once a key to the safety of the Catskills. Five have been restored as destinations for the many who love hiking the region’s many trail systems.

Fire-tower hiking The five remaining Catskills structures offer a variety of experiences

By Jodi La Marco

T

he Catskills provide a welcome escape when the heat of summer settles in elsewhere.

The region’s peaks are often cooler than the valley below, and mountaintop views are worth the climb. For an unforgettable experience, try a sunrise hike to one of the area’s restored fire towers.

Perhaps you’ve already voiced a flat no to the prospect of waking up at dawn, but bear with me. Sunrise hikes are worth getting out of bed for. Cool morning air

Many gems are hidden along Catskill Mountain trails, including one entire mountainside where intrepid hikers have been constructing impromptu throne rooms for decades now.

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June - August, 2018 • 45

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PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO

While stony summits are not the Catskills’ predominant feature, those hiking to the region’s high peaks will find stunning vistas. is even cooler at high elevations, giving hikers a refreshing reprieve from the heat.

Starting early also means less-crowded parking lots and quieter trails. And of course, there’s the spectacle of the horizon during twilight.

Fire towers offer a 360-degree view above the treetops. From your perch, the entirety of the sky will be visible to you as it fills with light and color. Before the sun climbs high overhead, you may see blan-

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kets of mist still settled between the mountains.

Surrounding peaks appear to rise from the fog like green islands in a lake of cloud. Try not to hurt your thumbs Instagramming.

You’ ll experience a bit of regional mountain history as well. In 1908, fires ravaged the forests of New York State, burning more than 368,000 acres.

Strong public demand led to the passage of fire-prevention laws the following year. This new state legislation called for the construction of observation towers.

Hundreds were built throughout the state.

Five towers within the Catskill Forest Preserve that have been rehabilitated are open to the public. During summer

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• June - August, 2018

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weekends, the volunteer-staffed cab atop each steel tower is open to visitors. Even when the cab is closed, the steps leading to the top can still be climbed.

Trails to these five towers range in difficulty from easy to challenging. The shortest and least demanding leads to the Red Hill fire tower on Old Dinch Road in Claryville. Red Hill operated until 1990, making it the last Catskill observatory to close. At a round trip of less than three miles and with an elevation gain of only 1000 feet, this hike is doable even for

most beginners.

Another moderate hike leads to the top of Balsam Lake Mountain (Don’t confuse Balsam Lake Mountain with Balsam Mountain or Balsam Cap). This hike requires a little more climbing. However, the elevation gain is spread out over twice the distance, making the ascent longer but gentler.

From the parking lot on Mill Brook Road near Mapledale, cross the road to find the trailhead on the opposite side of the street. After setting out, you’ll gradually ascend for 2.2 miles before reaching

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the three-quarter-mile-long red trail to the tower. Balsam’s first observatory was built in 1887 by a private hunting club.

The structure burned down in a lightning strike. It was rebuilt in 1905 and taken over by the state in 1909.

T

he trailhead for Woodstock’s Overlook fire tower on Mead’s Mountain Road is just a seven-minute drive from the heart of the hamlet.

Woodstock has long been a popular tourist spot, so you’ll likely have company unless you set out early or in midweek. This hike spans a distance of 2.3 miles in each direction and gains roughly 1370 feet in elevation. For the inex-

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perienced, Overlook can feel like a slog, but thousands of visitors — including kids — make the trek every year.

Although the trail itself is uninteresting (the forest here isn’t particularly enchanting), the concrete hotel ruins near the top more than make up for that deficiency. The Overlook Mountain House was erected in 1871 and destroyed by fire just four years later. Unfortunately, its replacement suffered the same fate when it burned in 1924. Construction of a yet another hotel was undertaken but never completed. The unfinished and eerily beautiful shells of its buildings still stand today.

Like Overlook, the Mount Tremper trailhead in Phoenicia is also just minutes from a popular tourist hamlet. Phoenicia is home to a stellar vintage shop, The Town Tinker Tube Rental, and other fun local businesses. Though both these trailheads are located near delightfully quirky communities, the trail up Tremper is decidedly tougher and less used. Beginning at the DEC parking lot on Route 40, you’ll travel three miles to reach the peak and ascend almost 2000 feet on the way.

