Catskills and Hudson Valley Essays

Henry James described John Burroughs as a “more humorous, more available, and more sociable Thoreau.” Burroughs's close friend and mentor Walt Whitman called him an “Audubon of prose.” Throughout his long writing career, the Catskills and Hudson Valley native infused his writing with images of nature as seen and experienced within his own home region. “Nature comes home to one most when he is at home,” he wrote, “the stranger and traveler finds her a stranger and traveler also. One's own landscape comes in time to be a sort of outlying part of himself; he has sowed himself broadcast upon it, and it reflects his own moods and feelings; he is sensitive to the verge of the horizon: cut those trees, and he bleeds; mar those hills, and he suffers.” With this poetic sensibility and emphasis on the local, Burroughs created a unique literature of nature – one aptly represented by the essays here-in.CONTENTSIntroduction. A Sharp Lookout. The Falling Leaves. A Snow Storm. Wild Life in Winter. Winter Neighbors. April. A Young Marsh Hawk. Strawberries. Speckled Trout. Birch Browsings. Notes by the Way. The Heart of the Southern Catskills.