Reading about and remembering the Hudson River valley

Whenever I think about the state and town where I grew up—New York State and Tarrytown respectively, I feel blessed. Blessed to have grown up there, blessed to have the memories I have of growing up there. It’s perhaps hard to understand for those who have never moved from the place where they were born, but as I’ve gotten older, it is the positive recollections about the place of my birth that override the negative memories. I am beginning to forget the reasons why I wanted to move from it in the first place, especially when I visit Tarrytown in the summertime on my annual visits and walk along familiar streets in the baking heat, savoring my time there. Much of the town has changed since I was a child; in most cases for the better. It’s a prettier town than when I lived there. That seems to be generally true for many towns and cities, including Oslo. Oslo is a much prettier and nicer city now than when I moved here over twenty years ago. That is because there is more attention paid to urban planning and design—to how buildings, parks, and recreation areas look. The esthetic component attached to urban/suburban development and progress has become more important, and that’s positive.

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t wait to get out into the world at large and to explore it. And I’ve done so. I especially wanted to travel around Europe, and have visited many Western European countries during the past twenty years that I’ve lived in Norway. That wasn’t the reason I moved abroad, but it strikes me now that I was not at all averse to moving abroad when the opportunity to do so arose. I am perhaps a bit nostalgic these days for all things familiar from my youth, including my hometown, and that does not strike me as unusual after more than twenty years abroad. But what strikes me as most true is that the area where I grew up in New York State is beautiful; I am not remembering it wrong or seeing it through rose-colored glasses. The Hudson River Valley is lovely; likewise many of the small towns that have grown up along it and that are an indelible part of its landscape. I have traveled along most of the Hudson River by train, from Grand Central Station in Manhattan as far north as Poughkeepsie. It’s a beautiful relaxing ride, especially when you get out of the city area and into the suburbs; if you want to read more about it, here is a good link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Line_(Metro-North).

So it won’t be surprising that I am recommending two books that I have so enjoyed perusing and that have stolen my heart with their beauty and warmth. Both of them are about the Hudson River and/or the towns along it—one is a book of photography, the other is a warm and lovely tribute to a small pub in the town of Garrison (across the river from the West Point military academy)—Guinan’s--and its owner Jim Guinan (who passed away in 2009). The first book is a book of photography published in 2006 that I recommend to many people who ask me about New York State and the area where I grew up; it is entitled The Hudson River: From Tear of the Clouds to Manhattan by Jake Rajs; you can find it on Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/ckb5f35 and on Amazon: http://tinyurl.com/cjeeb8p. So much of the photography in this book is stunning; it is a collection of photos that portrays the Hudson River and the river towns and landscapes as they really are, in all seasons. The second book, published in 2006, is entitled Little Chapel on the River by Gwendolyn Bounds; it too can be found at Barnes and Noble: http://tinyurl.com/cqclprc and on Amazon:  http://tinyurl.com/cl7xdyh. It was recommended to me by my friend Stef who read it and loved it; I share her sentiments. The author writes in a heartfelt style about her meeting with Jim Guinan, his family, and the patrons of the pub, all of whom have their individual stories to tell, and all of whom become her friends over time. If you’d like to see photos of Guinan’s pub, you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gwendolynbounds/2050518523/in/photostream/. I never thought reading about a bar could be so interesting, or that it would make me want to visit it the next time I am in New York. Unfortunately, it closed its doors in 2008 and its owner passed away in 2009. I can relate to the author’s way of writing and to her attention to detail; but mostly I was glad to read about a place that connects me in some way to my first home—a Hudson River town in the state of New York. It brings me back to a time and a place that are close to my heart. Guinan’s pub was in Garrison, but it could have been in any of the small towns on the Hudson River, where the locals gather to drink a few beers after work in the evening and to shoot the breeze. As they used to say in the TV series Cheers—a ‘place where everyone knows your name’. That’s what this book manages to impart—the message that what counts in life is the connections we have to other people and how we deal with the people who grace our daily lives.

Beautiful New York State

In addition to today’s earlier poem, I am posting some photos of some of the places I visited on my recent trip to New York. Enjoy!

·         The United States Military Academy at West Point and the Thayer Hotel also in West Point with Renata, Tim and John: lovely views of the Hudson River from the Academy grounds, and a brunch worth the money at the lovely old Thayer Hotel. Also wandered around Newburgh and surrounding area. 

·         Long Beach on Long Island with Gisele: amazing waves and long stretches of white sandy beach; peaceful to walk along at night.

·         The New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx with Jean and Maria: there were only about a million photo opportunities here—from bees to butterflies to trees to flowering plants to greenhouses and conservatories—take your pick. Botanical gardens generally are among some of the most incredible places in the world.

·         The Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown with Jean: you can visit the beautiful Gothic mansion that was designed by the American architect Alexander Jackson Davis. The mansion was home to three important families, including Jay Gould, the railroad magnate. We walked along the Lyndhurst part of the River Walk for a short distance; see the following links for more information about this great idea that has found its way into reality: http://planning.westchestergov.com/images/stories/RiverWalk/riverwalkmap11x17.pdf and http://planning.westchestergov.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1187&Itemid=2128

Back view

Front view

Photos of Tarrytown Lakes and Hudson River Valley Estates

As promised when I wrote my post the other day about the Tarrytown Lakes and the Hudson River Valley estates, I am posting some photos that I have taken of the Lakes as well as of Lyndhurst, Kykuit, and Philipsburg Manor. The Lyndhurst photos are very old (and very edited in Photoshop; they were taken with a Kodak Instamatic, believe it or not), but have withstood the ravages of time. The Tarrytown Lakes photos are from the autumn of 2005 when I visited New York. I always drive around the old familiar places--memories abound and I enjoy my trips down memory lane. The Kykuit and Philipsburg Manor photos were taken in the summer of 2008 when I was in New York together with my friends Jean and Maria. You will get an idea of how beautiful the Hudson River Valley area and the village of Tarrytown are. Enjoy the photos, and if you are ever in the area, visit these places. You will love being there.

Tarrytown Lakes in the autumn

Tarrytown Lakes--you can see the roof of the shed where we used to sit in the wintertime when skating

Lyndhurst mansion--looking up from the riverfront

Lyndhurst mansion--view facing the Hudson River

View of the Hudson River from the Kykuit mansion

Another view of the Hudson River from Kykuit

Kykuit Mansion

Philipsburg Manor

Philipsburg Manor 

The Tarrytown Lakes and the Hudson River Valley Estates

The longer I live outside of New York State, the more I realize how privileged I was to grow up there. Tarrytown, the town where I grew up, is a lovely small village on the Hudson River. A short drive from the center of Tarrytown along Neperan Road and you will suddenly find yourself at the beautiful Tarrytown Lakes and the small forests surrounding them. The Tarrytown Lakes would freeze solid during the winter months, and we spent hours there after school ice-skating—practicing our twirls and fantasizing about being figure skaters. The boys would be playing ice hockey any chance they got. We would make our way into the shed by the side of the lake to warm up a bit and then out we’d go again. There were always lots of children skating; that’s where you went if you wanted to meet your friends after school during the winter months. During the autumn months, the trees would change color and the foliage was a sight to behold. My brother and his friends spent many hours fishing at the Tarrytown Lakes. Swimming was not allowed because the lakes were reservoirs for drinking water.

If you continued along Neperan Road, you would come to a point where you could make a left onto Lake Road (I don’t remember if it had a different name some years ago). If you drive along Lake Road, you will eventually come to the Rockefeller Park Preserve where you can run, bike, or walk for miles. When we were children, our parents would pack us into the back seat of our car for our weekly Sunday drives during the spring and summer; we often drove along Lake Road that merged into Bedford Road that passed through the Rockefeller Park Preserve. Sometimes we would stop and get out of the car to walk over to the horses standing by the fences waiting for a handout of sugar cubes. Sometimes we watched the sheep or the cows. I remember thinking as a child how beautiful and expansive and green the land was during the summertime, and how blue the sky was with its lovely puffy white clouds.

Broadway, also known as Route 9, runs through the center of Tarrytown. If you drive south along Broadway, you will discover two lovely estates with historic homes (now museums) located on the riverfront—Lyndhurst and Sunnyside. Lyndhurst was the home of Jay Gould, the railroad tycoon; it is now managed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, while Sunnyside was the home of the famous author Washington Irving, who wrote The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside, along with Philipsburg Manor, Kykuit, and Van Cortlandt Manor, are managed by the Historic Hudson Valley, a non-profit organization started by John D. Rockefeller. The Rockefellers were and are a very wealthy New York family; they have used their wealth and clout to promote education and environmental protection in New York State, and supported these endeavors quite early on. I have had the pleasure of visiting Lyndhurst many times, especially as a teenager; in recent years I have visited Philipsburg Manor and Kykuit together with my friends Jean and Maria when I have come to NY; this year we’re talking about possibly visiting Sunnyside and Lyndhurst again when I visit NY in August.

Lyndhurst especially holds some special memories for me. The two Dark Shadows films (House of Dark Shadows and Night of Dark Shadows from the early 1970s) were filmed there. As I have written about in an earlier post about Dark Shadows, my friends and I would wait at the entrance gate each day after school for the filming to be over, so that we could meet the actresses and actors and get their autographs. A few years later, during our junior year in high school, our English teacher, who was interested in film-making, gave us the opportunity to make two short (three or four-minute) films during our last semester, which were then shown to the entire school during a one-day film festival. It was a lot of fun to learn how to use the movie camera (8mm film at that time), how to cut and splice the developed film, and how to thread the film projector. One of my ‘creations’ was filmed at Lyndhurst; I used Jethro Tull’s song Living in the Past and created a short film to the music using my friend Janet as my actress—dressed first in modern clothing, I had her climb over the entrance gate and then as she hopped down, she was suddenly dressed in a flowing old-fashioned long gown from the 1800s. I don’t remember where we got a hold of the gown. What I do remember is that the filming was done in slow-motion, so that when she jumped down off the gate, the slow-motion effects of her ‘transition’ from a modern girl dressed in jeans to an old-fashioned girl dressed in a long gown were just so cool to watch. Even when not filming, we often spent a lot of time at the estate, walking around and taking pictures of the landscape and the main house (Gothic architecture). Years later, during the mid-1980s, the grounds were opened to the public on Saturday evenings for picnics and then there would be classical music and jazz concerts once it got dark. I can remember attending a few of them with both friends and family. In some coming posts, I will include some photos of the Tarrytown Lakes, Lyndhurst, Philipsburg Manor and Kykuit. They are beautiful places and if you ever find yourself in New York State in the Tarrytown area, visit them. You will not be disappointed.