“The fog comes in on little cat feet,” says poet Carl Sandburg about the clime in San Francisco. The same can be said of how autumn first comes to these parts. It’s a flirtation of wild asters and jewelweed and bawdy goldenrod. The sky is as blue as the Madonna’s robe and the sun is hot, but wake up early the next morning, and dew has dampened that tablecloth you left on the patio table. The cicadas still thrum in late afternoon, but you notice the songbirds are silent. Silent and gone.
And then there is that one arc of maple bough bending over your street that is, suddenly, red. Very red, every leaf. No brown edges warned you, no yellow spots. She’s here. She’s bold about it and she’s going to take your measure.
Too bad if you have not ordered your pallets of wood pellets, your cords of wood. According to my supplier, the price has already gone up twenty bucks and delivery is four weeks out. Four weeks. That’s the end of October.
We had a two-foot snowfall on October 12 one particularly cruel winter. Does the enhanced price of renewable fuel sources, and the delayed delivery dates signal a shortage of supply (both in inventory and willing labor/brawny young country boys?) Nope. It’s what the market will bear, now that we’ve been “gentrified.” Things were going this way, but it’s been a sort of fever dream since last February.
Jim, the guy who owns the land next to mine in Lanesville, tells me that his real-estate lady has not one house for sale. Everything is sold. It seems every house, cottage, cabin and yurt is inhabited. And even available vacant land is hard to find.
What accounts for this sudden rush to gentrify? Is it the coronavirus? It might be possible with infra-red technology such as it is to watch bands of light exiting the RR, the Numbers 1, 7, and 4 trains, and the shuttle and glimmering northward like a moving LED strip of light. My own daughter left behind her cool digs in Brooklyn last January and seems not to mind me so much any more.
Is it the wildfires, some alleged to be the result of arson, that sent a middle-aged lady to us, asking to buy our land, because she so fears the fire and has been told it is coming to Kingston? We could tell she was very frightened (who isn’t these days?), and so we spoke in gentle tones about what she must consider.
Oh, she exhaled with relief, don’t worry about the snow. I have a snowblower! A snowblower. She would have to be at work by 6:30 after blowing snow on a road that is the length of a football field and 25 feet wide.
Which reminds me. Contract with a snow-plow operator now. They get booked quick. And read your contract carefully before signing.
Should you decide to call this place home, there is more to know about such things as snow blowers, snow plows, four-wheel-drive vehicles and mowers.
Let me share this anecdote. I worked on a shoot last Monday. It was a gorgeous old homestead in Staatsburg, owned by very bougey people … new to lawns, chickens, screen doors. Traversing the lawn, I spot an enormous bolt, two fingers thick, attached to two broken pieces of metal each as large as the bolt.
The thing was made grizzly with rust. It had obviously stared down and defeated any number of seasons and mower blades. I plucked it out of the lawn, and placed it on the porch. When the lady of the house breezed in from “spin class” (lordy, she lived on a flat road that provided lots of free spin opportunity), I was quick to show her the unsightly bolt.
She stared at it, then at me. I explained I had retrieved it so as to spare the mower’s blade. She blinked at me as if I had, and instantly conveyed to her, the solution to the Collatz Collective. Then she sniffed ”fine,” and smiled gratuitously as she disappeared inside the screen door, “just put it somewhere.”
Is it the lawlessness, as reported in the more urban environs, launching citizens at us, eager to buy, hoping to settle in the realm of the angels? Well, hikers, be aware that here we have hunting seasons. Those seasons involve bows and arrows, guns and bullets and camouflage clothing. Or lively red and orange plaid.
None of this is violent. But your hiking adventure might get lively, too, if you step out unaware without colorful togs. And please, please, please wear appropriate footwear. As beautiful as this landscape is, it is rugged.
