AUGUST 14, 2021 – As a biting fly in the car kept me alert, we hurtled west on I80 across Pennsylvania and Ohio to Friday’s destination just beyond Toledo. The day had begun in Cragsmoor, NY, 90 minutes from Manhattan. Our proximity to Gotham reminded me of things that people back home in Minnesota have said to me over the years about things “back East”; perceptions that it’s one big noisy, dirty, congested place, covered with asphalt and concrete, wall-to-wall high-rise buildings, and endless tracks of stinking, smoking industrial sites. In high school I remember learning that geographer Jean Gottmann coined the term “Megalopolis” to describe the whole, densely urbanized region sprawling from Boston to Washington.
Of course, on approach to Newark’s Liberty Airport or LaGuardia or JFK an air traveler sees an endless stretch of steel, concrete, industrial sites, high-rise buildings, and highway arteries jammed with vehicles. Going north to Boston and south to Washington, one encounters large concentrations of population and industry.
For the past 10 days, however, my wife and I had traipsed around the New England states of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, as well as New York and Pennsylvania. We’d gotten within sight of the wilds of northern New Jersey. Apart from many friends and family we’d visited and new people we’d met, our time “back East” was in the heart of nature.
Connecticut is replete with preserves established for public benefit and enjoyment. The privately dedicated land is supplemented by 132 state parks. Our old family place in Lyme and our son/daughter-in-law’s new home in Chester are surrounded by nature. At our friends’ beautiful “pond palace” in Falmouth, Massachusetts, we learned the extent to which conservancies control ecologically sensitive lands and wetlands. In the Rhode Island, the nation’s smallest state, we enjoyed a long stretch of its endless shoreline. In New York, we found yet another Eden—in the lower Catskills—and another still—Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. In Pennsylvania, we slipped off the Interstate and explored the Poconos, an area of still more gorgeous scenery.
For many years a family friend, Tori Drake, a professional harpist who often landed in St. Paul for gigs with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, invited us to visit her and her spouse, Lonnie, in Cragsmoor. The name derives from its nearby craggy rock formations and the Moorish fog that often wraps the place in mystery.
We’d never landed in Cragsmoor, NY—mostly because we’d never examined a map closely enough. To search for interesting stops along our drive from Connecticut westward, I used my index finger to blaze a trail across the pages of a large road atlas. As my finger entered the Catskills, Tori’s standing invitation flashed to the forefront. I sent a message and received an immediate response. Three days later, we arrived at Tori and Lonnie’s Shangri-La. (To be cont.)
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
