Daily Archives: June 28, 2018

Catskills Weekend: June 30th Events

© J.N. Urbanski 12.50pm

Get outside! Walk, wade, wallow in the natural world. Find peace, sip, eat and relax at these wonderful events in the Catskills that includes a strenuous bushwhack hike for the more adventurous.

Saturday June 30th

Catskill Mountain Wild have partnered with Hudson River School to offer a regular event called Hike The Hudson River Art Trail the first event being Kaaterskill Falls at 5pm on Saturday June 30th. “Hike into Thomas Cole’s paintings and visit the views in nature that Cole and his fellow artists made famous with outdoor guide extraordinaire Catskill Mountain Wild on the Hudson River School Art Trail #hrsat! The truly magical thing is that these places remain remarkably unchanged since Cole first visited in 1825 thanks to significant and ongoing preservation efforts”.

Catskill Mountains Trout Unlimited present Ladies and Leaders, a new series of events aimed at creating a fun, supportive, and social environment for women in fly fishing, the event “will be a low-key night on the stream of fishing followed by drinks and food to unwind and share stories. We will meet at 5pm and gather in the parking lot of Woodstock Brewing on Route 28 before heading out to the creek. We will fish until about 8pm and reconvene in the same meeting place before ending the night with food and drinks”. Woodstock Brewing 5581 Route 28 Phoenicia, NY.

For something more strenuous, a Hike to Alder Lake, Cradle Rock Road and Balsam Fire Tower with Catskill Mountain Club: a difficult bushwhack. Pre-registration required. Starts at 8am.

The Michael Kudish Natural History Preserve will host a Pop-Up Interdependence Party with a bonfire on 2515 Tower Mountain Road, Stamford, New York 12167 from 7.30pm to 10.30pm on June 30th. Bring your own snacks, beverages and musical instruments if you have them. Camp out overnight if you want to. More details = [email protected].

Full Strawberry Moon

© J.N. Urbanski 8.42pm

It’s the very little things we take for granted: enjoying nature before industry marches all over it, and looking up at the full, strawberry moon by an evening fire.

Back in April, Leslie T. Sharpe delivered a lecture at the Catskills Center in which she invoked a boat journey up the Hudson, two hundred years ago, when Manhattan and beyond was lush rain forest. In the boat was a young Washington Irving and Henry Hudson, marveling at the stunning beauty of the area. Now, of course, Manhattan is a gleaming, flinty mass of boxes jutting out of the sky like an gigantic block graph recording its own wealth. Turning to the future, how long will the Catskills – this craggy chunk of lush forest – be here?

The Catskills State Park, about 700,000 acres – its multitude of tributaries and it’s ecosystem – produces and protects by edict all of New York City’s drinking water. Gas pipelines snake through the state, on the flat lands either side of the Catskills that have been protected from the ravages of the oil industry by their elevation and their status as water bearer: the ancient Aquarius in a modern Industrial Age. There’s a second protective directorate in place for our region, which is Article 14 of the New York State Constitution which declares a part of the Catskills “forever wild”.

Up until 1822, wolves elk, panther and moose roamed the Catskills. By 1850, unregulated fishing and hunting had depleted fish and game stocks to new lows. The Catskills had been mostly deforested by the logging industry, and the tanning industry that only abandoned the Catskills after it had taken the bark of every hemlock standing. One hundred years ago, the Catskill Mountains were bare and deer were so rare, a preserve was created for them.

All that has changed and the Catskills were as they were before the civil war, only now there’s no industry, only tourism, plus a few new invasive species shipped in from around the world.

Today, this full moon day and into the weekend, get outside. By appreciating the wonders of nature more often, we develop a bond with it, and are more likely to try and protect it.

According to the Almanac, the moons were named after the agricultural practices in place at that time: “This Full Moon got its name from the Algonquin tribes who knew it as a signal to gather the ripening fruit of wild strawberries. It has also been known as the Honey Moon, Mead Moon, and the Full Rose Moon in Europe”.  Find out more and watch the Almanac’s video on the subject here.

Check out our weekend events in the natural world on June 30th.