The hardest hike of the bunch leads to the top of Hunter Mountain. Among the first

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Explore Hudson Valley

observatories to be built in the area, the original 1909 structure on Hunter was far more crude than its steel replacement. The tower’s main supports were made from three large trees, and the viewing deck was completely exposed to the elements.

Hunter Mountain is not for beginners.

The approach via Becker Hollow — the shortest but steepest route to the peak — climbs more than 2220 feet in less than three miles. From the parking lot on Route 214, follow the blue trail for about two miles until you come to the yellow trail on your right. Follow this short path for about a third of a mile to reach the observatory. Once there, pat yourself on the back. You’ve just climbed the secondhighest mountain in the Catskills.

Aircraft surveillance eventually rendered observatories obsolete. Towers

began closing in the 1970s, and by the 1980s only a handful remained. With the threat of demolition looming, communities began restoration efforts in the mid-1990s.

Regarded as more than just lookouts, these towers were seen as pieces of Catskills heritage. Each of the five communities surrounding an observatory organized on a grassroots level to raise funds for its own rehab project, and the overarching plan was coordinated by The Catskill Center and DEC. The towers on Hunter, Red Hill, Tremper, Overlook, and Balsam Lake Mountains are once again available for the public to enjoy. Whatever time of day you choose to hit the trail, a visit to one of these historic structures will probably turn out to be one of the highlights of your summer.

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Making do Summer is a kids’ treasure box

By Roxanne Ferber he wind-down to the end of the school year was exhausting. The finish line seemed never quite close enough. Finally, though, the last school bell rang, and the kids ran out to start their summer fun. Tired of the usual lineup of overcrowded amusements and overpriced trips to big theme parks? Why not seek out the more hidden treasures of summer nearby?

T

When I was a kid back in the 1980s, there was never a rush to go on a vacation. We had sprinklers in our back yards, and an ice-cream truck roamed the neighborhood.

Why not live like a tourist and hop in the car to find something new only a short distance away? Visiting a farmers’ market in another town may not sound like a fancy getaway, but that unfamiliar setting may offer live music or kids’ art activities. You can be sure to sample the fare and stuff the kids’ faces with delicious

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pastries and fresh berries.

Not every kid has a pool in her or his back yard, but there are plenty of swimming holes to keep cool in. Get the lowdown on the best swim spots in your local newspaper or with a quick Google search of your county. You may be surprised at how many hidden areas you have yet to explore. Swimming in a lagoon in a creek or semi-desolate natural stream is a unique experience. The kids will always remember the excitement of playing in that water for the very first time. Splash pads at local parks or the town wading pool may be more suitable for little ones.

Seasonal fare, from backyard barbecues to food festivals, takes center stage at nearly every gathering. You can’t shake a corn dog on a stick without pointing to it as a got-to-have taste of summer. You can’t pass up the varied kid-driendly food at a county fair. The kids enjoy the cotton candy and farm-fresh milkshakes during fair week.

Mix it all up with hours of fast rides and a walk down the game row. Most wouldn’t call the county fair a hidden treasure, but we all covet those carefree summer days meeting up with friends to slurp down snow cones.

Food-truck festivals are popping up in

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have drool-worthy concession stands with fresh popcorn and a kid’s choice of candy.

The local library may be a great place to cool off with a good book, but you can also

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All throughout the summer, most towns offer summer events that allow children to hang out with other kids and enjoy such all-out fun as hours of bouncing. And then come the big county fairs… some communities, with a huge variety of foods to sample. You can find lots of kid-friendly favorites, and there’s plenty of room for the kids to run.

Stroll along with the kids at a car show.

Entertain them with stories of what it was like driving in cars without media players, digital surround sound and doors that open with a touch of a button. Introduce them to the era of muscle cars and tailfins in seafoam green. Car shows aren’t happening just in large-scale arenas. These days they are popping up at mom-and-pop pizza places and in the middle of small towns. These intimate shows are always kid-friendly and help create connections with local businesses in your community.

