“I enjoy swimming and we have a handful of options in this area, and 99% of them are illegal for stupid reasons.” – Jeremy from Newport
It must have been 2016 or so when I met a River Troll in Saugerties.
We had been tipped off by a bartender down in Brooklyn who said she used to come up every summer to ‘the Cloves’. She told us that there at the bottom, where the river ran out of the mountains, an idyllic setting could be found. A creek broke off, she said, with small, terraced waterfalls, perfect for submerging a sun-heated body on a hot summer day. Our instructions were to drive north up to exit 20 and to aim inland towards the mountain ridges when we exited. Up we drove.
The enclave at which we arrived – a portion of West Saugerties in the shadow of the mountains – did not seem welcoming to visitors. No matter. We found some grassy turnouts at the side of the road to park the cars about a half mile back from the water and we organized the troops and sallied down the main street sidewalk past houses which seemed vacant or cursed, like the tables inside had been set and the dinner had been served but all the dinner guests had vanished. Summer homes maybe.
We found the river. We performed our libations. We floated. A blast was had. We took everything out with us that we had brought in. Not because we were told to but of our own accord.
My assumption now is that the River Troll was somewhere else that day.
A year would elapse before we returned to enjoy the majesty and natural splendor of the scene. This time there were only two of us. We were scrambling down the dirt bank near a culvert of sorts when The River Troll popped out of his River Troll house and marched quickly over to the culvert.
“Hey,” he began. “What do you think you’re doing here?”
I sighed. He knew what we thought we were doing here.
It was just his opening salvo in a needlessly ugly confrontation with a pair of strangers. But by the end of it he would make it clear that the river was his, that we would not float in it or take our joy from it or engage in any other riparianesque behavior. Not while he was around. The land we were climbing down alongside the culvert to get to the river belonged to somebody else, nonetheless, in the absence of the owner, he had taken a proprietary attitude. He stood on top of the only little bridge available to him. He wore a Billy Joel T-shirt.
Any attempt to communicate ended when he pointed to a private property sign fastened to a short hurricane fence along the top of the culvert. He asked if we could read.
“No,” I told him. “We’re fucking illiterate.”
But city people coming to frolic about in a local’s river, creek or countryside, there is something viscerally offensive about them – their flashy fashions, their irreverence, their indigence, their wanton behavior. Like letting a young man court a precious daughter when the family knows he has no intention of marrying her, their tourism itself is what’s offensive. But that’s who you attract when you parade and flaunt your own natural resources.
Tourists, for the money they bring, are a double-edged sword.
Just last week, an erudite couple I met in the Rondout told me a story. Jana, a Bard professor from Darmstadt, Germany. Jeremy, an art handler from Newport, Rhode Island.
Jeremy told Jana he knew about a lake they could swim in across the Hudson River over in Elizaville. They agreed on the place and time and arrived separately.
“He got to the parking lot first,” said Jana. “He’s used to being there, so he knew where to go. I think he said that he was already parked before anything happened.”
Jeremy had noticed the two Lake Trolls sitting there in barbeque chairs but thought nothing of them. He didn’t know they were Lake Trolls yet. He thought they were just two pleasant-looking old women enjoying the lake view.
“And then one of the ladies came running over to him,” said Jana, “and was like, “you can’t park here!”
“You know when you’re on private property,” muses Jeremy, “and people give you that look, and they sidle up, and they’re like, ‘Can I help you,’ that sort of thing? When I asked her straight up, is this private property? She acted really weird and gave me a half answer and I asked her twice, and she never gave me a real answer about that.”
Exasperated, Jeremy made motions that he would park some blocks away in the nearby neighborhood. The Lake Troll informed him there was nowhere to park for him anywhere in Elizaville.
Rather than argue, but now determined, Jeremy headed farther off in search of parking. Jana arrived after he drove off.
“The ladies came up to me before I could park and asked if I had a pass,” said Jana. “I was like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. And then they offered that I could pay them fifteen dollars. Oh, no, I said, I just want to jump in, that’s not worth it for me.”
Jana too sought parking further afield.
“I was on this strange side road, and realized that these were all private homes and that it would probably be weird if I left my car there. As I was thinking that and trying to look on my phone for another road, some assholes in a giant orange truck pull up and are kind of honking at me and yelling at me that I can’t be here.”
“I don’t know what’s going on over there,” said Jeremy. “I feel like someone may have bought the lake.”
Littoral and riparian
Actually, no one, not even a Lake Troll, can buy a lake outright.
This is because the surface waters of New York State are understood to be held in the public trust, which is a dusty legal doctrine establishing that certain natural resources be preserved for public use. The doctrine’s protection extends over tidal waters, rivers and lakes. For the purposes of the right of navigation especially but along with more incidental public water rights like fishing, boating, drinking and swimming, private river rights, like private lake rights, are preempted by the public trust doctrine. It’s important to know this when dealing with Trolls.
