Gornell University Library Dthaca, New York BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 _ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE CATSKILLS Photograph by Howard Burtt Wart or Manitou’ THE CATSKILLS BY T. MORRIS LONGSTRETH Author of “The Adirondacks,” etc. ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1918 Copyright, 1918, by THE CENTURY Co. Published, October, 1918 DEDICATED WITH LOVE TO MARTHA M. HALDEMAN WHOSE SYMPATHY AND ENCOURAGE- MENT HAVE BEEN NEVER-FAILING CHAPTER I IT III IV Vv VI VII VII IX x XI XII XIII XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX xx XXI XXII CONTENTS IntropuctTions ALL Rounp . WoopstocK AND THE OVERLOOK MEANDERING BY THE Map Tue WALL oF Manitou . APOSTASY OF A CHEERFUL Liar . Natty Bumpro’s VIEW . WHEN Is 4 WATERFALL? THat ELUSIVE VAN WINKLE Stony CLOVE . A CHAPTER ON SHOES Brute’s LitrLe GAME Our WINDHAM Way . THe WINTER Woops . Tue NortHwest REDOUBT Big INgIN anpD Heap Bia SLIDE . SPRING AND Mr. BurrouaHs INTERMEZZO A RENDEZVOUS WITH JUNE . Mount ASHOKAN AND THE RESERVOIR . Tue Hapry VALLEY . BEAVERKILL BusH THE CATSKILL Park . Some GuIDE-BooK ADDENDA . InpEx PAGE 15 30 40 50 65 85 95 . 115 . 134 . 141 . 155 . 175 . 202 . 210 . 238 . 255 . 260 . 266 . 275 . 284 . 299 . 812 . 319 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Wall of Manitou . . . . . =. . Frontispiece Map! i ee, Set. ae Se ae ih, Se) 8 ‘Dark Lines of Widening Torrent’? . . . . . 17 Knapsack and Shoe-Leather . . . .. . . 18 A Sawkill Memory . . . . . . . ss « 85 Splutterkill, Splatterkill . . . .. =. =. =. 86 The OntiOra . . ..... .. . . 58 Mountainside—Santa Cruz Park. . . . . . 54 Natty Bumppo’s View. . ....... 7 Haines’ Falls . . . .... .. =. . 72 Crest of the Kaaterskill. . . . .... . 89 Kaaterskill Falls . . . . ..... . 90 Down the Kaaterskill Clove . . .. . . . 107 Profile near Palenville . . . . . - . ~ ~ 108 Plateau and Stony Clove . .... . . . 125 Hunter Notch—Stony Clove . . . . . . . 126 The Esopus near Shandaken . . ... . . 148 Phoenicia eh ee. Vo ke ER Gee oe. vals aoldt Out Windham Way. . ...... . ~~. J6i1 Valley of the Westkill . . » . . . . . . 162 The Winter Woods. . .. . ... =. =. 179 The Wittenberg. . . . . . ... . . 180 Late of Wittenberg Forest. . . . . . . . 197 Ashokan from the Wittenberg. . . . . . . 198 ILLUSTRATIONS. A Slope of Utsayantha . South from Utsayantha Man-Not-Afraid-of-Company Woodchuck Lodge Stamford from Utsayantha Nearing Grand Gorge Roxbury the Rare Green Pastures . PAGE . 215 . 216 . 249 . 250 . 267 . 268 . 801 . 302 THE CATSKILLS THE CATSKILLS CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND HE principal, grand, and conclusive thaw had come late in March. There had been previous slight relentings of the cold, occasional dribblings from noontime icicles; but winter, usu- ally so intermittent with us, had stuck to being winter for weeks at a time until Greenland’s ici- est mountains and our less pretentious suburb had much in common. At last, however, the snows were ebbing away. The wealth of whiteness that the north wind had spent his months in amassing was being, squan- dered by the spendthrift south in a few days. First the deep ruts ran with water, and soon the entire roads. The broad fields grew noisy with dark lines of widening torrent. Houses that one day stood beside a lake the next stood in it; and from humid dawn till hazy eve an adolescent sun brooded upon an emerging world. It was a beau- tiful representation of Genesis in rehearsal. 3 4 THE CATSKILLS And after Genesis came Exodus. The abandon of mounting spring had kindled in me a longing for outdoors and the open road altogether incom- patible with the rigors of professional hours. No youngster in our school had computed more ex- actly than had I the interval between the moment in question and vacation; between the acute pres- ent and an abstract future. Outdoors the glint of yellowing willows and the encouragement of the song-sparrow were daily growing stronger. But they were confronted in- doors by a calendar and a Committee of Educa- tion. “Come out and be human,’’ sang the song- sparrow. ‘“‘Stay in and be educated,’’ shouted the Com- mittee of Education. In this chorus of competitive invitation the Committee would have drowned out the bird if the quiet hand of chance had not given a signal: a band of itinerant measles came to visit in our vicinity. If it be so that our personality is betrayed by our prayers, then mine are not for publica- tion. For they came true. The measles—I hoped they would be light cases — did not abate their duty; nor did the Board of Health. In the first flush of spring, before the last drifts had vanished from the lee of hedges and hefore INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 5 the maple-sap would have started in the moun- tains, we were furloughed. We became as free as song-sparrows. In a twinkling of the imag- ination the dim blue ranges of my day-dreams changed to the tangible dirt of the road beneath my feet. Once