If you’re already taking a walk through history, why not visit museums and historical mansions for a new perspective on the past? Kids of any age will find a new appreciation for modern life when they find out that nineteenth-century kids their age were churning butter and stacking blocks of hay instead of moving digital figures on a screen.

Enjoy watching your family’s favorite movies come to life on the big screen at a drive-in theater. Kids will be wowed by the little speaker boxes and thrilled to be out well past bedtime. While some of them might find this attraction old-fashioned, the adults with them are reliving their childhood memories. Besides, some of the few drive-in movie places left still

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find some kid-friendly entertainment there. Family-fun nights with reptiles and mad scientists could be on the agenda at a library near you. Some libraries host block parties and summer fairs. If you don’t have your own library card, there is no better time than now to pick one up.

Make your own family-fun night or rainy-day fun at home by checking out the board games and Lego kits at the library. Every library offers something new and exciting to share, so take a chance and hop around to new locations.

Looking to infuse a little art into your outdoor summer fun?

Take a look at sculpture parks.

Unique works of gigantic art are on display in wide-open spaces you can walk through with the kids. There is no one way to PUBLIC DOMAIN PHOTO enjoy the excitement of staring up toward a behemoth piece of Do kids really want an endless stream of activities, from camp to classes, metallic art. Expect that every occupying their time each summer? Or do they just want the chance to wander? kid will want to climb on it. hot. When the kids are asked to write the back to school, their cheeks flushed from Ask at your local library circulation desk traditional essay about how they spent the summer sun. The temperatures will about passes for free admission to nearby their summer, make sure they have plenty begin to cool down, and the excitement museums and sculpture parks. of adventures to share. of reuniting with school chums will burn Once summer is over, the kids will head

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June - August, 2018 • 51

COURTESY CAMP TIMBERLAND

Summer camps such as Shandaken’s fabled Timberland have long drawn youngsters to the Catskills, and fueled adult memories – and fears – of what nature can provide.

Even I can love camping How nature can work its charm on us all

By Abbe Aronson

A

uthor Jenny Offill once referred to herself as “the indoorsy type.” I’ve always loved the description. I relate to it completely.

Growing up, we did not camp. There were no romantic evenings around a smoldering campfire with guitars strumming.

No hilarious anecdotes about peeing outside. No fond memories of overnight camp in the woods of Vermont or Maine.

No nostalgia for simpler times.

There were instead the sanitized shopping malls of vanilla, suburban Philadelphia. Later came the intoxicating punkrock scene downtown in Center City and then in New York City. The outdoorsy gene eluded me completely.

In the summer of my sophomore year in college I signed up to be a counselor at a fancy Jewish camp in the Poconos, where I was assigned the task of overseeing the

oldest girls’ group. My charges wore designer bathing suits and never got their hair wet. Their parents arrived on visiting day with sushi on dry ice. Camping this was not.

How this decidedly urban girl ended

up in the Catskills is a longer story. The mountains, the air, the woods and the peace and quiet intoxicated me from my first weekend jaunt here in the mid-1990s.

It was an easy decision for me to make a new home here in the country. That was

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about 15 years ago.

Still, there had been no camping.

When he was two years old, my now nearly 19-year-old son cried when we set him down on the grass. “No no no,” he screamed. “Itchy!” He never asked to be a Boy Scout or to spend an evening outside under the stars. A semi-disastrous sleepover with his buddies in Kenneth Wilson State Park when he was in the second grade is still fodder for family amusement. No one in our family, it seemed, was interested in spending time in nature in a meaningful way.

A

nd then, slowly, something happened. My life changed in a way that I least suspected.

Wilson Park is just down the road from us. I found myself easing into a habit of walking the dog there, for exercise. I was happy to clear my head before the chatter of the day began. The walk be-

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came a habit. Our dog, a French bulldog named Tugboat, was also the indoorsy type. He fell in love with the open air.

