Kaaterskill Falls Archives | Carol L. Douglas

December 18, 2018

And that’s why we can’t have nice things

Fences protect fools from the view. Unfortunately, they also separate the rest of us from it.

Rocky, by Carol L. Douglas.

Last summer I painted a rocky outcropping at Fort Williams for Cape Elizabeth Land Trust’s Paint for Preservation. It is a long finger of granite pointing straight into the ocean, as dramatic as any point at Acadia, but only minutes from downtown Portland. And therein lies the problem. People were constantly crawling out to the end of the rock to take selfies. I watched a couple encourage their kids to do it. The drop is easily long enough to kill, and the surf below will take what the rocks don’t.

The foolishness of all these visitors was manifest in their footwear, which ranged from flip-flops to sandals. In two-and-a-half days I saw only one properly-shod climber. He had a safety mat and was practicing some kind of technical descent.

Kaaterskill Falls, by Carol L. Douglas

It reminded me of another popular tourist spot that’s also legendary among plein airpainters. That’s Kaaterskill Falls, a two-tier, 260-foot-tall waterfall in the Catskills. This was, in many ways, the heart of the Hudson River Schooland where plein air painting in America was born. When I first visited, it was easy enough to believe you were alone in the primeval wilderness. You approached the falls the same way as Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and other great painters did, up a steep, 2.6-mile trail with very little in the way of safety improvements.

The last time I painted there was in 2014, with Jamie Williams Grossman and other friends from New York Plein Air Painters. It was shocking to see how many people crawled around the lip of the falls and its access trail wearing terrible footwear. That summer two visitors fell to their deaths. Access was closed for 2015 while they made safety upgrades. When it reopened the following summer, there was another fatality.

The view of that rocky promontory is now obscured by a fence. (Photo courtesy of Karen Lybrand)

Inevitably, the state of Maine had to fence off the rocky point I painted before someone falls to their death.

Artist Karen Lybrand walks at Cape Elizabeth almost every day, and sent me photos of the new fence. “I’m sure the risk-takers will still find a way to take selfies on the cliff rocks,” she commented. Someone will feel the need to get past the safety restrictions, resulting in more safety restrictions.

You can see trail wear around the rocks. (Photo courtesy of Karen Lybrand.)

Maine was projected to have around 40 million visitors in 2018. They’re not necessarily from places where people understand the risks of the natural world, or are expected to take responsibility for their own safety. Their attitude toward wilderness will inevitably affect our access to wilderness.

I’ve done that painting from exactly the low angle I wanted; I couldn’t paint it again, but I don’t want to, either. And it’s perfectly paintable from over the fence; it just won’t have the same looming presence.

A 1920s postcard showing the Marginal Way approaching Perkins Cove in Ogunquit. That was before the path was so heavily traveled.

There are any number of coastal views that would be diminished with such a fence. They’re protected only by their isolation, and even that is slowly eroding as America’s population grows.

These are stunning views from places that are perfectly safe—until you stray from the path and do something stupid. But we can’t allow people to reap the consequences of their bad decisions in our litigious society, so they will be fenced off one by one.

October 28, 2016

Actually, it’s not just the light

“Bloomfield Farm,” by Carol L. Douglas. The soft rolling hills, hazy light and deep, gravelly soil are typical of the western part of New York.

This has been a week of retrenchment, the backroom work that has to happen so that one can go back to the rough-and-tumble brush duel. Among other things, I met with a gallery owner. We talked about the differences between my New York and Maine paintings. Earlier this week I said it was the light, but it’s also the land.

I have been thinking about the spodosols that underlie the boggy boreal forest here. These are found in Maine, eastern Canada, Scotland, and Scandinavia, and they’re partly why these North Atlantic regions tend to have a similar feel. They provide romance and color for artists and an uphill battle for farmers.

"Mountain Lake, Spring," by Carol L. Douglas. In some ways the Adirondacks can stand in for Maine because they have the same soil type.

“Mountain Lake, Spring,” by Carol L. Douglas. In some ways the Adirondacks can double for Maine because they have the same soil type.

Spodosols are also found in the Adirondacks, which may explain why Winslow Homer had such an affinity for both places. I watched a friend garden in the lower Adirondacks for a few years. While he was able to amend the shallow soil, the short growing season ultimately did him in.

“Catskills Farm,” pastel, by Carol L. Douglas.

My working life has been mostly spent in upstate, central and western New York. There, the soil is very deep and well drained, often running to clay. It is also essentially basic, meaning there are no broadleaf evergreens in the forest understory. If untended, it quickly reverts to forest, which tends strongly to maples, ashes, tulip trees and other hardwoods.