unmoored, it had taken me little time to get under way. A train, a trolley, a ferry; and the first of April was leading me forth from the Hudson-washed city of Kingston to tramp for a full month (measles permitting). through the mountains that banked ahead of me against the western sky. I had stout shoes on my feet and a stout knapsack on my back, and my head was filled with visions of broiled trout. Nothing else, except possibly the hot-cakes, mat- tered. To be sure, I was alone, which is not the best estate for highwaying; but even that condi- tion could not damp my spirits as I struck out through the mud of the late merry month of March. March had gone out like a ewe-lamb, and so had I. Had I not listened to the farewells of friends and to their prophetic qualms! All winter mem- ory had been filling my eyes with pictures of shadowy gorges and winding woodways, with a full meal at the end of every proper period. The friends reminded me that those pictures were il- lusion, that spring is a sodden equinox and corn meal monotonous. Do not despise the dangers of 6 THE CATSKILLS setting out a month ahead of convention! As I listened I was almost persuaded to go back on those beneficent measles. There was a dash of truth in what they said. It is quite true that there is no walker who has not longed sometime for wheels, no vagabond who would not at times trade all his liberty for the discomforts of home. Every seeker has often criticized the curiosity that led him forth. But he who would find must also seek, On that eventful morning of brilliant skies and buoyant airs, the rhythm of the road made me as forgetful of farewells as is the new-risen soul in Paradise of the burial service. In an hour I had left the little city and the Hudson well behind. I doubt whether the approach to the Elysian Fields can be more quietly beautiful than was that elm-lined road along which my pilgrimage led. To the west and to the north mountains rose per- pendicularly from the plain. The plain was bare, the mountains snow-covered, and distance en- dowed them with living color, a faint mother-of- gentian blue. They rose in conscious dignity. Apparently they were not concerned with making an impression by pinnacles or ragged edges; they coveted no cheap splendors. They had taken time to be perfect, established, beautiful. Despite the clearness of the air, the mountains grew visibly nearer with every mile, always a comforting observation to any one used to the co- INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 7 quettish qualities of Western distances. The gen- eral ranges disclosed their more richly tinted val- leys. The gray of the leafless forest was darkened here and there with patches of conifer. Climbing a little hill beside the road, I came upon my first surprise of a surprising day. At my feet there shone a mountain lake, ice-green and without ap- parent end, where there had never been a lake be- fore. On earlier visits to the Catskills I had ridden through the lowlands where now sparkled , and flared these unexpected ice-floes. Yet the set- ting was perfect, the lake fitted into its scene as magically as does Derwentwater. Along one edge the silver gleam of water liberated itself from the frozen glare of aged ice and danced in the sun. For miles back into the mountain-land the body of the lake extended, with bays winding between the hillocks on either side. Was the world still under creation’s spell, I wondered? Then I remembered that it was the great new Reservoir. But in remembering the beauty of it grew no less. My itinerary was unplanned. There was still a week before trout might legally accept the fly. I had thought of wandering about the mountains prospecting for rich pools. But now there was a decision to be made. Yonder beckoned the ancient hills; here invited a new lake, to which—? At such moments of decision the tiniest of considera- 8 THE CATSKILLS tions may switch one of the contending molecules from pro to con and one’s destiny be changed eternally. The consideration in this case was or- dinary enough. An automobile of the universal type stopped at the roadside. At first the mere stopping of the car, inasmuch as I did not care to ride, had no apparent bearing upon my future. But presently the youth who had been diverting himself beneath the hood called to me, and my attention was ,withdrawn from the impersonal attraction of the Ashokan Reservoir to the personal ones of the driver. Since I had been alone for nearly two hours, I was quite ready to speak with my kind. But with this young fel- low it was business first, and that without conver- sation. He said merely: “Tf you ‘Il hold that I ’Il crank her.’’ I held it and she was cranked. But she still sulked. Force was, as usual, of no avail with the female of the species. I ventured a pleasantry to that effect, but it fell upon ears primed only for the purring of the motor. So I put down my pack until he should ask me to do something else. There was something about the boy that put one in a mood to oblige him, and I was rather surprised at the car’s obstinacy. He now set about engag- ing earnestly with the diversities of its interior. I had nothing to do but observe him. He was obviously strong. If there is any series INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 9 of motions better calculated to exhibit natural en- durance than an automobile crank in process of revolution, it has never been revealed to me. With the sun now in its zenith, I watched his ex- ertions with admiration. He neither began to melt and exude away as the unfit would have done; nor did he explode in sound as the mentally un- governed might; nor did he even persist in per- forming the same deadly orbit as a merely stub- born ox would do. Between every few revolutions he got his wind by reckoning up the as yet un- tried combinations possible to the machinery. When he stood erect I saw that, despite his strength, he was not so very tall or powerfully built. He was about the age, I judged, at which I should have been teaching him Cicero. But I doubted whether he had ever heard either of Mar- cus Tullius or of his tongue. The buoyant health written over him did not speak of still hunts through dead phraseologies. There was grease on his cheek and dirt on his clothes, which were neither new nor patched. ‘‘Good American blood,’’ I remember thinking at the time. With an idleness born of the drenching sun, I watched him, sometimes holding things as requested, but never to any purpose. ‘¢She "Il come around all right,’’ he said,.spit- ting through the wheel. ‘‘It ’s what I get for try- ing to do without the—’’ He mentioned one of 10 THE CATSKILLS the internal necessities, the use of which he had questioned. As the car was plainly subnormal without it, I suggested that he let me help him put it back. But his inventiveness was not to be so easily placated. “Just you wait,’’ he exclaimed, ‘‘and we ‘ll have her going without it. That is, if you have the time.’’ “‘T have four weeks,’’ I replied, without much enthusiasm. He looked at me then — for the first time, I believe — and smiled, though ever so little. His eyes were fairly wide-set, and in them I fancied that I saw the man. It decided me upon staying. Looking back across vistas of conversations, jokes, journeyings, and mild adventure, it is hard to un- tangle Brute Vreeland, my friend, from the orig- inal stranger. But I am fairly certain that the beginning of our interest in each other dated from that glance — amused, slightly curious, but alto- gether amicable. ‘‘Here’s a city fellow I don’t quite follow,’’ he probably said to himself. ‘‘A real man ’s worth more than a range of moun- tains,’’ I was thinking at the same time. Then, quite unaware of each other’s thought, we turned to the business in hand. There were a great many more permutations of valves and things before the next cranking, and the despair that I customarily feel at the sight of a car in negative motion was held in check only by INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND ll the boy’s own faith in ultimate success. At last the miracle occurred. The distraught vehicle gave a gurgle, gave another, came to life. In we got, off we flew. And then, having no more ma- chinery to engage him, he began to investigate me: ‘“Walking far?’’ I estimated that it would n’t be over four hun- dred miles in the month. ‘‘Four hundred miles! What in the deuce for? ’’ ‘‘Fun and fish and freedom.”’ ‘“‘This is a good enough sort of freedom for me,’’ he said, patting the steering-wheel. ‘‘In a car you aren’t tied to your feet and so many miles a day. You can go on and on.’’ ‘And if you walk you are n’t tied to a car and you can’t go on and on,’’ I replied. ‘‘That ’s the great advantage. The walker lives in the present, the motorist in the future —that is, if he lives. Walking is—’’ ‘*Yes, I ought to know,’’ grinned Vreeland; “‘T only got this car yesterday. I ’ve lived all my life in sight of that set of mountains, and I ’ve never been up one of them yet. I’ve often in- tended to, but they ’re always there, kind of too handy. Maybe I ’ll get back in them now. They say the roads are peach.”’ The narrow ribbon of macadam along one edge of which we took the curves was certainly peach. 12 THE CATSKILLS It was indeed flawless. We were already almost under the eaves of the mountain, and the village of Woodstock lay snug and neat before us. Quite before I thought twice, I said, ‘‘You ’d better come with me.’’ I was sorry the instant after, for it was sheer impulse. I did n’t want anybody, just then, to dictate the roads. Consequently I was re- lieved when he replied: “‘T ’d do it with you, but I have n’t been home for a good while. I work down Kingston way, in agarage. Business is kind of slack now and I got a week off. We ’re putting in a bath-room home. If it was n’t for that I ’d get you to show me how to walk.’’ ‘‘There ’s nothing like it,’’ I said faintly. He stopped the car where a lane ran up to a white cottage surrounded by sugar maples which appeared to be giving sap with considerable vim. I declined his invitation to dinner, yet lifted my knapsack from the car with real regret. Instinct is sounder than reason, just as expletive is more sincere than formal speech. Although no word of moment had passed between us, I felt as if I were depriving myself of a potential comrade. Hearti- ness was in his handshake; and although I tried to tell myself, when I had resumed my walk, that the country people are all alike, it did not succeed. I knew that I had left one who was not quite ‘‘all alike.’’ If he had not snapped the golden cord of INTRODUCTIONS ALL ROUND 138 education off too soon— My train of sentiment was snapped by a blast from an outrageous horn beneath my very ear. I reacted sideways to the roadside with great agility. ‘‘She can steal up pretty quiet for this kind of a car, can’t she?’’ It was my friend again, leaning out of his Ford and smiling at the broad jump I had made. If he had not smiled I could have shot him. But at him, beaming, I could not glower back. ‘“Does it still go?’’ he asked, suddenly turned shy. ‘‘What you said about me walking with you?”’ ‘‘Certainly,’?’ I was surprised into saying. ‘“What decided you?”’ ‘“Measles. My sister ’s got them.”’ No wonder that he wondered at my mirth. His coming back had irritated me. But the reason was so funny that I felt irritation, dismay, everything vanishing in laughter. His astonishment made it even funnier. ‘“It ’s queer ma takes it so hard,’’ he said after a while, ‘‘if it ’s as funny as all that.”’ I told him, with some effort, what the benevolent germs had already done for me. I also took occa- sion to paint for him pictures of roughing it so vivid that nothing might surprise him unfavorably on the trip, if he still felt in the mood for going. ‘Tt ’s exploring that I ’d like,’’ he suggested, when I had done my best. 14 THE CATSKILLS Remembering his mechanisms, I believed him. So I told him what clothes to have his mother throw out the window for him, and set the hour for the morrow’s departure. Then I turned again toward Woodstock, richer by one traveling com- panion, genus homo, species American, but variety unknown. The adventure had begun, and it was but little past noon. CHAPTER IT WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK HE village of Woodstock is the sort of charm- ing, delicious place that a guide-book would call a comnfunity, the inhabitants a town, and New Yorkers a spot. It is in reality a hamlet, which is short for hamelet, a place of little homes. And the hame countree never gathered together pret- tier cottages on its own green hills than cluster about the bridges over the little Sawkill or are sandwiched in the folds of green pastures. Sand- wiches, I insist, are appetizing. One must be very careful, however, in praising Woodstock to its face. Many of the inhabitants are artists, and whenever I suggested that I thought the place was pretty I was assured that I ought not to. I grant the defects, but if I am called on for proof I shall choose a day in June when the meadows are orange with hawk-weed and @vhite with daisy, the marvelous elms by the Tannery Brook in full foliage, the succession of brook-ledges swimming with water in a leisurely fall before the old Riseley place—a day when the 15 16 THE CATSKILLS little white studios gleam through the trees up the | hill, and the great protecting range of the Overlook | looks near. I shall take the judges there on such a day, and if they are not deaf to the warble of wrens, dulled to the scent of clover, and blind to the play of light and shade, I shall win my case. Woodstock is wealthy in small change, and show- ers it hospitably around. Woodstock, moreover, is no ordinary village where the one street is swamped by a surge of farmland and the inhabitants are moored to the milking-stool for life. It is a village through which sweep sane sturdy undercurrents of rural life, and, in addition, two tides of outside influ- ence. One tide is of art, rising to the master- pieces produced there by Birge Harrison. The other is the foam of Greenwich village fantasy. Wherever real artists gather the pseudo delight to flock. . From the farmers I heard funny tales. A reas- suring thing was the amusement they seemed to get out of the procession of poseurs, the value they attached to the presence of the genuine. One fine old man who had followed many a furrow told me with glee of the era of stockingless girls, the era of brother’s clothes on sister, the season of b&bbed hair. He was enthusiastic about the Maverick festivals, the stone-quarry concerts. He had only kindly words for those who were in earnest about Photograph by William F. Kriebel “Dark Lines or Wipentnc Torrent” 3 Z BE = 2 Photograph hy a & a & < & : & ° 5 wn a Zz < i LL < g a < Ae s WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 19 “their bit o’ brushin’.”” He subscribed to Mr. Hervey White’s ‘‘Plowshare,’’ the