I took a couple of pictures of the phoebe, and was about to turn back towards the trail I had left when a splash of color caught my eye: a cluster of pale lavender hepatica blossoms on the forest floor. They seemed newly opened, their slender, downy stems having pushed up through the leaf litter just days ago, shouldering off the layers of dead brown leaves that covered them, like sleepers pushing blankets aside as they awaken.
Deeded to the Rhinebeck Rotary by Brooke Russell Astor, widow of William Vincent Astor (son of John Jacob Astor, who died on the Titanic in 1912), Ferncliff Game Refuge and Forest Preserve is now in the hands of a not-for-profit corporation. It’s a monument to the vision of people who recognize the need and value of preserving a bit of wildness in the midst of sprawling development. Nesting phoebes share lean-tos here with campers, and beavers create habitat for fish, frogs, and waterfowl without coming into conflict with humans, for there are no roads or houses to flood.
These mature oak, beech, white ash, cherry, birch and hemlock woods provide habitat for deep forest mammals like the fisher and birds like the barred owl and scarlet tanager. The tower that surveys the patchwork of fields, forests and towns that makes up the landscape of the mid-Hudson Valley could be a metaphor for that vision, which one hopes all who climb it for the view will share. Without it, we’d end up living in a country where only such families as the Astors, on their vast private estates, will have such places as Ferncliff Forest to explore and enjoy.
