A word about C.C. (Chile) Allam—Chile was an editor at New York’s Daily News. He lived in our valley for many years and died at the Kingston Hospital in the early ‘90’s. The cabin he writes about here is a small one in Roxmor that is still standing (knock wood). He eventually moved down to the old white school house, where Bill and Susan Thompson now live. This feisty and beautiful piece of writing is my favorite winter sketch of our valley.
Mike O’Neil
Dec. 2, 2007
All Outdoors
With Hi Wright
(While Hi Wright is undergoing minor repairs, his column is conducted by friends. This one is written by a man who lives in two worlds—a metropolitan newspaper office and a Catskill mountain trout stream).
By C. C. Allam
MOST OF YOU WHO READ THIS COLUMN PROBABLY LIVE IN YEAR-ROUND HOUSES, HOUSES THAT ARE WELL EQUIPPED TO MEET THE RIGORS OF A MOUNTAIN WINTER. By and large, your winter probably brings little more actual discomfort than does the winter of a New York City dweller. Certainly, on that basis, there is no reason why you should have your head examined because you choose to live and work in a land where the snows are frequent and deep and the cold often is prolonged and biting. But…
Suppose you chose to live two and a half days a week in a house intended to be only a summer dwelling, without water in the winter and at the top of a climbing, unplowed road usually impassable to a car when there is more than six or seven inches of snow? Case for Bellevue? Well, that is what I often ask myself.
I have this camp in the Woodland Valley of Ulster County, near Slide, highest peak in the Catskills, and I go there from my job in New York two and a half days every week, summer and winter. I’m not asking for sympathy, but, let’s face it, from the end of October until the end of March, there is a lot of plain, physical discomfort. So why do I do it? I dunno, and yet I would be absolutely lost if some week I could not make it.
Forget the drive up the Thruway to Kingston, the 25 westward miles on Route 28 and the final three miles up the Woodland Valley road. They can be murder in a heavy snow in the middle of the night when I drive up. But forget that and concentrate on my arrival at the foot of the private road going up into the colony in which my camp is situated. There are a couple of feet of old snow and a good hard new one is swirling all around me and the wind is cold enough to freeze your blood. So I park just off the road knowing that in the morning the gallant Shandaken township plowboys will bury the car so snugly that I’ll have to shovel out.
I LOCK THE CAR AND START UP THE ROAD, WHICH COILS A THIRD OF A MILE UP A SHOULDER OF PANTHER MOUNTAIN. I’ve done it hundreds of times, but the old snow and the new combine to obliterate the track so that every now and then I have to hunt around to get back on course. I am puffing when I get to the top of the first long rise. There I get a level stretch for a breather and I think how different it looked last August when I wore only a thin shirt, shorts, socks and shoes. Then comes the second steep climb, and I’m home. That third of a mile that I can do in five or six minutes in summer may have taken me 40 minutes, and I’m puffing again while I get out my key.
Once inside, with the lights on, I look at the thermometer. Since I can have no heat there while I am away in the city, the INSIDE temperature may be as low as 10 above. I turn on the kerosene space heater and start building a fire in the fireplace. If I was prudent the week before, there will be a basketful of small, starting wood beside the fireplace and a pile of larger wood on the porch table. But sometimes I am in too much of a hurry to be prudent, so now I may have to wallow out into the snow to the woodpile.
I pick up the Big Ben I keep on the mantle, but my fingers are too numb to turn the winding key. I take a pair of pliers out of the drawer and wind it with that. The clock gives a few hearty ticks and then stops; it is so cold that the oil is congealed, so for about 15 minutes I have to shake it frequently, letting it sit on top of the space heater between shakes, and finally it ticks away without a break. More than once I have had to turn the radio knobs with pliers too. I never before realized how necessary fingers are.
Meanwhile the inside temperature goes up quite nicely until it hits the upper 30’s, and I feel elated. Then there is some kind of slowdown which I suppose a heating engineer could explain but which baffles me. From that point on the thermometer seems only to creep.
But I still have on my thermo boots and heavy hunting coat, and as soon as it gets up to 40 I sit down in my chair before the fire and read until it reaches the middle 50’s, the point at which I think it is warm enough to get ready for bed. I reached the house at 1 a.m.; by this time it is almost 4.
I FILL THE HOT WATER BAG FROM THE TEAKETTLE THAT HAS BEEN ON TOP OF THE SPACE HEATER (SURE THERE IS AN ELECTRIC RANGE, BUT WHY USE THE JUICE?). I shove the hot water bottle into the down sleeping bag on top of my bed, I climb into pajamas in front of the fire, lower the kerosene heater, put up the fire screen open the bedroom windows, slide into the bag and zip it up. My face is cold in a pleasant sort of way, but the rest of me is snug. But, brother, when you sleep in a bag, you don’t want to top off your evening with a couple of bottles of beers!
Of course the next two days and nights are more comfortable because the space heater never goes out. But there is constant carrying—groceries, wood, kerosene and water from a spring not too far away. For a week or two after the inside water system has been turned off, I feel sort of lost, but then I get into the winter stride and find I can do very well for a day with a tenth part of the water you would use for your morning shower.
There would have to be rewards for all this or I really should have my head examined. One of them is the complete freedom and satisfaction I feel the minute I get through the front door. Another is the real comfort of my old outdoor clothes. One of the biggest is the couple of hours I spend over breakfast about noon in front of the window that looks on my busy bird-feeder. Another is sitting there looking through the bare poles of the winter forest at Mt. Wittenberg, landmark of my part of the valley.
BUT LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT THE OTHER NIGHT TO GIVE YOU A REAL CLUE TO THE FASCINATION. It was the second night of the year’s first snow—only a baby snow of about four inches, but there was a full moon turning it whiter than snow ever was before. About 11:30 I went out for a walk through the colony. The sky was full of big scurrying clouds, as though through a hole in the ice. I took a flashlight with me but never used it. I could even read name-boards at the various camps without it.
The roofs were brilliant squares and rectangles of snow supported by sidewalls that were only masses of inky black. Finally I got down to that flat stretch where I get a breather when I’m climbing up to the house, and there, though it was the second day of the hunting season, I surprise eight to ten deer. After they smelled me and high-tailed, I looked toward Wittenberg. I am sure I never will forget that night and that sight.
Before me was a snow-covered field and beyond that was the Craig barn with its roof sloping upward away from me, shining under the moon with the pure radiance of the first Christmas. My delighted eyes followed the roof to the peak and on upward to where the long snow-sprinkled mass of Terrace Mountain crouched under the cold tower of Wittenberg.
I often have regretted that there is not a full moon every week, but standing there surrounded by the moonlit mountains I realized that men could not endure the beauty of the full moon more than once a month.
What do you think? Should I have my head examined?