Woodstock magazine. It was a refreshing incident, this find- ing a man who, in most of the other farm com- munities of our land, would have limited his inter- ests to the price of eggs or local politics, but who, once subject to the play of creative forces, re- sponded to their charm and worth. Thus once more was the artist justified. That afternoon I Ivckily fell in with an illus- trator whose circulation is in the million, one of the small group of kindred spirits who stay in Woodstock the calendar round. Truly there is virtue in a place where the twice lucky residents can pursue their professions in a veritable refuge of delight, and yet not lose touch with the great city at the other end of the river. He took me many miles up into the valleys, and from behind the wind-shield I saw mills that could have talked of Whigs and Tories, streams that murmured be- hind their veils of ice, and ever-opening valleys clad in a purple mist of hard-wood forest. I was told about Mink Hollow of unplacid fame, given a view of Coopér’s Lake, a pond of respectable di- mensions. We drove by an establishment whose owner, evidently not hungering for calm, sought to relieve the unfretfulness of his domain by sign- posting his garden-corner, ‘‘Broadway”’ , and ‘¢42nd Street.’? He had probably fiown the city to 20 THE CATSKILLS escape the uproar. For us poor wingless crea- tures the promised land is forever where we aren’t. And when we fly? I wonder if then am- bition shall taste satiety. Shall we be more rest- less, or will the measure of the entirety attained quiet us down to some solider enjoyment than mere flight? Ever since Columbus brewed his dreams over the travels of Marco Polo, we have been chiefly concerned with getting somewhere else. As we rounded turn after turn, passed lovely val- ley after lovely valley, I began to wonder why, on the morrow, I was to start off with an unknown youth on a speculative journey. In the Sawkill, in the little Beaverkill, in every silver hollow there were more fish and more fresh thoughts than I could garner up in many a moon. There were to be two answers. Months later I found one in the thrill of enjoyment I had in com- ing back to friends. That evening I found the other. Before a fragrant fire of apple boughs we talked late, as new acquaintance will, and discov- ered to each other (as new acquaintance will) such confidences as a year of other places or estab- lished friendship might not have brought forth. We saw that, although we were two men of differ- ent ages, different businesses, and with different goals, we were but on different stages of the same old road. And, though this could not have much of a discovery to either, yet there was great com- WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 21 fort in the checking up of mutual reminiscence, in the uncovering of common pitfalls. This warming to fresh sympathies is the heart of travel. Whether one voyages in the Catskills or in the Mountains of the Moon matters only to the purse. The enjoyment is the same—the broaching of new casks of life. Both the Andes and the Adirondacks are cold stone, and to travel vast distances just to observe huger heaps of that betokens a fantastic judgment. It is the number of hearts disclosed or the depth delved into one that makes a trip successful. The only advantage of travel in the wilderness is that with fewer peo- ple your eye is clearer and you accept nothing from the habit of accepting it. Otherwise your home town, your street, your house, would be the completest stage you ’d need. It takes genius to travelinacity. Life there is too rich to be drunk swiftly of, and most have not the patience to travel slowly. They taste here and taste there, and travel on. But in the country, particularly in the back country of our great East, any amateur can enrich his trip. Any tyro in the art of living, if he but have some sympathy with folk, can ex- change confidences, can ballast his faith in human- ity, and put on ten pounds at the same time. Had I not ventured to Wqodstock I should have been less rich by several friends. It was long past tes bed-time of the quarter 22 THE CATSKILLS moon when we recognized that it was ours. It was even further past sun-up when I came down to the breakfast’ which, in that pleasant country, marches gallantly to a stern conclusion of hot- cakes and maple syrup, attacking which every man must do his duty and at least one more. There is no quarter allowed. . Punctually we met, my acquaintance of the Ford and I, in front of the church. He was ‘‘trimmed down for leggin’ it,’’ as he termed our pilgrimage, and we set out in a nipping air well satisfied with life and a little curious about the intimacies ahead, each somewhat shy about beginning them. I asked about the church, which is really very pic- turesque and piquing to the fancy, and Vreeland had told me that it was at least six generations old, when a breezy lad passed us and called out, ‘‘ Hello, Brute; where you makin’ for?’’ ‘‘The other side o’ hell,’? my friend replied. ‘“‘Want to go part way?’’? The briskness of the reply startled me. “‘T shall not be dull,’’ I thought, and settled down to enjoy the trip. “Is Brute the name they gave you in the church, or a nickname?”’ I asked. ‘“‘No; teacher gave it me. She said it was in Shakespeare—short for Brutus, you know. She ’d always giggle when she ’d say it. But she was WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 23 awful silly. Teachers are n’t mostly like that, are they?’’ ““Mostly,’’ I replied. It looked as if the inti- macies were about to begin; and, as I did not in- tend them to be premature, I had the conversation revert to the antiquities of Woodstock. Its for- tunes had gone up and down. In 1728 a Martin Snyder had settled, with his ten sons and un- counted daughters, not far from the spot, and his progeny had gradually enveloped the wilderness. Even in the memory of Brute, some of his neigh- bors quarreled in Dutch when under extreme provocation. For a while tanneries flourished up the brooks. The great hemlocks were felled and stripped and left to rot, only the bark being util- ized. Such reckless days brought on reaction. Then there was a period of blue-stone quarrying up on the Overlook, the great flat stones be- ing used for the edges of city gutters, for flag- ging pavement and doorsills. That era passed. .Rather quickly the remaining timber was used up, the game shot out, the streams fished out. With the passing of fire-wood in great quantities passed the glass business which had grown up, sand hav- ing been brought from Jersey so that the fuel might be utilized. And now the fields were fit, at last, for crops and cows. It is a mile from the village to the foot of the 24 THE CATSKILLS mountain, two miles of very genuine climb to the resting-place called Meads’, and two more to the Overlook House. And there is no day too hot to make the exertion not worth while. In spring, even, the sun can be very earnest on that southern slope, but there are always wild fruits to enrich the way. The sun that had beguiled Brute and me upon the road soon shifted the responsibility for the day. Flurries of snow swept down upon us from the pass. Our early spring had suddenly lost its equilibrium and was falling back into the arms of winter. Bits of sunshine, pale and distraught, were racing thin and far over the dun landscape —the fragments of our glorious morning. We had paused to get our several breaths when I noticed a man turning off the road a little ahead. I requested a direction or two, and by some slip of the conversation I found that I was talking with a man who had lived with William Morris and had known Ruskin well. Such are the surprises of Woodstock. It was on another very different day, when the gardens at Byrdcliffe were rich with poppies and larkspur and the Persian rose, that Mr. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead showed me about his moun- tainside. There he had intended that the families who had caught the flame of his ambition were to live. There they were to weave by hand, to fashion out their pleasure in pottery, and to work WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 25 in metals. Their children were to be taught to use their hands until they had reached college age. Health and simplicity and the genuine riches of life were to be the rewards for all. Byrdcliffe could not compete with Patterson. The factory is stronger than the hand that taught it, and Byrdcliffe is a shattered dream. But Mr. Whitehead’s beautiful pottery is none the less beautiful, his nature nowise embittered by the shattering of the dream. In a room of his home hangs a coast-scene of Birge Harrison’s. Its shimmering beauty I shall remember always. I should think that in the same way the beautiful endeavor at Byrdcliffe must stay always in the memory of Woodstock, making it a better village than it would otherwise have been. In the snow-veiled pastures who could conceive that buttercups and wild strawberries were but two months off! Up we struggled to Meads’, and warmed our noses in the kitchen of that hospitable house. From the porch in clear weather there is a view, flanked by hillsides, that sweeps out over Woodstock, lights up in the shine of Ashokan Reservoir, and darkens to the southwest in the forests of the Peekamose country. The house sits comfortably in the hollow, and from the other end you look down over a pond into a deep wooded valley, sheltered on the north by the four peaks of the Indian Head range. To Brute and me they 26 THE CATSKILLS spoke in terms of grim cold. From the passes ad- vanced veils of snow, and when the onslaught slackened the dark mountain-heads seemed to be threatening new squalls. From Meads’ the road runs steeply up to the Overlook House. It is a consistent climb, and will have its effect on man or beast or motor; but all three accomplish it. On the way up trees obstruct the view, except occasionally to the left down into the