In the Catskills

In the Catskills

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Title: In the Catskills
Author: John Burroughs
Release Date: November 21, 2004 [eBook #14108]
Language: English
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IN THE CATSKILLS
Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs
With Illustrations from Photographs by Clifton Johnson
Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company The Riverside Press
Cambridge
1910

[Illustration: A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN The highest
of the Catskills (Chapter VI)]

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
I. THE SNOW-WALKERS
II. A WHITE DAY AND A RED FOX
III. PHASES OF FARM LIFE
IV. IN THE HEMLOCKS
V. BIRDS'-NESTS
VI. THE HEART OF THE SOUTHERN CATSKILLS
VII. SPECKLED TROUT
VIII. A BED OF BOUGHS

ILLUSTRATIONS
A DISTANT VIEW OF SLIDE MOUNTAIN (Frontispiece)
THE FOX-HUNTER AND HIS HOUND
AT THE HEADWATERS OF THE DELAWARE Overlooking Mr.
Burroughs's boyhood home
FINDING A BIRD'S-NEST
THE WITTENBERG FROM WOODLAND VALLEY
A TROUT STREAM
THE BEAVERKILL
SOME PEOPLE OF THE CATSKILLS

INTRODUCTION
The eight essays in this volume all deal with the home region of their
author; for not only did Mr. Burroughs begin life in the Catskills, and
dwell among them until early manhood, but, as he himself declares, he
has never taken root anywhere else. Their delectable heights and
valleys have engaged his deepest affections as far as locality is
concerned, and however widely he journeys and whatever charms he
discovers in nature elsewhere, still the loveliness of those pastoral
boyhood uplands is unsurpassed.
The ancestral farm is in Roxbury among the western Catskills, where
the mountains are comparatively gentle in type and always graceful in
contour. Cultivated fields and sunny pastures cling to their mighty
slopes far up toward the summits, there are patches of woodland
including frequent groves of sugar maples, and there are apple orchards
and winding roadways, and endless lines of rude stone fences, and
scattered dwellings. In every hollow runs a clear trout brook, with its

pools and swift shallows and silvery falls. Birds and other wild
creatures abound; for the stony earth and the ledges that crop out along
the hillsides, the thickets and forest patches, the sheltered glens and
windy heights offer great variety in domicile to animal life. The
creatures of the outdoor world are much in evidence, and at no time do
their numbers impress one more than when in winter one sees the
hand-writing of their tracks on the snow.
The work on the farm and the workers are genuinely rustic, but not
nearly so primitive as in the times that Mr. Burroughs most enjoys
recalling. Oxen are of the past, the mowing-machine goes over the
fields where formerly he labored with his scythe, stacks at which the
cattle pull in the winter time are a rarity, and the gray old barns have
given place to modern red ones. It is a dairy country, and on every farm
is found a large herd of cows; but the milk goes to the creameries. The
women, however, still share in the milking, and there is much of
unaffected simplicity in the ways of the household. On days when work
is not pushing, the men are likely to go hunting or fishing, and they are
always alert to observe chances to take advantage of those little
gratuities which nature in the remoter rural regions is constantly
offering, both in the matter of game and in that of herbs and roots,
berries and nuts.
Mr. Burroughs's old home has continued in the family, and the house
and its surroundings have in many ways continued essentially unaltered
ever since he can remember. What is most important--the
wide-reaching view down the vales and across to the ridges that rise
height on height until they blend with the sky in the ethereal distance, is
just what it always has been.
That the Catskills have proved an inspiration to Mr. Burroughs cannot
be doubted. Possibly we should never have had him as a nature writer
at all, had he spent his impressible youthful years in a less favored
locality. It is, however, a curious fact that the town which produced this
lover of nature also produced one other man of national fame, who was
as different from him as could well be