The Catskill Forest: A History

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable
Review: I don't think there's anyone who has hiked over more of the Catskill Mountains than Michael Kudish. Having written his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Catskills forests, he is THE expert on the subject. Every one else learns from him.

But for too long, you had to do that learning through the mimeographed sections of his dissertation handed out by the Catskill Center, or at public appearances at Catskill 3500 Club gatherings or NYSDEC public-education meetings.

No more. The knowledge that he has spent the decades since his dissertation gaining and improving upon, he has now shared with the public in this highly readable and accessible volume. It's too cumbersome to put in your backpack, but that's the only problem I have with it.

Everything you might have wondered about while hiking, whether on- or off-trail, Kudish can answer for you. Why is Graham Mountain's summit covered in that scrubby cherry and birch without a trace of the thick balsam fir that covers adjacent lower summits? Where's the Brant fort, near Roundtop? He knows and he'll tell you (but I won't because you should buy the book).

Kudish painstakingly delineated all the first-growth forests of the region (there are many), looked through old reccords to establish when and where fires occurred, and in general found and logged many things merely thought to exist deep in the woods (the stocks of mature American chestnuts, apparently blight-free, on Tremper and Carl mountains is a real stunner).

I have hiked these mountains thoroughly over the past several years. I have done all the peaks of the Catskill 3500 Club and then some. I learned a lot.

But this book told me many things I didn't know, solved many mysteries (and actually deepened my enjoyment of the woods). Without denying what I learned on my own, it opened up whole new worlds, as if I'd only just begun.

A little basic scientific understanding, of the sort one could pick up in, say, a high school biology class, is helpful but not required. Kudish has a popular audience firmly in mind, and in fact can even bring a smile to your face (particularly when he sticks up for much-maligned Eagle Mountain as his favorite peak). And the research is of course exhaustive.

What Alf Evers did for the region as a whole, Kudish did for the woods. If you love the Catskills enough to have read Evers' work cover to cover, I'd strongly recommend this as a supplement (though a pretty hefty one at that).