beautifully wooded valley. But from the porch of the hotel the world lies visible. I cannot recall having seen an advertisement of this hostelry, but it is not hard to imagine the powerful adjectives which the management must have collected to describe that view. In summer, except on rare days, a blue haze narrows the spec- tacle to a radius of fifty miles. In the clearer atmosphere of winter it is very impressive. The Ashokan, the Hudson, highlands in seven States, the vast shoulder of earth, soar away from. one. At last the earth is partially appreciable. It may not seem a sphere, but so much of it is seen that you realize that you are on an Earth. That is an extraordinary feeling. Go up higher mountains, and you lose contact with the globe. But this plain at your feet is yet near enough to show its pattern. When you rode through it, it seemed mostly farmland; now it shows mainly wood. To the west rise the Catskills, range beyond range, WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 27 until the blue calm of summer frames the view. No summer visitors could have imagined the scene that opened to my journeyman and me for the few moments between squalls. The wind seemed to be gathering strength. For the space of a few seconds the cloud shadows would fly over the edge. Then the sun would stream after them. Out it would pour along the level plain below. Those distances below us were remote and cold. And the mountains at our backs were bleak with trailing gray, except when the April strength of sun overtook the February carnival of snow and overcame it. Then the flame of life seemed to flare for a glad moment before being overwhelmed by the next onslaught. The great single‘fact was the pressure of the wind during the squalls. With its broad hand the gale pushed against the exposed flanks of the hotel until the cables that fastened it to the earth tightened and sang, and I began to wonder how long mere wood and nails were going to survive. It was a bold architect who planted such an ex- _panse of board on such an exposed perch. In win- ter’s heaviest gales the weight of wind must be enormous. Even on our day of ruthless weather, when the great blasts, tawny with driven flakes, swept down upon us, roaring as they came, we felt there were chances of not remaining attached to terra firma. It was as exhilarating as a run at sea, 28 THE CATSKILLS sails glistening and rail a-wash. And I was secretly delighted that the youth beside me was held by the fascination of it, too. “Would n’t it fool you!’’ he exclaimed, after a while, as we stood near the brink looking down into the indefinite depths at our feet. ‘‘It certainly would fool you. To think I never took the bother to come up, and me looking at this old white hotel all these steens of years.’’ ‘“How does it hit you?”’ ‘There ’s not a word to cover it. I used to hear those art-painters talk about it till I guessed it ’d make me sick. They did, anyway. They ’re mostly high-dome pussy-cats. They ’d say, ‘Oh! wasn’t it grand! Wasn’t it colossal!’ ’’ ‘‘Well, what do you think of it? Were n’t the high-dome pussy-cats right?’’ I tried not to sound amused. ‘‘Absolutely,’’ he admitted meekly, ‘‘I ’ve got to go back and slobber just like them, ‘Ain’t it grand! Ain’t it colossal!’ if they ’re the words meaning what you can’t take in and wish you could. I ’d like to watch the thing out.’’ I was beginning to like him. There are cer- tain things essential in the friend who is to walk by one’s side through rough weather as well as fine— generosity, a sense of humor, a sense of beauty, honesty, a liking for adventure. The man that I had partly divined in that first roadside meeting WOODSTOCK AND THE OVERLOOK 29 was beginning to come true. Already I knew that I could trust this youthful native far; even as far, possibly, as he had picturesquely‘forecast our jour- ney—‘‘to the other side o’ hell.’’ CHAPTER IIT MEANDERING BY THE MAP TOO, would have liked to watch the thing out. But there was another consideration besides the fleeting beauties of the roaring landscape. Remaining on our unprotected perch involved freezing to death; and, as we were already blue with the persistent blasts, we reluctantly left the dumb hotel to their vengeance and sought a little woodland harbor for our lunch. A path rises to the northeast from the building and skirts the cliff. On one side rises the forest, on the other falls the abyss. There are a thou- sand of the finest opportunities for self-destruc- tion, but Brute and I felt very well satisfied with life and did not avail ourselves. Instead, in a sheltered semicircle of young spruce we made a little fire and in its golden circle devoured food. Then we got out the map. Maps are as invalu- able as meals to any person who intends to enjoy the Catskill country. The legend of the large- scale masterpieces is a fascinating short story to the man who walks. For it must be understood at the outset that the Catskill country is able to re- spond to the