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The Marsh in Spring
A beloved place is like a reliable friend: it demands nothing from you, asks only for your patient attention, that you enter into its presence with an open heart and a listening mind….
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Thompson Pond Preserve
On my recent spring walk at Thompson Pond, at the foot of Stissing Mountain in Pine Plains, I was able to savor all of the elements and qualities that I associate with the…
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Dickie Barre
What does one make of a hike that begins at a graveyard? Only that the human lives, and deaths, that transpired here cannot be disentangled from the life of the place we enjoy…
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Through the grapevine
Hudson Valley Wine Market on Main Street in Gardiner has the greatest inventory of homegrown Hudson Valley wines of any wine boutique. Owner Perry Goldschein, who purchased the business (formerly known as Enthusiastic…
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Great things to do with the kids
“and the brown, still brown, has a greenish hum that you can only hear if you put your ear to the ground and close your eyes” – from And Then It’s Spring by…
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Turn up the volumes
Before you bemoan the total disappearance of the small-time bookseller who tends to the printed word and offers full shelves of hardcopy of the same, look around your town, on corners and down…
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Ferncliff Forest
Spring is a kind of kaleidoscope. Its array of delicate colors — lavender, white and pink in early forest flowers, red in the tops of swamp maples, and gold-green in budding trees —…
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Guyot Hill
To climb a crag like Bonticou is an exciting outdoor experience, but to view the same crag from a nearby hill offers its own, quieter rewards. I discovered the latter on my recent…
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Spring Farm
To walk along one of the hedgerows of red cedar trees that separate the rolling meadows of Spring Farm is to experience the dominant landscape of our recent agricultural past. Yet the fields…
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Sam’s Point
To climb in elevation is equivalent, at least in terms of the plants, animals and even the weather one is likely to encounter, to going north. So we decided to visit Sam’s Point,…
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D & H Canal Park
High Falls is a place of two trails, and both have stories to tell. The trail that starts at the DePuy Canal House tells of the Delaware and Hudson Canal, which transformed this…
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The winter marsh
Though it’s natural, in late February and early March, to anticipate the coming of spring, yet I relish the bracing quality of such truly wintry days as remain to us. “Winter comes to…
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County seatings: Exploring downtown Hudson
Years ago, Hudson was like many county seats around the nation, and particularly the Northeast: The main course at local restaurants was breakfast or lunch. And no, that didn’t mean three martinis before…
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The Foothills
Among the many kinds of walks we take, the walk close to home, along a less traveled path, has much to recommend it. Such a walk can be taken on the Foothills Trail…
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The many lives of Adolfas Mekas
In his book of short stories Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, neuroscientist David Eagleman imagines three deaths. The first death is when the body ceases to function: the second death is when…
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Poets’ Walk
Poets’ Walk is one of those places in the Hudson Valley that remind us that the Romantic view of nature took root early in our region, perhaps before it did anywhere else in…
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Help find a grave
With more than 11 billion historical records in its online archives, Ancestry.com is often the destination of choice for first-time genealogists seeking to track down information about their family history. It can be…
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Stony Kill Falls
For outdoor adventure close to home, mingled with scenic grandeur, nothing beats a winter walk to a waterfall. Such a walk is most challenging, and most inspiring, when snow covers the ground and…
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Cut that out!
When Woodstock-based photographer Jeffrey Milstein started Paper House Productions 30 years ago this January, there wasn’t really anything comparable on the market. The blank greeting cards and stickers that he designed were strikingly…
The Marsh in Spring
A beloved place is like a reliable friend: it demands nothing from you, asks only for your patient attention, that you enter into its presence with an open heart and a listening mind….
Get an earful
In the opinion of this writer, this moment is in some respects the best time ever in the history of the mid-Hudson Valley music scene, Dylan be damned: more original acts than ever…
Thompson Pond Preserve
On my recent spring walk at Thompson Pond, at the foot of Stissing Mountain in Pine Plains, I was able to savor all of the elements and qualities that I associate with the…
Through the grapevine
Hudson Valley Wine Market on Main Street in Gardiner has the greatest inventory of homegrown Hudson Valley wines of any wine boutique. Owner Perry Goldschein, who purchased the business (formerly known as Enthusiastic…
The commerce of comedy
Someone’s about to air UPAC’s dirty laundry – a larger-than-life leopard-print brassiere suspended from giant clothesline by gargantuan clothespins – and it signals something significant, something serious. What’s going on may be the…
Vernooy Kill Falls
The trail to Vernooy Kill Falls leaves the road to enter a moist hemlock forest. As we traversed the rock-strewn, stream-braided terrain on a perfect spring day, we felt we were entering a…
Great things to do with the kids
“and the brown, still brown, has a greenish hum that you can only hear if you put your ear to the ground and close your eyes” – from And Then It’s Spring by…
Turn up the volumes
Before you bemoan the total disappearance of the small-time bookseller who tends to the printed word and offers full shelves of hardcopy of the same, look around your town, on corners and down…
Ferncliff Forest
Spring is a kind of kaleidoscope. Its array of delicate colors — lavender, white and pink in early forest flowers, red in the tops of swamp maples, and gold-green in budding trees —…
