Catskills, defined and experienced
Paradise Lost. How else can you describe and confront the impacts on two of America’s best cities, where peace and beauty and sun and arts defined the way of life. Until one day it was changed. St Pete’s - sure, carried some risk being a beach town, but Asheville, just minding its own business far away from anything remotely seen as a hurricane threat. It’s like Woodstock NY just wiped out one day, with its history soaked, broken, mudded, and lost. Not good. Washington Post now has an app or something where you can plug in your locale and get a risk evaluation of climate change. Turns out, this whole region is on the safer side of things. But still, if a storm hangs over our heads and it rains 22 inches in 3 days, anything goes.
Getting a lot of hiking and walking done in the brisk autumnal days. Trails abound all around my daily travels be it near my home in Milford PA surrounded by the Delaware National Water gap and trails within, where my offices are near the Bashakill protected nature swamp, and all around my travels to Narrowsburg, North Branch, Olivebridge, Kerhonkson and beyond. 2024, post shoulder heal up, has been an active year in terms of biking, hiking, walking, and home gym. Bodes well for this aging body. Today a 4 mile uphill climb at Vernoy Falls on the south side of the Catskill Park proper.
In case you didn't know, the Catskills are two parts - one is a geographical region defined the metes and bounds of a surveyor, the other is a Catskill state of mind which is much larger than its physical and proper boundaries. Few people would argue too hard that Callicoon, or Saugerties, or Narrowsburg or Stone Ridge aren't in the 'Catskills', but according to the map, they aren't. The 'Catskills' is synonymous with 'Upstate', and both sort of mean north of the city but not too north.
My new shades.
Got an interesting year shaping up for next year. So funny how the fear of ‘never selling another house’ or ‘that might be my last sale’ never really leaves me even after 24 years of doing this. Fear is good. Fear is better than over-confidence. Over-confidence breeds poor decision-making like buying land that is priced too high and thinking the sales price will justify it. Lot’s of evidence of that not working out for people previously and now again. Building homes is hard, so when the profit is thin at the end, you can see why newbies don’t want to do it again, in terms of building for sale. We got some neat projects on the horizon, and the team to handle it. For the first time in years it won’t be a situation where we are just holding on for dear life as our impossible workload swirls around us.
Just finising this one up with precision and care.
Closed on my new piece of land in Kerhonkson where hopefully we can build 5 homes.
Lucas is now driving, and is getting a lot better day by day.
Football season in high gear. Not a great year for Delaware Valley which is unusual for that team.
