Wings over K-town: an aerial perspective

John Morrow pre-flights his plane. (Photo by Jesse J. Smith)

At the same time, Ulster County’s dramatic geography rolls out below in a way that those who’ve never flown over it or seen it from atop a high Catskill peak can grasp. The narrow strip of lowland hemmed in by the Hudson on one side and the mountains on other is a busy patchwork. The broad flat metallic or tarpaper roofs of commercial and industrial sites on the Ulster Avenue strip give way to clusters of residential neighborhoods built around looping asphalt roadways. These clusters get more and more sparse heading north towards Saugerties and west towards the mountains. The green forest canopy breaks only occasionally to offer glimpses of golden hayfields, dun-colored construction sites or wide deep green lawns around a house.

Even Kingston’s most densely populated neighborhoods look thickly forested from above. In Uptown Kingston, the spire of the Old Dutch Church and the yellow brick of the Stuyvesant apartments appear as an archipelago in a sea of green. Flying over the Kingston Metro area, Morrow points to landmarks like the sharply carved terraces and startling cobalt blue waters of the Callanan Industries quarry on Route 32. Flying low over the Hudson, he points out the site of the as-yet-unbuilt AVR Landing housing development. In the past, Morrow has put his flying skills to use on behalf of the town taking pictures and conducting aerial surveys to give his fellow town officials a bird’s eye view of affairs.

“You can get a better sense of how everything fits together from up here,” said Morrow. “You can see where you might run into a problem.”

Back on the ground, with the Citabria lashed securely to the dock, Morrow packs the life vests into the Jeep and gets behind the wheel to check on his flock of chickens and give a visitor a tour of the farm. On the way, he reflects on private aviation — a veritable craze in prosperous post-WWII America, when many learned how to fly in the service, but now in a long, slow descent. There are still a couple of thousand licensed pilots in Ulster County alone. But, he worries; young people are less and less interested in the pursuit. He chalks it up to a post-9/11 wariness about airplanes in general, and a new generation’s preference for iPads and Xboxes over attitude indicators and fuel pressure gauges.

“For whatever reason kids today don’t seem as interested in outdoor things,” laments Morrow. “I guess they’d rather be in front of a computer or something.”