a plea for Pigeon Brook

In this immediate area Pigeon Brook is probably the body of water that suffered the greatest damage from Hurricane Irene last August 27-28. Or let's put it this way: the ways in which this brook was changed are still almost entirely apparent.
Pigeon has always been my favorite stream here, and it has some serious competitors.
There's the stateliness and historical significance of the main river flowing through our land - the Neversink, a mecca for flyfishermen starting with the Dutch in probably the 17th century - a classic.

High Falls Brook above the falls itself is a lot like Pigeon, actually, but below it it's slower, wider, more "obvious" than Pigeon. And it has a reason for going: High Falls. Forgive me for putting it this way, but it's like a tourist-destination stream. Not for me when I want the real thing. I've climbed up all the way along High Falls Brook to its source, up a ridge of Doubletop and is probably the best way these days to get up Doubletop. So H.F.B. is special to me but still there's that hike-a-little get-big-payoff thing that seems facile. Hemlock Brook aka Trickle Creek isn't really much and it runs right through the middle of camp, so it hardly counts, and it's dry a lot of the year. It does, when it's been raining a lot, go through the middle of Big Tree Field and that's a nice feature.I don't know if the stream that once flowed through the meadow that is now Lake Cole ever had a name. I suspect not. Two or three streams feed the man-made lake. Anyway, that can't count, can it?
The East Branch of the Neversink flows down the back side of slide, picks up real stream status through the Tison preserve (Frost Valley land), then passes right next to the old Straus estate (now East Valley Ranch, also FV), passes across the road from our Farm Camp (where the kids actually have their "waterfront" period in one of its deep-ish holes) and flows all the way to Claryville, where, just at the famed turn-off to county road 47 and the 7 miles to Frost Valley's main property, the two branches of the early Neversink converge. I love the East Branch and it's getting to be one of those rivers I can drive next to and feel lots of feelings. For one thing, as I drive alongside it toward and at the Tison property, near the head of the Denning trail, I can fool myself into believing that I'm existing in 1870 or 1890.

Biscuit Creek - she's got to be at least everyone's second favorite. Biscuit is what you think of when you think of this part of the Catskills. Really gorgeous. Moves slowly and knows where it's going. Flumes here and there cut through the glacial boulders - making mesmerizing features such as Devil's Hole. It's easy to hike alongside. The train dates back at least to Forstmann's time, when he laid down felled Hemlock trunks on the creek-side edge of the trail, and rode big horses pretty far down the river. I think of Biscuit Creek as Forstmann's stream. The storm messed with Biscuit down near the open fields of camp and down to where it joins the Neversink. Damage upstream is not so horrid. It still looks like Biscuit. (Above: Biscuit Creek falls a few years ago.)

But Pigeon Brook. It's crazy and it's wild. It drops from around 3750 feet at its 2-pronged source, up near the top of of Doublestop, to the spot (right at Sequoia) where it meets its calm brother Biscuit at around 2000 feet (the bottom of our valley is 1900 feet). That's a steep drop. The Pigeon Brook valley, formed between (and actually dividing) Doubletop Mountain and Big Indian Mountain, is very steep. Thousands of years of erosion and this little feisty waterway has done most of that deepening. At right above you can see a Google Map version of the first part of Pigeon. See where Biscuit, much thicker blue, goes off to the east or right. That's Pigeon, ending at Sequoia, bending up off to the west or left and then turning north and up the mountain. Below you see a satellite photo of roughly the same sector: again, Pigeon off to the left, Biscuit to the right. Pigeon goes almost due north up the mountain. That accounts, of course, for its sections of steep descent.

Yesterday - the Saturday of holdover weekend between sessions 2 and 3 - was the perfect day for a hike up Pigeon. At least by the calendar. By the weather, not so much. An hour into our 5-hike hike up and back it started pouring, and I mean pouring. I hadn't brought rain gear because - what the hell. I knew I'd be scrambling hand and foot up the creek itself much of the time and so I'd be very wet anyway. So I put on non-cotton shirt and shorts no hat and headed out. Along with Dr. Rick Kaskel (another trustee and long-time dialysis doctor and a guy with a replaced hip!) and Bud Cox, who got persuaded to do this hike right there over breakfast, a few minutes before departure. Good ol' Bud. Of course having Bud with us meant that we had

