West Kill is a small town wedged in a wide valley in the Catskill Mountains. The houses nudge each other in the small town, then out route 42 the houses space out, become farms. I wonder about the brave farmers who first settled this valley.
“Do you think you would be lonely living out here?” I ask our car full of women, all dressed for a day hike up West Kill peak. I used to romanticize living far from everyone and everything, craved silence the way some people crave chocolate. Mary responds quickly, “Yes.” I would be too, I admit. Though I often spend long days alone I always see another person: the post mistress, or Mikee the baker where I buy a brioche on Wednesday mornings. In the bakery I’ll know someone, share a few words, a laugh. I may only talk to another person for five minutes in a day but that is five minutes of touching the world. I think of these moments as ballast, keeping me upright. This Catskill town’s emptiness feels vast. To add to it, there is evidence, deep, piled up, destroyed evidence of Hurricane Irene from this past fall. Some bridges have been rebuilt, some remain in progress. But the river bed is wide, wider than is needed for the stream that now flows through. The debris that lines the riverbank includes massive logs and piles of brush. Looking at it I sense the force of the water that swept through here, altering this landscape.
The trailhead follows a stream into the hills and to a series of beautiful waterfalls. The trail then shot uphill for two and a half miles.
I am sure that I used to be a fun hiking companion to Mary and Connie, with whom I’ve shared many peaks. We would gab our way up and down mountains covering life’s most important topics: family, food and sex. Now, I have my binoculars strapped to my chest, eager to see what birds are living their lives on this snowy mountain. Rather than talk, I linger behind everyone looking for movement, or a small chip.
I am rewarded right away with a plump rusty Fox Sparrow. It’s one of my favorite sparrows and not just because we share a name. A Junco trills from the woods and further up the trail I hear a flock of Pine Siskin where they belong: in a pine tree.
Soon we are tromping through snow, and clambering over downed birch trees. We have had so little snow this winter that to walk through the soft layer pleases me.
A picnic on the summit offers one of the finest views from a Catskill Peak I have ever had. Often from these summits there is little or no view. In fact, you hardly know you’ve arrived at the summit. Here, we look into the valleys, the trees brown, but beginning to shade to green with new buds, the spread of the mountain range before us. We pick out other peaks: Plateau, there, Hunter, there, and share food.
view from the summitA Turkey Vulture soars into view. And then a Raven swoops past. I could hear—felt—its wing beats. Perhaps we were sitting too close to a nest.
The quiet of the woods is my company on the descent. Too soon we are out of the snow and back at the stream, the falls. And there to greet us is a patch of Spring Beauties.
