In Praise of an Adoptive Land

First impressions are hard to shake. We first moved to upstate New York in late March. It was grey and rainy and the landscape was brown and muddy, recovering slowly from the battering of a harsh winter. The rolling green hills seemed monotonous and the sky, when it was clear, was an icy blue color that left me, well, cold.

But Twenty years on, this once foreign landscape has become my own. A short drive from the city, these hills offer a welcome respite from the stresses of daily life and work. I learned to appreciate the small ramshackle family farms dotting the countryside with their ancient oversized wooden barns. They stand there , an anachronism in a time when most farm produce comes from hyper-industrialized megafarms, as a testament to the the stubborn, heroic toil of the last family farmers. Moreover, the hills are not a monotonous as they appear at first glance. Hidden among the green hills and farmlands, are hundreds of glens and gorges cut deep into the layered shale rock. Clear, icy-cold streams run through them often interrupted by waterfalls. There is nothing quite like walking upstream in a shady glen in the middle of a hot summer day, the cold water, cascading over layers of shale, cooling your feet. And even though you have walked that same glen a dozen times before, the sight of the waterfall around the bend at end of your hike never fails to surprise and excite you.

The streams empty into lakes etched into the valleys by ancient glaciers. Several of these lakes, long and narrow, sit in parallel, pointing North in adjacent valleys. Viewed from high above they look like a collection of elongated fingers, thus the name, the Fingerlakes. The dark waters of these narrow lakes, hint at their significant depths, deep enough, some say, to easily navigate and full-sized submarine. If the color of the water, especially on an overcast day, can appear foreboding, the view of the lakes from the surrounding hills is always majestic.

Perhaps the area's best natural asset, though, are the two seasons when nature explodes in a fury of color, ornamenting the hills, glens, streams and lakes with an infinite palette of colors.

The glorious early Springs and Falls of upstate New York are God's reward for having endured yet another seemingly endless and bitterly cold winter. Not that winter does not offer its own particular charms, but after five months of a grey and white world, cabin fever sets in and even the hardiest among us crave the warmth of the sun.

The Fall foliage colors this year were particularly intense. The hills, seemingly overnight, turned into a kaleidoscope of colors with fiery reds and yellows and all shades of browns. Side lit by the late afternoon sun, the trees looked like they were ablaze. It is a feast for the eyes and the senses as the cool autumn breeze carried in it the unmistakable smell of Fall.

Then, just as suddenly, the incandescent light in the leaves faded and the floated to the ground, rust colored. The once flamboyant trees were now bare. Winter is around the corner; in fact, scattered among the raindrops today, were the first few flecks of snow.