access to a ton of knowledge of Big Indian Mountain and Doubletop and Pigeon itself. So, yes, we spent most of the time going up Pigeon Brook hiking and climbing up in the creek itself. You see, there's a Frost Valley-made trail high alongside Pigeon on the right or east side almost as far as FV property goes. Bud and I recalled for Rick the fact that Frost Valley summer camp overnight hikes went to any of four beautiful Pigeon Brook campsites in the old days. These were named Pigeon 1, Pigeon 2, Pigeon 3, and Pigeon 4. Bud thinks that Pigeons 2 and 4 had lean-to's. I think 1, 2 and 4 did. Anyway, those lean-tos are gone and I strongly urge us to build some new ones. No one - and I mean no one - in camp takes campers hiking up Pigeon. It's a shame. You can say you climbed up part of Doubletop if you do. And of course it's an excellent challenge for the older campers. So I say: less High Falls and less Banks Hill and more Pigeon Brook! The old campsites' clearings are still more or less there and with one day's volunteer work they can be re-made and look welcoming even to novice campers. In some of the photos below you can get a sense of the changes made to Pigeon by the hurricane a year ago. Here for instance is a boulder that got tossed downstream and wedged under a larger bolder while everything under the large bolder got swept away. Now the larger one is being precariously held up by the smaller.

Banks are eroded everywhere, which means that any chance of forging a trail or path along either side of the stream becomes less likely. And everything is soft or crumbly underfoot.

And there are many more little waterfalls and flume-like spots.

Here, below, Bud shows where the waterline was at the height of the storm's violent run-off. This we figured by looking hard at damage, water marks, and erosion. Amazing, eh? When the water was really this high, the entire Pigeon Brook valley was filled with fast-moving water. No wonder the pressure below was so great - on the Biscuit Creek falls in camp, on the bank keeping Pigeon Lodge up out of the stream, on the spot where Biscuit (which Pigeon's water in it) slammed against the southside bank of the Neversink behind the horsebarn.

In the pouring rain, fairly well exhausted from the scrambling ascent on hand and foot in the middle of the brook, climbing over many fallen trees and slipping on tilty rocks that had only been in place for 11 months, we reached the Pigeon Brook fork. Here two feeder streams converge to form Pigeon proper. One goes up and east toward Big Indian Mountain. The other goes up and west toward Doubletop. We went on the northwest fork for a little, then clambered up the steep slope and took a compass bearing west to try to find the deerpath that comes due south down from the top of Doubletop. We didn't get that far and in the pouring rain abandoned the plan to continue to the top of the mountain - and headed at a bearing of 255 degrees. Bushwacked, of course, keeping the Pigeon Valley to our left and staying on a 2500 feet contour for quite a while. Eventually we descended on the same contour and at 2200 feet cross the Frost Valley property line and headed due south into camp. We read the perimeter trail and walked by into camp just to the east of Friendship House and Wolff Lodge. (I add these details in part so others can repeat the trip with some relatively specific instructions.) Dear FV-loving reader of this blog: get thee up Pigeon Brook. What are you doing with your life that you can't spare a day and do this? It's good for the soul: rough hard work, and it fills a longing that camp people have felt every since Wawayanda moved here in 1958, but a somewhat lost art. Go there and be real.

a long story about a night of a million stars

Last night. One of the most beautiful nights I can ever recall here. Ever. Ever. It got very cool and very clear, and the stars were completely brilliant and there were millions of them, and there was a breeze, and when I did a devotion for a Tacoma cabin, them and I sitting around the campfire in the middle of the village, we could hear - when we went silent - the sound of the wind in the leaves of the beech trees above us and actually the sound of the river well down the valley below us. It was that clear and that silent. This was at 11:30 PM or so (yes, devotions for Tacoma can go late).

The evening had started with a special combo Challenge Night (a first, in my memory): Outpost and Pac. They worked and played really well together. I assembled a terrific roster of guest judges and that added to the creative flavor of the evening. In one of the two photos below you can see all of them, from left to right: Shawn Blagmon, Katie Kelly, Matt Buzcek, Doug Kallin, Peter Owen, and Sandy Shapiro Bohn.

I have to say something about Katie Kelly here, because I don't think I've mentioned her yet in my posts. She was a camper in Susky in 1985, my last summer as director. She grew up through the ranks and became a VC of Tacoma and then for several summers an assistant Hird director, and later she worked full-time for Frost Valley as our alumni

affairs coordinator, but now, this summer, she's back, here and there. She spent a good part of session 1 with us and found a way to be back for a week this session too. She's such a good presence. This time she brought with her a stack of mint-condition Tacoma weekly schedules from the mid-1990s. And modestly asked Lesley, the Tacoma VC for 2012, if she might want to look them over. And did she! She also taught them an old Tacoma song that they'll sing together at Closing Campfire.