exactions of the experienced as well 30 MEANDERING BY THE MAP 31 as to the simpler pleasures of the amateur trav- eler. It is as versatile a pleasure-land as one may wish for. It provides motor roads of excellence through an extensive woodland. There are bears for the hunter, and hotels for his wife. Old men who have never seen a railroad live but a few miles from resplendent garages. Time was when the Catskills were about the only mountain country available for the fortnight vacation. The White Mountains were a little far away, and the Adirondacks an unexplored wilder- ness. The West was unknown. Now it is but a day from Broadway to Montreal. A trip to be talked about means at least Australia or the Ural Mountains. Therefore the Catskills are passed by. They are actually getting wilder. There are more deer in them than ever before, as many bear. -Fewer people put up at the big hotels than when Queen Victoria was planning her Jubilee. Conse- quently a man with a map in his hand can plunge into as wild a wild as most men want four or five hours after he has left his taxicab in New York. The map is an important consideration: the Gov- ernment map the only thing (cf. Appendix). From the safety of a train platform it is easy to under-estimate the difficulty of cross-country travel through. the Catskill woods. Once swal- lowed by the forest, which is of second growth, very thick and very much alike, the hill-shoulder 82 THE CATSKILLS that you judged would be so easy to follow be- comes a maze of distracting side-slopes; the peak for which you were making apparently has ceased to exist; and the summits are so long and flat that you never know when you have reached the exact top. But the Government maps show every trail, every road, every roadside house, streamlet, ford, and spring. In planning out the day’s progress they will inform you as to whether you will find secondary roads or the superior roads of State. With the contour lines and a compass, cross-woods travel becomes secure. Every vagary of the slope, each knoll, each rill of water, is there to identify your location. Following the map soon became an obsession with Brute. His keen interest in affairs of ac- curacy was stimulated by the unfailing way in which these sheets of paper delivered us to our destination. When our supper depended on the one way out of some vast labyrinth like the slopes of Panther Mountain or the featureless expanses about the head-waters of the Beaverkill, there was supreme satisfaction in being able to say, ‘‘That way lies a summit, this a ledge. I must follow east-southeast for a mile to reach that brook, which I shall know is the right one because of the woodsman’s road beside it.’’ It was, then, with something of this satisfaction that Brute and IJ, on our snowy ledge, plotted our MEANDERING BY THE MAP 83 next move. To be sure, while there was a diver- sity of interest, there was a paucity of possibility. Although in our nook we were safe from the gale, it flew roaring above us at intervals and shook down a tinsel of light snow. On a summer’s day we would have taken time to investigate Echo Lake and to climb Indian Head on our way to the Platte- kill Clove. But we decided to edge around the cliff until we struck the road and follow that to supper. Indeed, at that altitude of three thousand feet there was slight evidence of the thaw that had been raging in our city streets. The snow beside the trail was upwards of two feet deep. In spots where the sun had basked on the open ledges fell cascades of ice. Everywhere sat winter, worn and senile, but capable of making our progress difficult. And at the rate the cold was increasing we could take any pace without much danger of arriving in a lather. On a clear day in winter or summer that walk from the Overlook to Plaat Clove affords extraor- dinary views over the Hudson. The road was once used for carriages, but nature has restaked her claim. Washouts, new trees, deserted flag- stone quarries, decaying cabins mark the re-occu- pancy by the wilderness. It is doubly lonely now, and the porcupine, the fox, the woodchuck, and the bear openly share the territory with their shyer 84 THE CATSKILLS neighbors. Several times we had to avoid slip- ping into the depths by going on all fours across a river of ice. It grew fairly late, and we were tired with the snow-tramping and wind-buffeting before we stumbled down some long slopes, crossed a rickety bridge, and entered the scattered village of Plaat Clove. For the past hour our conversation had special- ized on things to eat, and we had determined. to pitch upon a house that had a prosperous air. At length, after passing one or another because of some defect in its shingling or the paint, we knocked upon a well-to-do looking door which - seemed capable of offering to us at least three courses, if not a salad. The light from its win- dow shone straight to the heart, for. night had suddenly fallen and we were not yet acclimated to the feeling of homelessness.