Meadow

This just in from Terry Savage. He saw the photo I posted a couple of days ago (Feb 6th) of the meadow with the hammock and wrote to give us some information on it.
- Carol Seitz

"I enjoy keeping up with events in the valley by checking in on the Woodland Valley View from time to time. It was a nice surprise to see the Burroughs Meadow (and my hammock) featured in a photo. The meadow is now owned by the Larkin Farm Association and is a protected reserve. Below is a excerpt from "In the Southern Catskills" by the great John Burroughs, a frequent visitor to our valley, in which he talks about the meadow 100 years ago."
- Terry Savage

"From a meadow just back of Larkins's barn, a view may be had of all these mountains, while the terraced side of Cross Mountain bounds the view immediately to the east. Running from the top of Panther toward Slide one sees a gigantic wall of rock, crowned with a dark line of fir. The forest abruptly ends, and in its stead rises the face of this colossal rocky escarpment, like some barrier built by the mountain gods. Eagles might nest here. It breaks the monotony of the world of woods very impressively.

I delight in sitting on a rock in one of these upper fields, and seeing the sun go down behind Panther. The rapid-flowing brook below me fills all the valley with a soft murmur. There is no breeze, but the great atmospheric tide flows slowly in toward the cooling forest; one can see it by the motes in the air illuminated by the
setting sun: presently, as the air cools a little, the tide turns and flows slowly out. The long, winding valley up to the foot of Slide, five miles of primitive woods, how wild and cool it looks, its one voice the murmur of the creek! On the Wittenberg the sunshine lingers long; now it stands up like an island in a sea of shadows, then slowly sinks beneath the wave. The evening call of a robin or a veery at his vespers makes a marked impression on the silence and the solitude."
- John Burroughs

PS from Terry - Burroughs mentions the veery - a bird I've only heard in our area - usually at dusk. It has a very beautiful song - here's a link to it:

http://www.mbr-pwrc.usgs.gov/Infocenter/i7560id.html