After Challenge Night Matt and I chatted about his time here (1996-2005, I think) and the changes and not-changes. And then we went over to the Wellness Center to find Dan Weir. I was astonished and in a weird way delighted by how busy the Wellness Center was. It was already around 10:15 PM. The game "French Revolution" or "French Rev," played at night in the dark, will cause a sprained ankle or wrist, and there were a few of those. Another little guy had twisted a knee. My favorite medical thingy of the

evening was the bite suffered by a counselor possibly from a "yellow-sac spider" (so the EMT on duty speculated - he'd done some research). This thing was amazing. On its own the dime-sized fluid-filled spot on her ankle has burst and she was being cleaned and bandaged and she and we were happily ready to put the spider encounter behind her. The EMT was fascinated and on his iPad showed me photos of it earlier in the day. Some people react strongly to the bite of this particular spider and that's why there had been so much attention paid to it through the day. But this spider-bitten person was going to be completely fine, and quickly. [Today, the next day, Dr. Rick Kaskel was checking in with some kind of federal toxic spider center in Arizona to see if this incidence is something we need to report.]

Vince O'Donnell, a talented Pac counselor who had led his village at Challenge Night in the absence of his VC (VC night out), had been so ill during the evening program that he kept taking breaks. When we got to the Wellness Center later, there was Vince, waiting to talk to one of the six or seven medical staff there about what might be done to get him ready for Olympics the next morning. (Five minutes before I sat down to write this entry, the next morning, I saw Vince, a head coach of South Africa, out there in the sunny field, banging a drum and leading a brilliant S.A. cheer that required tremendous feats of dancing and drumming. I asked him how he felt, and he looked at me with a funny ironic smile and shouted not to me but to the blue sky above: "I feel GREEEEEAAATTT!" Ah, camp.)

It was so busy that Tammey McCloud, our amazing Wellness Center director, came in just to keep the traffic moving along. What amazed me was that no one was complaining about the quality of attention they were receiving and - this really makes me happy - the medical people completely accepted the presence and talky help of various staff including directors and one bearded trustee and one very happy-to-be-back former Director of Camping. At one point I sat with Aidyn Gold as he was treated for a sprained wrist (which was eventually splinted and off he went into the night back to the cabin). Aidyn was a little upset about his injury and I reminded him of all the times his father, Adam, then a young camper, was injured and how much he complained at such moments. Aidyn thought that was great and smiled a big smile at participating in the family tradition.

I looked at my watch and, as much as I was enjoying this extra evening program being played by a village-sized gathering of slightly injured and ill people, I realized it was time to walk up to Tacoma for the devotion. I joined them at the fire-ring. Claire and Shannon were the counselors (I've known them both - and Shannon is in fact the daughter of my neighbors at home in Philadelphia) and the kids were really ready for a sentimental story. And I surely did give them that. I told them about the most important summer of my life - Lenape, 1968. I won't tell that story here, but suffice to say: it really did change me. I met someone that summer who made me realize I should take none of this - these stars, this breeze, the sound of this river heard far off in the silent dark night - for granted. And then the counselors and girls spoke and we held hands (really! - twice!) and said goodnight and promised we'd all really try to experience this fully.

Then Matt and I began walking around. It was 11:45 PM. We walked and talked along the paths between and among the villages under the stars. Matt, who had lived here year-round for several years, talked about the brilliance of the stars as if seeing them for the first time - in awe. I was in awe of his being in awe. We joined the Outpost CQ fire. They were going to grill some burgers on a make-shift grill (an aluminum pan that had carried some chocolate brownies) but we left before it was time to eat. Then we went back to Tacoma, and by now the same fire that had lit my emotional conversation with that Tacoma cabin was now fueling the conversation and late-night snack of the Tacoma staff. They were grilling flat pita-like rounds of bread and melting spicy jack cheese on them. They offered Matt and me one of these grilled-cheesy confections each, and though I wasn't hungry I had one and loved it. The bread was crunchy and one could taste the taste of firewood and hot stone. As I munched, I took in the conversation and I overheard them talking about how much fun it was learning about old Tacoma from Katie Kelly and much they were getting from seeing her old weekly schedules. Naturally they wanted to know more about the previous generations and Matt and I were happy to oblige. At a few minutes after 1 am I drove home slowly and kept looking out and up through my front windshield. All the stars were up there, leading me in a certain direction.

White Pond this morning

This photo was taken by Sara Alexander of Chuck White Pond this morning.

autumn bikes rank Frost Valley road high

Frost Valley Road is featured on a web site written by motorcyclists who search for the best weekend rides. Click here and either scroll down until you see Frost Valley or use "find" and search for "Frost Valley."

