White Gold

Snow is in the forecast! Several inches possible. I hope so. Our house is cupped by Pakatakan Mountain and overlooks a couple different tiers (or micro-climates) of land, including a pond, stream, field, and forest, and when it snows it's like we're sitting inside a snow globe. But mostly I hope it snows for the ski hills - especially our beleaguered Belleayre. (But that's another post.) Snow is what makes the economy up here in the winter months. And the economy, as we all know, is melting down in major proportions. Our small towns depend on tourists and skiers, snowboarders, hikers, hunters, and all those who need to take a breather once in a while - so I'm hoping for some white gold in major proportions. 

Speaking of the economy, I'm buying local this holiday season. Gives me a reason to visit all of my favorite businesses up and down Route 28. As I do, I'll be blogging about these small businesses - really, labors of love - that make the Catskills so cool, most of which blend a rural and urban aesthetic  seamlessly. (There isn't a box store, chain store, mega store, or brand name store within fifty miles!) 

Stay tuned for Shop the Catskills, a recurring post about local businesses. 

For more info on buying locally, check out this link for Pure Catskills, a "branding and buy local campaign" sponsored by the Watershed Agricultural Council, farmers, and fresh food purveyors.

Note: The Catskill region used to be known for its cauliflower production, which farmers called white gold, as it sent many a farm kid to college.

 

Mountain's worth of blogging

I have a mountain's worth of stuff I want to blog about and already I've gotten some "user-generated" material in the form of pics and links. I'll get those up soon. For now, I'm doing something like bushwhacking before this blog is up and running. My husband will be posting, too. His Catskillian interests these days are anything that pertains to building fires in our new fireplace insert (chopping wood, stacking logs, bundling kindling, etc.), and hiking, snowshoeing, skiing, staying warm, and as always, the history of music here in the Catskills (Dylan, The Band, etc.) and how it lives on in certain bands today, including his own, Two Dark Birds.  

Here's a list of things to come:

• Pics - coming soon!
  
• Listings of local businesses and events
  
• Profiles of people who live here and the odd ways (and some not so odd ways) they make their living (i.e. Life of a transplant, Life of a weekender, Life of a local)
  
• Local economy - how small towns and the people who live in them are surviving in the midst of a global financial crisis
  
• New grocery store (coming soon) to Margaretville - so long A&P!
  
• New pool and recreation center coming soon to Arkville, to be built by the Gould family of John Jay Gould fame
  
• New Water Discovery Center (coming soon) to Arkville
  
• Brief history of NYC's water supply and the Catskill towns that were displaced so the reservoirs could be built
  
• A look at the artists, writers, & musicians who make the Catskills their home or home-away-from-home

Hello Mountain Hi

We were sleep-deprived first time parents of an eight-month-old baby girl when my husband and I sold our apartment in Brooklyn and moved to the Catskills. I definitely felt withdrawal pains after leaving the city—and occasional buyers’ remorse. I admit: for the first week, I thought we’d made a huge mistake and I feared for our daughter’s future. I’ve since completely changed my tune—and my postnatal hormones have regulated themselves. More importantly, our daughter, now two, has thrived. She’s a country kid, for sure. In her words: I love my dad. I love my mom. I love my mountain.

Recently, I read about a new study on attention restoration therapy (ART), soon to be published in Psychological Science, which finds that “interacting with nature dramatically improves cognitive function,” and now I’m even more convinced that we made the right move. The study has found that “a walk in the woods is like a vacation for the prefrontal cortex.” Similarly, last spring I read Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods (April, 2008), which claims that nature deficit disorder is a real threat to our children who spend more time these days plugged into dvds, video games, television, and the Internet, and/or running to and from overscheduled activities than they do in free, unstructured outdoor play. 

This blog is about our own little "back to the land" experiment. But it's more than that. It's about the Catskills and all its offerings. My friends are all tired of me trying to persuade them to move upstate. But I want to start a movement. A mass exodus to the sticks. And now I’m armed with empirical research, scientific studies, and a blog.