From Reynolds Lane to the Old Swimming Hole

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Just yesterday morning, I woke up before dawn -- as usual these days -- and after chunking wood into the stove, I went for a walk up Reynolds Lane.  A brief half hour, I thought.  Up to the mill and back.

But then the dawn looked so pretty -- light was blooming up over the shoulder of Mt. Guardian, which rises steeply from the Sawkill gorge across the meadow -- that I kept going up Hutchin Hill Road past the fascinatingly tacky giant blue globe wrapped up with a golden ribbon on the left and then past the mill on the right and on up a hundred yards of hill before veering off on the old dirt logging road to the right and on into the woods, thinking I might get down to the old swimming hole on the Sawkill where Aly Lent and the Steinlauf girls used to cook s'mores on a hot rock that summer when Yehudi Wyner, now a famous composer, was living in the mill with his wife Nancy, whose career as a coloratura soprano was just beginning to develop.

Yehudi Wyner became one of the best  known and well-respected  American composers.  I am pleased  to admit that the last concert I heard of his music -- at Brandeis about ten years ago -- really sounded nothing like two cats yowling, although it was not nearly so sweet as one of the Mozart operas I first heard played under his direction  back in the Sixties whenYehudi was the musical director at The Turnau Opera, a two piano summer stock opera company in Byrdcliffe.  My first  girlfriend Aly was one of the ushers, so I watched a lot of opera that summer.  Cosi  Fan Tutti was my favorite opera back then, though these days I prefer The Magic Flute.

And of course Aly and I went swimming at the mill as often as possible, though we preferred swimming a bit upstream, where the Sawkill makes a right angle bend before flowing down past the mill.  There is a road on the right -- a dirt track, really -- branching off from the Hutchin Hill Road about halfway up the first hill.  It's posted -- I think more or less improperly -- but you should check with the landowner even though the Sawkill is navigable water and riparian access could possibly be permitted under New York State law.

There was a solid glacier of ice covering the steep path we used to climb down to swim at the bend in the river, so I just kept going on into the woods.  The road is relatively level and there wasn't much snow cover, though there were a lot of trees tumbled across the first stretch, as well as one little  rivulet to cross.  Fortunately, the rivulet was frozen solid.  I walked this route with Kitty Montgomery several months ago.

So you keep on in there a good way -- while the Hutchin Hill Road climbs very steeply on the left -- not far, really, no more than a quarter of a mile, and at last you come to a wonderful old house site on a level expanse that maybe used to be a meadow, tucked away in a little bowl in the hills with the Sawkill chuckling where it  makes the first of three right angle bends coming out of Keefe Hollow.

This is about as far away from people as you can get without trekking  into the mountains.  Not a house in sight.  A lovely spot for contemplation.  There were fairly fresh (day old) tracks of a few other walkers and a dog,  but I met no people. The Sawkill was frozen over pretty solid.

This gorgeous morning walk took an hour and ten minutes (counting the return) from the junction of Reynolds Lane and Rt. 212; there are no really steep hills to pull and it's a pretty good early morning  ramble  when you're thinking of an old friend, sadly far away,  who's too ill to write back much these days.