John Burroughs Gravesite. Sunday, September 11, 2013.
(Image and text were featured in the exhibition James McElhinney. Discover the Hudson Anew, curated by Laura Vookles. Hudson River Museum. Yonkers, New York. September 13, 2019 to February 16, 2020. Published also as a limited-edition in Hudson Highlands. North River Suite Volume One. Needlewatcher Editions. New York. 2018)
Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.
John Burroughs grave-site, looking north from the trail.
Kathie and I first discovered the site on a ramble into the western Catskills. Parking along the shoulder of Burroughs Memorial Road, we follow a narrow track north through the woods to a clearing. Descending eastward, wild meadows welcome us to broad vistas, no less inspiring in bucolic charm than majestic wonders like Grimsel Pass or Grand Canyon. Hewn by the east branch of the Delaware River and the headwaters of Schoharie Creek, the little valley is the source of two mighty watersheds—the Delaware and the Hudson. Beheld from Burroughs’s boulder, a harmonious patchwork of farm-fields and woodlots presents a soothing view. One forgets. Roxbury’s farming-community relied upon railway-depots in Arvkville and Margaretville to deliver its bounty to market. Burroughs’s youth knew the clamor of steam-powered machinery echoing through the valley. The song of the axe was heard deep in its woods. Burroughs’s vista was just far enough to escape such distractions, to stand between the land of men, and God’s country.
Literary Naturalist John Burroughs (1837-1921) was born near Roxbury in the Western Catskills. He later lived at Slabsides, his woodland refuge near Kingston, New York in Ulster County. Drawing heavily on travels through the mountainous regions around the Hudson Valley and New England, Burroughs argued that deeper connections with nature would develop the mind and nourish the soul, advocating the practice of close observation. In his essay, The Art of Seeing Things, published in Leaf and Tendril, 1908, Burroughs writes,
“To know is not all; it is only half. To love is the other half.”
To a neighbor complaining that birds no longer visited her home, Burroughs replied that during their conversation he had noted the songs of several, and named the species one by one. “You must have the bird in your heart”, he told her, “before you can find it in the bush.” Toward the end of his life Burroughs repaired to Woodchuck Lodge, a rustic farmhouse on the slopes of Clump Mountain, near the farm where he was born. His fondest retreat was a large recumbent boulder he called Boyhood Rock. By its foot he rests beside his wife. Fieldstone walls shelter their grave. In sweeping views of the beloved valley he abides.
Painting next to Boyhood Rock at John Burroughs’s grave, Roxbury, New York
John Burroughs’s mission and legacy is celebrated today by the John Burroughs Association, which maintains his Ulster County retreat Slabsides, and is developing new trails along Black Creek near Highlands, New York. Annually it presents a number of literary awards for nature-writing including the prestigious John Burroughs Medal. I heartily recommend membership in this wonderful organization.
With Joan Burroughs, President of the John Burroughs Association at Discover the Hudson Anew at Hudson River Museum, February 16, 2020.
(A preview of SKETCHBOOK TRAVELER by James L. McElhinney (c) 2020. Schiffer Publishing).
Copyright James Lancel McElhinney (c) 2020 Texts and images may be reproduced (with proper citation) by permission of the author. To enquire, send a request to editions@needlewatcher.com