He cultivated the ability to run hard.

Both of us felt better upon returning from what became our daily two- or three-mile walk.

It was idyllic. After out walks, Tugboat dropped instantly into a deep slumber on his doggie bed. I poured a fresh cup of coffee and tackled my work with zest and zeal.

It wasn’t just the movement, the endorphins, the light sweat I worked up on those paths. It was the quiet time in a semi-natural setting that was so appealing. It was a time of unplugged silence, of nothing more than scenery and delicious woodsy smells, with no one else around.

It was the opposite of how I had spent most of my life.

I started to joke about it on social media. #parking #mychurch blah blah blah. Those who knew me were amused that I had fallen so hard for something so outdoorsy.

A reservation for a hot new restaurant in the city or fantastic seats at a concert? Yes, those things, of course. But a silent stroll in nature? Who was this person, anyway?

Wilson Park, solo with the dog or with friends who joined the walks, became not just routine. It became nourishment.

It became therapy. It got me through break-ups and tough decisions about work and raising a teenager. I walked at sunrise and felt like my heart would

ABBE ARONSON

A restful nap in a poolside chair is outdoorsy enough for many. burst with happiness. Filled with anger for a dead parent, I slogged through the park on a very somber Mother’s Day. It was a balm.

N

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aturally, when I started dating a man that my pals and I referred to as “Sporty Spice” I was eager to share with him the wonders of the park. Wilson Park is gorgeous. SS readily agreed that it was one of the nicer campgrounds he’d seen.

Campgrounds? To me, this was my park.

I actually avoided the park during camping season, when it was overrun with kids and grills and campers and activity.

It seems that you can run but you can’t hide. Camping eventually caught up with me.

After waxing poetic about how much I was loving lying out under the stars at night by my pool with SS post-skinnydipping, I said, aloud, to a few friends,

“You know? I’d go camping with him. I think I’d love it.”

This was the person who has received novelty cocktail napkins with the slogan “I Love Not Camping” printed on them.

Twice. From different people.

“You’d go camping? You must really like this guy!”

I did. I do. A lot.

Which brings us full circle. In July, we are going camping. And not in Wilson Park, though I must tell you that my favorite site in that campground would be #68 if I were picking out a spot for myself to pitch a tent. For that matter, it’s probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to do my first test run just down the road, right?

We are going camping in Acadia National Park in Maine for five days. Five days, as in almost a week.

You should see the look on my friends’ faces when I casually tell them.

It’s not such a stretch for me to imagine

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the trip. For one thing, I’ve learned that I can do anything on which I set my mind.

I’ve lived a complex life, with plenty of twists and turns. Challenges don’t scare me. I embrace them, in some ways.

All that clean air will naturally smell and taste different from our Catskills. There’ll be open space, new birds, paths around trees and rocks and streams that I’ve never seen before. That’s a big turn-on for this newly anointed nature girl.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m already joking about how my campsite in Acadia will come with WiFi and a mani/pedi station. I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t turn this adventure into a quasi-sitcom of sorts.

The thing is, camping — taking that step into the natural unknown — doesn’t seem like a challenge, really. Being in a gorgeous place — a huge step up from the local park that I know as well as my own body at this point — with someone I adore doesn’t seem so bad. SS has promised me an A+ experience complete with fantastic meals cooked over the fire and what he categorizes as the most comfortable tent in the history of tent sleeping.

I’m in. It seems as though my outdoorsy gene has kicked in big time.

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Not so long ago The sultriness of summer memories

By Tad Wise

All our teachers had been conveniently distracted by a scandal involving the headmaster and a ome time in the Fifties, missing hundred thousand dollars.