Zen deer

You can't much closer to a deer than this. (Ben and Hannah call me the deer whisperer.)

the sky bespeaks a good check-in day

Huge, huge check-in day yesterday. Session 2 is always our largest session. I walked into the dining hall for Hird's dinner and--pow!--was happily jolted by the sheer size of the group. Every table in the main room filled with eager folks young and old(er). Sun shone most of the afternoon, but then--yet only after 99% of the luggage had been moved and everyone was in cabins or dining hall--we got a soaking rain. This drove opening campfires indoors. As I moved from leading "Father Abraham" hilariously for Wawayanda to doing the same for Hird on the other side of camp, I saw that the sky was beginning to clear and snapped this shot at the lake. A nice pause in a long busy day. Nice? Nice. To say the least.

"that was my first deer"

Jeff Daly tells his staff the moving story of a boy's first deer. This was the final gathering of the staff at the end of session 1, before they went off for 2 days off prior to the hectic start of session 2.

Fred's autumn

Former FV conference director Fred Wasiak was back and took this photo during the Columbus Day weekend.

mourning on the trail

Today I received an email message from a friend of Frost Valley's - a guy who with his wife owns a house nearby and has come to love hiking and fishing and mushrooming at (and near) FV. He's a big-time guy in NYC, runs a really terrific institute, but loves to get away to the Catskills. He's come to know our summer camp over the past few summers, but his first contact with us was the allure of the forests, streams and trails. His email to me just now really reads like a poem. I've very moved by it. Here goes:

We were at Frost Valley Saturday

no fish no mushrooms of note but gorgeous

In my normally alone spot there was a hiker who told me not to be alarmed if I heard screaming and crying

He said his wife died

I asked when

A year ago

Well I did hear copious weeping and more

So I moved on

Good old frost valley

could the sky be any bluer?

Photo taken in early August this past summer. I have the color of this sky in my mind pretty much all the time.

ursa major

Seriously large bear scat. Photo taken this very morning, on the trail to Devil's Hole. The bear's certainly been eating his or her berries.

remember our newts?

Reid Bauer has written a short essay on Frost Valley's legendary newts. Click on the image at right for a larger view of the article.

Biscuit Creek trail

Sun-dappled trees along the Biscuit Creek trail.

landscape a painter can love

The web site, ArtDaily.org, keeps track of new exhibits as museums and galleries. Today the site features a new show of paintings by Louis B. Sloan, who died in '08. Louis Sloan used to visit Frost Valley and one of his FV landscapes is in this exhibit and is mentioned in the article.

PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Louis B. Sloan (1932-2008) was a prominent figure in the Philadelphia art community. An alumnus of Fleisher Art School and PAFA, Sloan taught still-life, landscape, portrait and figure painting classes at PAFA from 1962-1997. Sloan worked in the conservation department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1961-1980.

The recipient of many prestigious awards, including, PAFA's third annual Distinguished Alumni Award and the Jennie Sesnan Gold Medal, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant, the Emily Lowe Grant, the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Van Der Zee Award from Philadelphia's Brandywine Workshop, Sloan also received tributes in the halls of government from Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell, Philadelphia Mayor W. Wilson Goode, and most recently on November 4, 2008, from Mayor Michael A. Nutter.

The exhibition, curated by Philadelphia art collector, Lewis Tanner Moore, will display over thirty works spanning Sloan's long career. Early works include Backyards, 1955, painted during Sloan's student days at PAFA. The painting captures a moment in his west Philadelphia neighborhood and "that glorious light that glows", indicative of Sloan's work, particularly his landscape paintings. While Sloan's cityscapes favor a more somber palette as seen in Early Streetscape and Gathering Storm over Philadelphia, c. 1961, Sloan's landscape paintings embrace brighter colors to emphasize the varying light and atmospheric conditions as seen in Moon Light, 1978 and Lifting Fog in the Poconos, 1980. Sloan's true passion was landscape painting and it is in paintings such as, "Frost Valley in the Catskills, 1995," that his great techinical skills, unique artistic vision and masterful rendering of nature are brought together.

D'Arcy Oaks saw the painting and was intrigued. Where is the painter standing? What scene is the painter painting? His guesses: "My guess: perspective is from somewhere near the water tower, looking through some of the recent trees at Wildcat. Second guess: beyond the trees is bank's hill." Anyone else have a guess?

