Catskills to Nyack, New York
I’ll start at the end, because it’s too good not to.
I checked into a beautiful hotel room in Nyack, New York — a room a lighting designer clearly had a hand in, bed floating off the carpet, everything warm and considered — and immediately saw people posting aurora photos from all over the world. Germany. The UK. West Palm Beach. I set my bag in the bathroom and went back out.
That’s where this one ends up. But let me get there properly.
The Catskills: Getting it Right on the Way Out
I found myself with a loose plan and a brochure I hadn’t known existed until the Thomas Cole house the day before. It’s called the Hudson River School Art Trail — a printed card with twenty stops mapped across the Hudson Valley and Catskills, places where Cole and Church and the other Hudson River School painters worked, the landscapes that inspired the canvases. It starts at the Thomas Cole site, crosses over to Olana, and fans out west into the mountains through places like Kaaterskill Falls, North South Lake, and a handful of overlooks that the painters documented and the terrain still holds.
I recommend this card to anyone coming to this part of New York in October. The website is hudsonriverschool.org and the whole thing is right there. I’ll link it below. It’s one of those resources that arrives a day too late to use properly and goes straight onto the list for next time.
I stopped at the North South Lake entrance and had a conversation with the ranger at the gate. She was honest — ten dollars to drive through and look at the lake, more worthwhile if you’re hiking. I had two hours to Nyack and no particular plan, so I asked where she’d go for a scenic drive. She told me to find 23A to Platt Cove Road down to Woodstock. Seasonal road. Wild, she said. Take it.
She was right.
Tannersville and the Road Down
Tannersville sits at the top of the escarpment and is known for its pastel storefronts, which give the main street a slightly improbable quality, like someone painted a New England village and ran out of white. I passed through it following the ranger’s directions, got a little turned around near the Ace Hardware, and found the road she meant by going past the gas station.
Platt Cove Road drops down the mountain in a series of curves that reward attention and punish speed. The color was running through the trees in layers — still green at the top of the ridges, gold and red through the middle, the valley below just starting to catch up. As a landscape photographer, I missed at least three shots I wanted and took several more I didn’t expect. That’s the Catskills. There’s also a waterfall system in this area — Plattekill Falls, Kaaterskill Falls, Bridal Veil Falls — that I will be returning for with more time and a proper plan and the right tripod.
Nyack
Nyack sits on the west bank of the Hudson just north of where it meets the Tappan Zee, twenty-five miles from Manhattan. It’s a Hudson Valley town that feels like a small city, with a real main street and a harbor and the kind of art-gallery-coffee-shop density that happens when New York City is commuting distance but you can still park without losing your mind. I checked in, photographed the room before I mucked it up, and was about to settle in when the notifications started coming.
The Northern Lights
I’d photographed the aurora once before, from Rialto Beach in Washington State back in May, and I knew what the energy of it was like — this particular alertness that arrives when the sky starts doing something it doesn’t do every night. My phone was lighting up with images from everywhere. I found a state park north of Nyack on the map, saw other cars already there, and set up the tripod.
A deer ran through the frame at some point. A park ranger showed up, looked at my screen, and then showed me his phone — pictures from 7:15 when the sky had gone entirely blood red. He let me photograph his screen. The cop car was in the foreground, which actually looked great.
A woman standing nearby was a costume designer. It was her first time seeing an aurora. There’s a particular thing that happens in moments like this — strangers in a dark field all pointing at the same sky, everyone generous with their screens, comparing angles and exposures and where they think the peak might be heading. My sister was posting from West Palm Beach. People I knew in Canada were sharing images. The whole country looking up at the same thing.
I moved to Nyack Harbor for a second location and got a few more frames. Then I went back to the hotel, looked at everything on the laptop, and went to sleep satisfied in a way that doesn’t have a better word for it.
Season Five
New England is done. Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New York. Fourteen days, give or take the one the hurricane added. First real fall color I’ve ever chased, and it delivered every time I slowed down enough to look for it.
The northern lights over Nyack were not on the script. They never are.
More of all this later.
