Great Hudson River views from the Mills Mansion and Norrie Point trails
FDR sent in the Civilian Conservation Corps to build a camping area and a restaurant at Norrie Point called the Point Inn, which served diners from 1937 to the 1960s.
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Jane Goodall doc screens locally
When Jane Goodall went to work for paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey in Tanzania in 1957, her only academic background was secretarial school. She approached her work in Africa with no preconceived notions, and ended up turning the field of primate biology on its head.
Mid-Hudson Adirondack Mountain Club offers free cross-country ski lessons
Got some holiday poundage to lose and a New Year’s resolution to become more physically active, but no network of outdoorsy buddies on hand to lend support and encouragement? You’re not alone; the ADK has plenty of organized outings to offer, even in the dead of winter.
Learn about the hidden world of bats in New Paltz
Saturday, Jan. 13: Author/artist Barbara Bash will talk about the year she spent with little brown bats, learning how they give birth, raise their young, fly, hunt with echolocation (catching 600 mosquitos an hour) and gather at bat “conventions” before going into hibernation inside the caves before reemerging in spring.
Take a trek to the Ferncliff Forest tower in Rhinebeck
After John Jacob Astor’s death on the Titanic in 1912, Ferncliff Farm was inherited by his son, William Vincent Astor. In 1959, Vincent died, leaving Ferncliff Farm to Brooke Astor, who was later persuaded by Homer K. Staley Sr., president of the Rhinebeck Rotary, to donate 190+ acres to the Rotary for a forest preserve and game refuge. Her deed stipulated that the land must remain forever wild.
First Day hikes in the Hudson Valley
Monday, Jan. 1: Start off the new year with a walk on the wild side.
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.
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.
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.