Halfway through my one month New York trip, I got tired of heat where the only reprieve was manmade air conditioning. I felt a sudden nostaglic longing for upstate and the summers I spent there without AC, swimming under waterfalls, (small) cliff-jumping, and laying on flat rocks next to rivers.
I went to “maps.google.com” and searched “waterfall” and panned around upstate. I decided on a day trip with my Dad and family dog to Kaaterskill Falls. Kaaterskill is the closest real waterfall that seemed to have the upstate sensibilities for the do-it-your-way freely accessible untouched nature I wanted. The falls is a two stage waterfall, and was pretty dry when I want, creating a calm little pool at the top to swim in. My family dog was also able to jump in, but it felt a bit bothersome to others to have a dog in the water. Kaaterskill is of course packed on a Saturday in July, owing to it being the closet true falls to the city by a few hours relative to other upstate waterfalls. If I went again, I’d aim to beat the crowd and get there earlier than 11am.
Upstate nature feels different than California nature to me. What makes it feel this way is not just the hardwood dense forests, but rather a tendency towards freedom of usage, guaranteed by a population that treats nature generally well apart from some beer cans left at the dam by college students, rarely big enough to warrant the creation and enforcement of rules that limit usage. There just seems to be plenty of nature to go around.
