Catskill Calendar:
A Natural History of
'My Side of the Mountain'
LITERARY LANDSCAPES VOL.2

photographs by Carey Russell
Novel and illustrations by Jean Craighead George

– A work-in-progrss –
Running away from the city and exploring the Catskill region of central New York in the shadow of Sam Gribley's mountain.

I first read My Side of the Mountain in the third grade.  I was 9 years old and the year was 1980.  It was by all accounts, my first “chapter book.”  At that age, I cannot say for certain if the book’s themes already spoke to my nascent proclivities and curiosities as a naturalist, or indeed, if the book itself planted them there.  Either way, Jean Craighead George’s story of the purposeful and resourceful runaway, Sam Gribley, filled me with the desire to develop and test my own abilities to live and thrive in nature.  Survival skills based upon one’s own whits and raw know-how.  A set of skills which today we might call woodcraft, Scoutcraft, or bushcraft.  By this measure, I am little different a person today, than I was when I first imagined Sam’s tree house, falconry skills, and eye for edible plants.

In 1980, my only other affiliation with the city of New York was a faint recognition that it was also where one might find Sesame Street.  While the Catskills were a name pulled from out of time and space – so far away and unknown to me that it might as well have been a place carved from fantasy.  After many turns and home places in my adult life, I now find that I have in many regards become Sam Gribley.  I live in New York City and not only fantasize about escaping to the Catskills, but do so on a regular basis as a licensed guide and master naturalist – and now as a photographer.

If you too were inspired by My Side of the Mountain in your youth or still daydream about “getting away from it all,” I hope you will find a piece of yourself within these photographs as well.  For me, they function as a way of understanding myself and my adopted landscape with greater awareness, and as something of a scavenger hunt as I trace what might have been Sam’s trail through the city, wilderness trails, and communities of the Catskills.