“Kaaterskill Falls,” by Carol L. Douglas. This is the shale of Southern Tier and Catskill Mountains.

It can be extremely stony from glaciation, but it is never rocky in the way of Maine. The exception is where rivers cut gorges through its bedrock limestone and shale. Western New York is oddly flat compared to the rest of the Northeast. The hills are low, worn, humpy things, remnants of glacial formations that are much flashier in other parts of the continent. That is why people think of it as Midwestern, rather than Mid-Atlantic.

“Corn Hill Methodist Church,” by Carol L. Douglas. This ruin is of Medina Sandstone, which is a cool red color.

Medina sandstone, which underlies the Lake Plains, is reddish in color. That gives its dirt a cool red undertone. The color is echoed in the Victorian Gothic architecture of its cities and towns. A great percentage of the land is under production, since this is very fine farming soil, both for truck farming and for grapes.

“Middle Falls of the Genesee River,” oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas.

A landscape painter is in some ways a journalist. We notice and communicate facts about our world. We frequently tell people that painting is in the seeing, not the paint application. Nowhere does that play out more than in plein air work. The more observant we are, the more we tell the story of the place.

December 2, 2014

A change is as good as a rest

Kaaterskill Falls, 8X10, unframed, by Carol L. Douglas. Kaaterskill Falls is one of America’s oldest tourist attractions.

Yesterday I was moaning with a friend about how a busy holiday leaves us needing a vacation. She said, “I can’t remember the last vacation I took.”

That’s something I hear frequently. It got me wondering about the history of the vacation. Luckily, while we may not get much time off, we can find almost anything online, and I went to Cindy Aron’s Working At Play: A History of Vacations in the United States for a précis.

The first tabernacle at Ocean Grove, NJ, in 1876, from Harper’s Monthly.

Of course the idea of vacationing arose with the elite: those wealthy people who could afford to get out of the steaming city in the summer and head to their rural estates or the shore. That started as a way of avoiding disease, just as the Grand Tour was meant as an educational capstone.

It wasn’t until the Civil War that vacationing became more commonly available. And as with so many things in 19^th century America, the vacation was tied up with religious reform.

Yellowstone was the world’s first national park. This poster is from 1938.

On the one hand there were secular resorts like Saratoga Springs, NY, Hot Springs, VA, and Newport, RI. These catered to money, with a whiff of dissolution and activities like billiards, bowling, gambling, dances, and concerts. On the other hand, there were the improving resorts, like Chautauqua, NY (and all the little chautauquas it spawned) or Ocean Grove, NJ.

Kaaterskill Creek, 8X10, unframed, by Carol L. Douglas.

Even as transportation improved and religious revival died down, the middle class tended to prefer improvement to frivolity, favoring camping, touring, and the National Parks over fashionable resorts. While there have always been amusement parks like Coney Island to attract middle-class visitors, it wasn’t until the opening of Disneyland in 1955 that the modern theme park was born.

Want an improving vacation? I will be teaching in Acadia National Park next August. Read all about it here, or download a brochure here.

June 5, 2014

Untouched Eden

Rocks at Kaaterskill Falls, 10X8, oil, by little ol’ me.

I am going to leave it to my friends to argue about whether Kaaterskill Falls—at 260 feet—is the highest waterfall in New York, but it’s certainly a contender. And no busloads of tourists are going to roar by and disgorge occupants for 15-minutes visits, either, since you have to bushwack up the side of a mountain to get to the cascade’s base.

The trail is typical for New York parks. Not developed, but safe enough.

Nevertheless, it’s a pilgrimage site for anyone interested in the Hudson River painters, for it is an iconic image for them, defining wilderness to the romantic 19th century mind. And not just painters got in on the act. William Cullen Bryant wrote an ode to the waterfall that ends in youthful death.

MIDST greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
All summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn tide…

Not the smartest footwear.

The last time I hiked in sports sandals (on the T Lake Trail in Piseco, NY) I sprained my ankle, so I was loathe to climb without proper footwear. Jamie Williams Grossman loaned me a hiking pole, however, and I gingerly set out after my fellow painters.

Kaaterskill Falls, 10X8, oil, by little ol’ me.

My pack is still too heavy, but the climb itself proved to be no problem. I made two sketches before it was time to leave. There are at least a hundred more there, awaiting a return visit.

There are still a few openings in my 2014 workshop in Belfast, ME. Information is available here.