First Day hikes in the Hudson Valley
Monday, Jan. 1: Start off the new year with a walk on the wild side.
Nature
Survey asks: What do you want from your Joppenbergh?
From the 1930s until 1971, the steep-sided little Rosendale mountain became the site of ski-jumping competitions, which drew skiers from near and far, including several Olympians.
The Christmas Bird Count is one of the largest citizen-science endeavors, and anyone can join
Dec. 14–Jan. 5: The data collected at these counts comprise one of only two large pools of information used by scientists to track bird species over the decades.
Cut-your-own Christmas tree at Bell’s Farm
You’ve got your pick of Douglas fir, Canaan fir, concolor fir, Serbian spruce, Colorado blue spruce, balsam fir, grand fir, Korean fir, Meyer spruce, Fraser fir and Fralsam fir. Holly the Dog runs alongside as we cruise through sections planted in each of these varieties, and Gordie talks about the Bell family having worked this farm since the 1900s.
Alien visitors at a Catskills campsite
Our intrepid local geology columnists examine signs of glaciers at North Lake’s Site 151.
James Felice is a bug for insect photography
“I’m not interested in moving them, harm them, or messing with their day,” said Felice. “I just want to be a gigantic ape with a camera.”
First phase of New Paltz’s River-to-Ridge Trail nears completion
Avid cyclists in the New Paltz area have been agitating for decades for an alternative route west of the Wallkill River to the Shawangunk Ridge and now the Open Space Institute is making it happen. Check out the first section of the River-to-Ridge Trail, while not yet officially open or fully landscaped, is now walkable.
Vying for the vista: Carleton Mabee’s final opus, Saving the Shawangunks
The book is positioned as a celebration of nature’s fragile ecosystems and of the David v. Goliath community members (for David’s tactics, in this case, were largely litigatory) banded together to protect them. But in the moment-to-moment of the prose and in the very consciously balanced, 360-degree management of his facts, Mabee reveals himself mostly as a fastidious historian and no polemicist at all.
Angler’s Log: Nature’s tired
From all indications 2017 was a very good year for trout fishing the Esopus; thus I’m still excited to continue to wander it as long as I can.
New 123-acre Ulster County nature preserve welcomes visitors
The donor named it in honor of her father, “who not only enabled me to own the property, but who instilled in me his love of animals. And now visitors will enjoy it too.”