- - -

A few weeks after posting this entry, I got this note from John Giannotti: a note about Louis Sloan, the painter of "Frost Valley in the Catskills". Lou was a delightful man who first came to FV with me in 1977 when we did our first Weekend in October painting marathons with his students from the Pennsylvania Academy and my students (and Bill Hoffman's) from Rutgers. Lou fell in love with FV at first sight. That fall was the beginning of a long association with Lou and FV. We came back dozens of times and Lou continued the tradition with his plen-air painting friends from all over the East. By the way, Chuck White loved to watch Lou paint. In fact, Chuck was in awe of him. I loved to watch Chuck watching Lou -- loved to watch that heavily lined, Marlboro man face turn all warm and fuzzy when he discovered a new color in the mountains that Lou had found for him on his canvas.

hints of autumn

Lately at night it's gotten down to 38 degrees. Word came from the farm (in the East Neversink valley) that they had a bit of frost. Yesterday I snapped three photos showing the first hints of fall colors. Autumn now? End of summer? No way. No way. No way. No way.

outdoorsy guy

Blast from the past this afternoon. Bill Clarke (at left in the photo) showed up here. Bill Clarke! Bill's first summer was as a Lenape camper in cabin 18 - Bud Cox's cabin. (Bill remembers Bud as a fanatic about winning the camp-wide cabin clean-up competition. The winners, some readers of this blog may recall, won a watermelon.) That must have been '65 or '66, when Bud was Lenape VC. Later Bill moved up the counseling ranks and eventually was our "Nature" director. Although born and raised in Manhattan Bill was one of our real outdoorsy guys. He was here through the early to mid 70s and then moved on. He now works in Albany for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (the DEC). He was here today to bring his nephew to camp for the fourth session.

Bill wandered around looking for Bud Cox to say hello--and eventually found Bud. But in the dining hall the little reunion featured in the above photo consists of Bill, Paul Brown, and Marie Hess. Paul, Halbe Brown's brother and the twin of Paula, has lived in Grahamsville for many years, where he works also for the government - on water quality. Paul came over from Camp Fitch when brother Halbe did. In '71 he was the CIT Director (for the boys) along with his twin sister Paula who was CIT Director for the girls. I should note that Paul was my CIT Director.

summer is good

Summer is far and away my favorite season. Not even close. The other day I was walking across a field near the East Branch of the Neversink River. The air was cool and yet the sun was hot (that possible?). The breeze was giving me a slight shiver on my arms but the sun on the back of my neck felt warm and close. The combination was stunning. Perfect weather. Hotcha!

Below: that same perfect sun at 6 PM - leaving in cool shade pre-dinnertime gatherers on the stone deck just outside the Straus House sun porch, while that perfect sun warms the top of the building. And look at that sky!

quick, get me a snake reference

Karen Rauter and others up at camp have been looking through old issues of the Wawayanda Wasp, which served as an off-season newsletter (for parents, mostly) and, during the summer, the camp newspaper written and edited by campers. (I was myself a "cub reporter" for the Wasp in '67 and '68.)

Here's a letter printed in an issue of the Wasp dated 1964:

Dear Mom and Dad,
Could you please send my by book on snakes; that tells the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes? A snake just bit me and…………
Love, Clem

I'm less worried about the snake bite (no poisonous snakes at Frost Valley!) than I am about the awful use of the semi-colon in the young fellow's letter home. What kind of grammar were they teaching up in the villages that summer?

spring finally

Spring has come to Frost Valley! Happy, happy, happy spring.

Daffodils fully in bloom in the grassy lawn just to the east of the Castle. There's the Castle tower in the background.

This great photograph was taken by Sara Munoz (formerly Sara Alexander, daughter of Stu and Valerie) this past Saturday.

April running brooks

The combination of snow run-off from Doubletop and a goodly amount of spring rain makes brooks that a normally just a trickle - and completely dry by August - run fast. Between the dining hall and cabins 21-25 flows one such stream. When Wawayanda first moved to Frost Valley in '58 and for many years later, this was known as Hemlock Brook (named presumably after the village that inhabited those cabins from 1958 to 1983). In recent years it's been called Trickle Brook - apt since, as I say, it's not much more than a trickle most of the year. Most FV'ers know this thing because after a big storm it flows right through the Big Tree Field and then is directed under the county road and after that moves through the horse field and into the Neversink.

If you walk above the dining hall area you'll see that Hemlock Brook also runs along the western edge of cabins 13-17 (formerly 16-20), the site of the newest renovated cabins we've been talking about lots on this blog. If you go to cabin 17 (20) and walk directly behind - "cabin 20's backyard" - you will go down a ravine fairly steeply and there's your brook.

Mid-April '08: right there this creek was running fast, little waterfalls all along the way. Here's one of the pics I snapped.