| Watershed Post

This Weekend: Celebrate National Trails Day

For 21 years, the first Saturday in June has been reserved for appreciating the nation’s mountain trails and greenery. This Saturday, June 7, Catskill area parks will observe the 22nd annual National Trails Day by hosting outdoor celebrations — welcoming residents and visitors to participate in hikes, runs and restoration projects, as well as the opening of several brand-new trails.

Below: Volunteers install a sign on the new Palmer Hill Trail in Andes. Photo by Ann Roberti.

Palmer Hill Trail opening, Andes, Delaware County

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Deer charges through Kingston coffee shop

Above: A still of the doe mid-crash, from the security camera footage of at Hudson Coffee Traders. Via Times Herald Record's Youtube channel.

Taking a break from the daily grind, a small doe crashed through the glass front door of Hudson Coffee Traders, a popular coffee shop in uptown Kingston, early Tuesday morning. Ariel Zangla at the Daily Freeman broke the story.

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Hudson Coffee Traders

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Kingston

Head injury can't stop Woodstock artist Lenny Kislin

After falling and hitting his head on the ice in February, Woodstock artist Lenny Kislin has recently returned to his passion: making sculptures from primitive early American antiques.

Last week, despite the fog of anti-seizure medication, Kislin started making sculptures again. This Saturday, he'll make an in-person appearance at a new gallery show featuring his sculptures alongside the photography of Catherine Sebastian in Roxbury on Saturday.

Left: "Weather-Beaten, Angry And Disillusioned, Blitzen Flies No More," by Lenny Kislin.

Kislin is a longtime fixture on the Woodstock art scene. On February 9, he slipped on the ice and hit his head outside of his Woodstock home. Kislin was on his way to a gallery opening and didn't immediately notice that he was injured, until he found himself behind the wheel in the middle of an intersection with no idea where he was.

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This weekend: Hunter hosts 10th annual Mountain Jam

The tenth annual Mountain Jam Music Festival, produced by Radio Woodstock WDST and hosted by Hunter Mountain, kicks off on Thursday, June 5 and continues through Sunday, June 8 featuring a line-up of 40 musical acts across three stages.

Jimmy Buff, program director at Radio Woodstock WDST, said booking acts for the Mountain Jam Music Festival is always a bit of a “juggling act.” It takes the perfect storm of luck, album releases and tour schedules to assemble the diverse line-up of new and old favorites.

“Sure, you’ve got your wish list every year,” Buff said. “But schedules have to match up with the dates. Work on this year’s Mountain Jam began when last year’s finished.”

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Between meals: Catskills-style coffee breaks

Residents of the Catskills are often people who thrive on privacy and peace, but it’s also important that the commons contain ample opportunities to get off of the farm and out of the woods to socialize. Happily, we’re blessed with a fine selection of coffee shops and casual cafés that showcase coffee curation and offer sweet and savory snacks.

Bread Alone Bakery (breadalone.com, multiple locations) has been doing the bakery-café thing for decades, and has two Catskills shops: the main headquarters on Route 28 in Boiceville, and a satellite café in Woodstock. Flour milled to spec, locally sourced fresh dairy and wood-fired ovens are some of the ingredients in its well-loved recipes.

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Breaking ground: New trails in the Catskills

Above: The newly-restored Rosendale Trestle over the Rondout Creek, reopened in 2013 as a pedestrian walkway on the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail. Photo by John Fischer Photography (noroadunturned.com).

To celebrate National Trails Day, which is this Saturday, June 7, we're posting our article about new trails from our brand-new 2014 Catskills Outdoor Guide, which hit the streets on Memorial Day weekend. There are more new Catskills trails than we cover here -- stay tuned for more coverage about Catskills trail events later this week.

The saying “as old as the hills” is especially apt in the Catskills, a mountain range that stood as a high plateau more than 100 million years before the Rockies began to rise in the West. But across the time-worn mountains, new pathways are always springing up.

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National Trails Day

New York New Jersey Trail Conference

Catskills Trails

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Man dies trying to free his stuck car in Sullivan County

A 61-year-old Long Island man died in the Sullivan County town of Fremont on Saturday, May 24 when his own car rolled over him in a freak accident, according to a New York State Police press release.

Richard Monticciolo of Lynbrook was on his way to visit a friend on Crowley Road when he overshot the driveway he was looking for, police wrote.

When Monticciolo pulled his 2013 Cadillac into the next driveway and attempted to turn around, the car got stuck.

According to the police, Monticciolo got out of the car and was pushing it from behind in an attempt to free it when it rolled backwards and pinned him underneath.

Nearby construction workers rushed to Monticciolo and freed him, but he was badly injured. According to the press release, he "succumbed to traumatic injuries" after being transported to the Catskill Regional Medical Center.

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New York State Police

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Brushland Eating House opens in Bovina

Sohail Zandi’s friends think he’s crazy. He could have stayed in the New York City restaurant world, where he's worked successfully for a decade. Instead, in January, he left Brooklyn, bought an old building on Bovina’s Main Street and opened a restaurant in the boondocks of Delaware County.

His friends aren’t the only ones.

“A lot of my customers think I’m crazy, too. They come in and they say ‘This will never work,’” Zandi said in his dining room one night last week. “But then I point out that they are sitting here eating.”

Below: Sohail Zandi opened Brushland Eating House with lots of support from girlfriend Sara Elbert. