![Daytrip to Totality](https://millertonnews.com/media-library/image.jpg?id=52027408&width=540&height=596&quality=90&coordinates=0%2C124%2C0%2C0)
Madison Lang
Last week my friend Madison and I drove from Lee, Massachusetts, to far northern Vermont, pursuing the path of totality: We would watch an eclipse.
Our working plan for the day was that everything would go terribly, terribly wrong, and the beautiful mundanity of it was that some things did and many did not, leaving us, at the end of our adventure, awed and contented, wending our way back south through seven hours of traffic in the hardening dark.
The evening before, talking to the friends we thought we might meet up with if we could all decide where we wanted to go in time to get there, Madison wailed that she felt shamefully underprepared.
In fairness, we had decided to “do the eclipse” just two days before. Also, Madison is a lawyer. I personally thought we were plenty prepared. We had eclipse glasses, leftover Indian (in case of culinary emergency), several bottles of water and a brown paper bag full of stale candy. The plan was to leave around six, bundle into my Forester (her car was overdue for an oil change) and drive north.
A hard frost came in that night. In the morning we discovered that, due to forces beyond my comprehension, a small crack had appeared in my windshield, zagging up from the passenger seat dash.
We chanced it. We were speeding east on I-90 when Madison cried, “the crack is growing!”
Indeed, the crack was growing. It was not subtle. It was growing across the windshield at about the rate that mercury rises in a thermometer plunged into boiling water. The crack was, we decided, during our mad dash back to safety, giving Final Destination. Despite the blinking oil light, Madison’s car now appeared relatively harmless.
The drive was beautiful and much faster than anticipated (apart from the bathroom lines, which, once experienced, prompted us to turn to roadside woods for the remainder of our journey): I-90 to 91 and then straight on til morning, which in this metaphor is Jay Peak, a ski mountain in Vermont, just south of the Canadian border.
By 1:30, at the base of the mountain, some 150 people and their children had spread themselves over the snow outside the lodges and restaurants; it wasn’t crowded but felt lively, one of those situations in which strangers are excitedly telling strangers where they’re from while lending them a sun-deflecting lens for their iPhone camera.
An array of lawn chairs and makeshift blankets and camera tripods faced the mountain. People in sunglasses and shorts drank beer from golden cans, and ski coats glowed neon against the bright snow. It might have leaned fratty except that most viewers were middle aged and/or dressed like arborists. Above the peaks, the sun was doing its usual sun thing, screaming light down from a wild blue sky.
At 2:20 a cheer went up. Not far from the Waffle Cabin, a cover band — the Pink Talking Phish — began playing Dark Side of the Moon. From behind my glasses, it looked as if the glowing disc of sun was being slightly compressed at the bottom right — a glitch in the matrix, a tiny fold at the corner of a page.
At 2:30 we were all calling out to each other — “it’s starting, it’s starting!” — as if we were not all tuned to the same channel, as if this moment had not been put into motion several billion years before any of us had learned to speak.
Now the disc had a small bite taken out of it, like the cookie you gave a mouse. I was lying on my coat (and Madison’s), staring at the sun. Kids frolicked in the snow banks. The band played Money.
A cool breeze came up. A man was letting strangers look through his telescope: a fat orange crescent, blunted on both ends, like a slice of cantaloupe.
The light took on a curious gray quality — it was not like evening light, because it was still falling from above; it was not the light of a gray day, because it was not dispersed; it was different, somehow, from other dusks — “eerie,” I thought, feeling dissatisfied with language.
People were putting on sweaters and coats, and the night wind picked up flecks of snow and swirled them around in the dimming light. It became possible to see the eclipse when — against medical advice — one glanced directly at the sun.
From behind the glasses, there was only a fingernail of light.
But people were taking their glasses off now, and the dusk deepening rapidly. There was a final flash and suddenly a black hole glowed in an evening sky, a great disc of nothing at all.
Planets glinted in the violet gloom, and an orange glow encircled the horizon, as if the sun were setting everywhere at once. But that void with its pale aureole — my heart seemed to rise slightly, pressing up against my skin like a child with her face to a windowpane, pulled upwards by the black, terrible nothing at the heart of the sun.
We were all so small and fragile, standing there with our tears and our beating hearts and our brief mortal coils. We were also all together, watching the accordion folds of deep time falling open across the silence, shoulder to shoulder in our wonderment.
Three and a half minutes was an age, then suddenly — the flip of a switch — no time at all; there was another flash, and the void vanished, swallowed by the overwhelming brightness of our star.
Quietened, blinking at one another in the strange gray light, we were surprised to find ourselves once again standing on the side of a mountain in the middle of our lives.
Maxon Mills in Wassaic hosted a majority of the events of the local Upstate Art Weekend events in the community.
WASSAIC — Art enthusiasts from all over the country flocked to the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley to participate in Upstate Art Weekend, which ran from July 18 to July 21.
The event, which “celebrates the cultural vibrancy of Upstate New York”, included 145 different locations where visitors could enjoy and interact with art.
On Saturday, July 20, The Wassaic Project hosted numerous community events. Will Hutnick, the director of artistic programming, said “We’ve been a part of it since the beginning, this is the fifth year of UPAW.”
Most of the action was based at Maxon Mills, the seven-floor grain mill located in the heart of Wassaic. On exhibit was work from 30 artists, 18 of whom were past residents of The Wassaic Project. “Artists can come and do a residency here, meaning they live and work with one another for a couple months at a time,” Hutnick stated.
The first floor held work by Petra Szilagyi, who uses dirt and linseed oil to construct images of paranormal concepts, most of which include bats. They reflected that a recent trip to a fifth sense competition in Vietnam was the influence behind the exhibit.