Curiously, River Trolls are easier to evade than Lake Trolls. The best a River Troll can ever do, if you know their limitations, is scare you up or downstream away from their territory. As long as you enter the river from a neutral approach – i.e. public access or easement – you can then wade right down the middle of their river. They are powerless, legally, to stop you from doing so. Such are the riparian laws of New York State.
Lake Trolls, however, like those who prefer to live near the shore of a sea or ocean, present a different problem altogether than those on a river.
Similarly entitled to rights in a confined body of water if their property touches the water, still not even a Lake Troll can purchase a lake outright, hoarded gold notwithstanding. What they can purchase is the land which encircles the lake. Doing so in its entirety effectively traps that which was public behind a private barrier, preventing anyone else from accessing the cool, refreshing water. Or only allowing them to do so for a price they decide.
Jeremy confessed that he hadn’t been to Twin Lake since 2020.
“Four years ago, no problem. Park, swim, no monitoring. I think someone found some sort of loophole,” said Jeremy, “where they were like ‘Oh! We can buy this parking lot and make it private.’”
Incorporated Trolls
Just outside of Kingston, Rosendale boasts a collection of lakes that runs the gamut of what a lake may be. Some are still and pond-like, with floating water lilies. Some are scummy and overgrown. On its best day, the water at Witches’ Pond seems fetid and greasy, like meat has been boiled and patches of oil have risen to the top. In the early summer it glows bright green with algae blooms. Later when the heat dries out the algae, the whole thing is rank and brownish. It curdles next to a closed landfill.
It’s called witches’ pond because of two old women I once saw emerging from the water festooned with swamp grass. I did not stop to stare or ask.
Other lakes are wide and deep and unencumbered by any strange growth and are good fishing. Fourth Lake offers public access at one point, but parking is limited and treacherous. And a swimmer must kick through jungles of long underwater weeds.
The prize jewel though is Fifth Lake, aka Williams Lake, wherein the water appears pristine and cool and suggestive. When the sunlight bounces off the surface it fractures like a blowing sand of crushed diamonds. It calls out to the nature enthusiast trekking by, the bicyclist, the jogger, the dog on a leash – it entrances one to stop, walk over and take a dip. Or take a sip.
But this you must not do. A stockade fence has been erected so the passerby will not be tempted by the watery vision. In other spots giant boulders have been stacked by backhoes. The message is clear, even to the illiterate. At every conceivable entrance, split-rail fences have been erected, wooden gates have been built and locked, and there are monotonously placed “no trespassing signs” nailed deep into the trunks and bark of trees.
Nature enthusiasts go away parched. Joggers run away half crazed. Confused by the cruelty, dogs urge their owners away panting in urgency to get back to the water bowl in the car.
This is definitively the work of some industrious species of Troll, but without seeing the representatives in the flesh, it’s impossible to say which.
It’s said that Hudson Valley River Resorts, LLC, purchased what land they could surrounding much of the lake in 2007 from the Williams Lake Hotel and Beach Club which even then charged a membership fee. But laws demanding transparency in New York State are infamously lax and so it’s impossible to find out whether the names of the beneficial owners behind the limited liability corporation sound at all troll-like.
It has been shared in the papers that an entity boasting the fabulous name of Rick Steele was the manager of the LLC at the time the old property was bought. The land surrounding the lake not in the hands of private residential owners has been in development ever since, that is the public rights to enjoy the lake offers as much refreshment as if the lake was a shimmering mirage in a desert. Crossing the land to approach the water is trespassing.
Consideration for the Trolls
As the tallboys and trashbags that I have seen cast aside on the trails to that emerald green and blue pool in the Peekamoose Mountains attest, in retrospect, a forest troll put to work for the public good need not always be a bad thing.
There are less and less places and things that are still holy in this world that can stand even the gentle, misguided exploitation of an environmentally-concerned chamber of commerce. The well of beauty can run dry. One solution is to stop telling anyone where to find the things of beauty who’s not willing to search for it on their own.
But that won’t happen. The box was opened and grief flew out into the world long ago. The latest box to be opened saw ecotourism fly out. That mindful cultivation and exploitation of the area’s natural resources for the enjoyment of tourists is booming and the druids will just have to clean up after them.
A curse for whoever first posted a picture of the Blue Hole on the internet alongside coordinates – or other positively identifying location information – may their family name reek forever with the sour smoke from a plywood fire. May their grandchildren live at the bottom of a creek in the shadow of a mountain ridge and wear Billy Joel T-Shirts.
Join the family! 