Our beautiful, clean, fresh air has allowed many of us to enjoy restaurant fare al fresco! These summer days, but that’s going to end. Like Ole Blue Eyes warbles in September Song, “the days dwindle down to a precious few,” and even the heartiest of us, sipping coffee with a now-trembling hand while angling for the sun on a crowded porch, will be looking for a more hospitable arrangement next. Herzog’s in Kingston Plaza has ordered a lot of heaters useful for extending the outdoors restaurant season.
Many places will go dark, like theaters. Except for Sylvia’s in Woodstock, Maggie’s Krooked Cafe and Mama’s Boy Burgers in Tannersville and Amy’s Take Away in Lanesville. By the way, Amy’s is the best kept secret up here. Let it be secret no longer. This is truly five-star cuisine.
That beautiful, clean, fresh air was so noticeably frigid a week ago. This is what auttumn typically is and does to us here in these parts. I worked with a young actress who said, “Gee. It›s cold. This is unusual, right?”
She’s newly transplanted from Texas. She’s very talented, and I suppose everyone wants to keep her around, so they all looked at their shoes (I could tell that was what they were doing, even though it was a Zoom rehearsal.) But I said, “No. No it’s not.”
Let that young thing scamper to The Well in Saugerties and grab some warm clothing before she turns blue. And let this be a lesson to all you young brides-to-be out there. We do have the most spectacular wedding venues in the country right here, but advise your guests to pack flannels and socks for that May or maybe June fete.
This is not hyperbole. I am three times mother of the bride.
There is such a thing as romance with place, and there is such a thing as a spirit, or spirits that inhabit the land and the air of a particular locale. Here there are spirits that inspire some to take what is here and shape it so that even those among us most narrowly limited in scope and imagination can see with awe. Think Opus 40 in Saugerties. Think Art Omi in Ghent. Think Storm King at Storm King.
You can visit these places, corona or no corona, any time of year.
This year, at Art Omi, you can take that antsy child to see and skate Chemi Rosado-Seijo’s Mahican Pearl Hole (Mahican Bowl.) It’s an impressive piece, a large skate bowl that honors the skate community. The rocks leading up to the bowl create a circular form that references Indigenous rock formations The piece’s name is an homage to the Mahicans, a culture and people that inhabited these lands. Jasper Kahn, a Hudson Valley local and skate board expert, is the artist who poured the concrete to its perfect shape and surface.
I continue to be amazed and pleased to see that the generic magazines and websites luring tourists upstate ignore us completely. It’s benign neglect and decades long, and I can only hope it lasts forever. We are Brigadoon! www.upstatenewyork.com, travelandleisure.com, news10.com, IloveNY.com all apparently do not know we exist. Hallelujah!
We love you, our guests, and are grateful for the what you bring. If you like it here, please, you must honor its spirit. If we learned anything about the Kaaterskill Clove invasion it is that, in order to keep peace, we all must agree to honor the land and honor the way of life that is upstate. There are things to know, and I have outlined some of that.
If you came here to find a better way to live, trust that the people here have created that. Do not assume that you know better, like a city friend of mine who took a position on a local town board. He tried to impose a law involving animal rights within a practice of animal husbandry about which he knew nothing. Not only was he humiliated when his lack of knowledge was made obvious, it was delivered in the persons of about 50 angry people who had an expertise and a credibility that crushed his attempts. Publicly. At a town-hall meeting. It will take some time for him to regain trust.
I learned this the hard way years ago when I wrote a column on education for another news publication. We may be gentrified, but the locals are still here and wise enough to admit that when Steve Sabol wrote “The Autumn Wind” for the Oakland Raiders, he knew something about the weather here in the Northeast. What autumn becomes when the silhouette of that little cat advances and transforms into something that howls.
The Autumn Wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
swaggering boisterously
His face is weather beaten
He wears a hooded sash
With his silver hat about his head
And a bristly black moustache
He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold
The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He’ll knock you ‘round and upside down
And laugh when he’s conquered and won.
Join the family! 
