Nature Done Wright

My latest column for The Record and the Herald News is about Slabsides and the John Burroughs Nature Sanctuary in the Catskills.

For those who love nature writing, this place is hallowed ground.

Here's how the column begins:

This summer, I made a pilgrimage to a rustic log cabin in the foothills of the Catskills. It’s home to woodpeckers and warblers, but I wasn’t there for just the birding.

The place is Slabsides, home to the legendary writer John Burroughs, who built the one-room retreat by hand in the late 1800s and wrote some of his most inspired writing about nature there.

Slabsides, a National Historic Landmark and a Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area site, is part of the 197-acre John Burroughs Nature Sanctuary, located not far from 9W and the Hudson River in West Park, N.Y.

The online version of the column features comments from Burroughs' granddaughter Joan, Slabsides birding tips from Mark DeDea (president of the John Burroughs Natural History Society), and a great warbler photo or two by Peter Schoenberger (including the one above) that the JBNHS was kind enough to supply.

You can read it here.

                          Inside Slabsides.