Nature at your doorstep – Dickie Barre
What does one make of a hike that begins at a graveyard? Only that the human lives, and deaths, that transpired here cannot be disentangled from the life of the place we enjoy on a perfect spring day, with the forest awakening around us. The graveyard is a small family plot, surrounded by hand-laid stone...
Wallkill Valley Land Trust’s walk and talk about box turtles
The Wallkill Valley Land Trust’s (WVLT) annual walk and talk will take place on Saturday, May 11 from 10 a.m. to noon on the Smith property in Gardiner. Anne Smith, with the help of biologist Joe Bridges, will discuss monitoring the Eastern box turtle. They have been monitoring the box turtle population on the Smith...
Nature at your Doorstep – The Comeau Estate
Every town, large or small, needs green refuges within its boundaries, places to walk in any season that offer the possibility of solitude. Residents of New Paltz are fortunate in having a variety of refuges within walking or biking distance. Sometimes one needs, without embarking on a long car drive, to simply check in with...
Nature at your Doorstep – Vernooy Kill Falls
The trail to Vernooy Kill Falls leaves the road to enter a moist hemlock forest. As we traversed the rock-strewn, stream-braided terrain on a perfect spring day, we felt we were entering a world apart. And so we were, for we would cross two creeks and climb a moderate slope on an old jeep road...
Mohonk Consultations honors Paul Huth with Distinguished Environmental Achievement Award
The longer I live the more my mind dwells upon the beauty and wonder of the world…I have loved the feel of the grass under my feet, and the sound of the running streams by my side. The hum of the wind in the treetops has always been good music to me, and the face...
Nature at your doorstep – Ferncliff Forest
Spring is a kind of kaleidoscope. Its array of delicate colors — lavender, white and pink in early forest flowers, red in the tops of swamp maples, and gold-green in budding trees — shifts with the turning earth. The eye wants to focus close, at the ground underfoot, then far, at the greening landscape and...
Earth Day is a great time for a spring cleanup
New Paltz may have more going on for Earth Day than practically anywhere else. And surrounding towns have been increasingly getting into the act. In New Paltz, there’s the townwide cleanup, events on campus, lectures, activities, music and even the Earth Day Fair at the Reformed Church on Huguenot Street. The quirky college town has...
Nature at your Doorstep – Guyot Hill
To climb a crag like Bonticou is an exciting outdoor experience, but to view the same crag from a nearby hill offers its own, quieter rewards. I discovered the latter on my recent ascent of Guyot Hill. Jack Fagan says of Guyot Hill, in his superb Scenes and Walks in the Northern Shawangunks, that it...
Food not fracking unites community and campus
On Thursday, April 4 at the SUNY New Paltz farmers’ market, farmers and local food enthusiasts joined together with those fighting fracking in New York and former Congressman Maurice Hinchey to show that what binds us together is stronger than gas industry money and influence. Hundreds of students and the community sampled locally grown food,...
Eva Hayes recounts her oceanographic adventures
Not many college students know how to manage a complex rigging system, navigate by the stars alone or judge distance through dead reckoning. Few have spent as much time on board a sailing ship as has Eva Hayes, 20, of Gardiner. The Northeastern University sophomore, and New Paltz Central High School alumna, spent six weeks...
Nature at your doorstep – Gateway and Foothills
On Sunday night I went out in the rain to witness a ritual far older than Easter, or even the pagan rites that were held at this time of year for untold millennia before the Christian era. I’m speaking of the annual migration of amphibians to the seasonal, or vernal, pools where they breed. Wood...
First controlled burns slated for Minnewaska State Park Preserve
The Shawangunk Ridge Biodiversity Partnership (SRBP) announced its plans for conducting controlled burns on the Shawangunk Ridge for the 2013 season which extends from mid-March to mid-December. Burns are planned to take place at several locations at Mohonk Preserve, Minnewaska State Park Preserve and Sam’s Point Preserve. This is the first season that controlled burns...