Elizabeth Taylor’s doctor Freedom’s day dawned, followed bought a dairy farmer’s by its night. estate in Bearsville. The We had a full keg of Tuborg on tap large house, guest house and nuwhich at first seemed too sweet, but merous barns were clustered at the got tastier as the sun set. The smell end of a long, tree-lined drive with of Thai weed, with its coffee-toffee extensive hay fields on both sides. tang, mingled in the early evening’s Dropping by our house one Saturbreeze. day morning in the spring of 1974, The girls were in shorts and biDoctor H. and his sprawling family kini tops or halters. We boys were soon became our acquaintances. bare-chested in bathing suits or in I was almost 18 years old when unbuttoned shirts soon abandoned. one Saturday morning that spring There were shrieks of laughter comI accepted a glass of champagne at ing from the tennis court and high, a steak-and-eggs breakfast at our poorly struck balls flashing over the neighbor’s house. fence. The meadow leading down Below the main house was a huge, to the glistening pool was without empty and thoroughly rusted pool Lyme ticks -- that contagion didn’t that had become home to hornets exist yet. and various vermin. My hosts told I’d painted the sheets of metal me it had been constructed by the upon which American sailors previous owner out of steel slabs cut had once battled the Japanese in from a PT boat. There were stories exchange for the party. Classes of machine guns and cash buried in COURTESY OF TAD WISE were already over, It was midweek. trunks somewhere on the property, The author as a teenager.

Destiny and a sister-in-law were tales which sounded an awful lot both naked in the pool. like the persistent rumors about a Earlier that spring, I was a student leader cache of loot and weapons hidden by Legs An utterly fantastic sound system domiin a local private school of 112 kids that Diamond in these parts back in the 1920s. nated the scene. Derek and The Dominoes turned out to be a short-lived experiment.

Thanks to the legend, the H. place had in particular attained immortality that I somehow arranged that our senior class long been called Treasure Farm. night. It seemed a stoned Jay Gatsby must party would coincide with my eighteenth The appellation held an entirely differsurely emerge from the main house to birthday bash. Funds set aside for the ent significance to me. The youngest of propose a toast to Eden returned. But he former would fuel the latter.

Dr. H’s daughters, a few years my senior, didn’t, so we stumbled toward it on instinct. had changed her name to embrace a sense The pool went nude at nightfall. Teenage of wonder. Destiny’s sparkling eyes and pregnancies became a considerable risk in hatever straight-laced teeth, full lips and deep tan were enhanced the water and the surrounding meadow. classmates my best friend and by her scanty white garments. She wasn’t Despite an air of romantic laissez-faire no I did not want at the senior party were interested in the tennis court, but after I fights broke out. Eric Clapton sang I don’t given bum directions. Our wild bunch scraped and painted the pool she took to want to fade away over and over. It seemed from Woodstock got the correct ones. I lounging naked on its perimeter. to me on the night of the great party paid the caretaker from Treasure Farm It would be one of those sultry summers that life would never be more perfect.

— a hardworking local in bib overalls — lashed with thunderstorms. The cicadas I will not go into the details. I understand to handle the barbecue, reassuring what screeched their ceaseless song of murder she’s in rehab again. few Kingstonian parents dropped off and sex. I had a job as carpenter’s helper their daughters at the borrowed estate. through the week, and planned to go off I waved at them, smiling, as they drove he month before, my actual to college in the fall. back out the long private drive. birthday had bisected May as it al-

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ways had and would. On this particular occasion I’d been enjoying my first legal drinks at the Cafe Espresso. A buxom waitress named Marcy was teasing me mercilessly, while a well-known local plain-clothed detective watched from the corner stool. He seemed to be in some sort philosophical debate with himself and finally something demanding an assessment prompted him to announce: “Sooooo! You’re 18 years old and you like girls .…”

An uncomfortable silence ensued. I cut it short. “Actually,” I said, “I prefer policemen.”

I was drunk, it was my 18th birthday, and these were our years without consequence.

Alex Cantine led the bar in riot with that machine-gun laugh of his. I realized that I could’ve easily been taken outside and pistol-whipped for my remark.

Those years are long over now, of course.

We still remember that Eden actually did peek through her mangled mythology in a few magnificent cameos. We try our best not to remember nor ever quite forget exactly how incredibly beautiful all of it was. Not so long ago.

June - August, 2018 • 55

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