Across the floor was Tiffany Smith’s interactive installation which incorporated plants and wicker chairs, all of which were objects associated with her Carribean upbringing. “The room being filled with plants is symbolic of hurricane prep which often included bringing the plants from outside into the house,” Smith said.
As visitors made their way up the narrow wooden stairs, music could be heard from behind the walls. The echoing music was Daniel Shieh’s installation, entitled Mother’s Anthem, which played a recording of the American Anthem in 30 languages. The languages ranged from Spanish and Italian to Navajo and Bengali.
Each floor was filled with artwork of all mediums, including painting, fibers, collage and photography. Rachel Bussières, who switched her concentration after watching the 2017 solar eclipse, uses varying light sources to produce lumen prints. During the wildfires, she recounted that she “made a new exposure each day to capture the changing air quality”.
Luciana Abait also incorporates the natural world into her pieces, instead using maps. An environmental activist originally from Argentina, Abait’s work highlights “environmental fragility, specifically the impacts it has on immigrants.” Her installation that is currently on display at Maxon Mills, takes the form of a mountain range built solely from maps of the US and Argentina.
Throughout the day, visitors could “Arm Wrestle 4 A Popsicle”. Winners had the choice of 3 playfully flavored trout-inspired popsicles - Nightcrawler, Power Bait, and Salmon Roe. Artist Katie Peck, who spent the day in costume as a rainbow trout, encouraged guests to step up and try their hand at an arm wrestle.
Shibori Indigo dyeing, group meditation, and dance workshops were open for community members of all ages as well.
While the daytime activities fostered appreciation of fixed art, a dance party until midnight at The Lantern Inn offered guests a space for performative art.
When describing the environment of The Wassaic Project, Smith emphasized, “It’s all community, it’s all love.”
A serene scene during the Garden Tour in Amenia.
AMENIA — The much-anticipated annual Amenia Garden Tour drew a steady stream of visitors to admire five local gardens on Saturday, July 13, each one demonstrative of what a green thumb can do. An added advantage was the sense of community as neighbors and friends met along the way.
Each garden selected for the tour presented a different garden vibe. Phantom’s Rock, the garden of Wendy Goidel, offered a rocky terrain and a deep rock pool offering peaceful seclusion and anytime swims. Goidel graciously welcomed visitors and answered questions about the breathtaking setting.
Amenia Finance Director Charlie Miller welcomed visitors to his Bog Hollow Road garden in Wassaic, a manicured expansive yard with well-placed garden beds framing a far-reaching view. He said he plans carefully each winter for the next spring’s improvement.
The organic, environmentally responsible Maitri Farm was next, a lesson in coordinating agriculture with natural balance. The farm stand and a walk among the greenhouses brought visitors together.
Near the center of Amenia was the garden of Polly Pitts-Garvin, offering a chance to visit a robust vegetable garden with raised beds to be envious of and a remarkable absence of any insects or usual vegetable garden problems.
At Chez Cheese, the vast garden acreage surrounding the 1850s historic home of Joan Feeney and Bruce Phillips in Millerton, visitors could begin at refreshment stations where walking tour maps of the 15-acre property were available. There were streams and ponds with docks, and a dozen bridges arranged around the landscape. In the 19th-century, the property had been the home of the Wilson Cheese Factory, inspiring the name of the estate.
The Amenia Garden Tour was supported this year by Paley’s Garden Center in Sharon.
Gary Dodson working a tricky pool on the Schoharie Creek, hoping to lure something other than a rock bass from the depths.
PRATTSVILLE, N.Y. — The Schoharie Creek, a fabled Catskill trout stream, has suffered mightily in recent decades.
Between pressure from human development around the busy and popular Hunter Mountain ski area, serious flooding, and the fact that the stream’s east-west configuration means it gets the maximum amount of sunlight, the cool water required for trout habitat is simply not as available as in the old days.
This is not a new phenomenon. It does seem to be getting worse, though.
Gary Dodson and I convened where the creek makes its final run into the Schoharie reservoir, part of the New York City water supply system, on a semi-broiling Thursday afternoon, July 11.
The goal was simple. Catch smallmouth bass, which abound in the lower section of the river.
This was hot stuff — as in an 80-degree water temperature.
The air temperature was actually slightly less at 77.
After negotiating the intensely slippery rocks, festooned with treacherous algae, the first major pool presented several difficulties, with a back eddy competing with a main flow and several large trees draped about the whole thing.
I hit on the simplest strategy, which was to flip a weighted attractor fly called a Tequilley into the start of the eddy so it would proceed slowly but steadily into the maelstrom, sinking all the while.
This worked. A proper adult smallmouth, with bronze coloring and vertical stripes, took the thing.
The point-and-shoot camera finally died, however, and I was not going to try to fumble my phone out for a nice but routine fish photo.
Why not?
Because I guarantee the fish would have made a sudden, last-moment bolt for freedom, causing me to drop the device into the drink.
Gary moved downstream while I continued trying to annoy the residents of the pool, succeeding a couple of times with different colored Wooly Buggers.
Then we all got bored and I moved off, where Gary was catching rock bass and cussing them out for not being something else. I have to admit, they are not the most compelling critters. Something about the red eyes.
This latest trip was dominated by extremely tedious and distasteful Harry Homeowner activities, but on both Wednesday and
Thursday mornings I prowled Woodland Valley Creek. By “morning” I mean “dawn,” because that was when the water temps were down to a barely acceptable 64.
I made the acquaintance of several stocked browns and of a handful of their wild cousins. The wild fish are smaller and nimbler.
The successful ploy was an Adams wet fly, size 16, drifted behind something big, like a Parachute Adams or Stimulator.