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Samm
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THIS PLACE
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Notes from my New York State retreat
This place is my favorite place in the world. Its familiarity is comforting, rejuvenating, refreshing, reassuring. The memories it conjures up are warm, happy ones, bringing me soul-generated smiles-- and sometimes tears-- as I think of people and days now long gone. Despite any tears that might come, I welcome all of the memories.
This place is behind the times, I suppose, if one is inclined to want or desire every electronic convenience device ever invented. Not for lack of education, information or availability, but for lack of the want or desire of the people in this area. Eight miles up the road is Delhi Tech, a college in the small town of Delhi (pronounced Dell'-high), and technology is their middle name -- literally.
This place is among low, tree-covered mountains, rounded by millions of years of evolution, some carved by streams and the beginning of the eastern branch of the Delaware River. My favorite spot in the world is alongside a mountain stream which feeds into the Delaware a couple of miles down. The hemlock trees are thick here, and their years of dropped needles cover the woods with a spongy, uneven blanket that is hard to walk on because of the steep angle the centuries-old creek has carved into the hillside.
At this place, the air is clear, fresh, and crisp; the steady creek-side breeze is cool, damp, relaxing to me. The only sounds I hear are the stream, woodland creatures like birds, chipmunks, and crickets, and an occasional passing car or (more likely) pickup truck. Here and there the sun finds its way through the dense evergreen hemlocks and spotlights the stream or hillside across from me. I've cleared off a spot on a large boulder where I can sit and write this descriptive account. To my left, upstream, the creek splits into a 'Y' and comes from two smaller sources. Downstream the water trips and trickles along a wider area of solid, slippery bedrock, then winds around a leftward bend, forced into a natural channel in the rocks that has been a water slide for generations.
Four of my family's generations have enjoyed the frigid waters in this natural slide that rush around you, washing you into the "deep hole." That's what it's always been called as far back as I can remember. Truth be told, the depth of the hole varied on how many river rocks had been washed into it during the spring thaw. Usually it was only about five feet deep, and about three feet in diameter at the widest point. The deep hole then fills a natural pool that evolved over the years, and it is about twelve feet in diameter but only ankle- and knee-deep once you doggy-paddled out of the actual hole.
Just up and over the steep ridge of this stream bed, the hemlock trees yield to an old meadow, opening up to share a view of the ancient mountains. I feel great peace as I walk these old paths. These hills and waters are my friends.
This place, most likely, is nothing extraordinary to many people. But if you've ever walked into a place that makes you freeze in your tracks just to gaze around and take in the surroundings, that's what this place does to me. Every time. Engraving the memory of its special uniqueness ever deeper into the core of my being.
This place I write of is in the lower Catskill Mountains in New York state, not drastically far from the northeastern border of Pennsylvania, and not too far from where Rip Van Winkle napped his enchanted slumber. My father's parents lived their entire lives within a half-hour of this place, and I was fortunate enough to spend weeks of my childhood summers in this unspoiled haven.
© July 2001-2 Susan McLean Russak
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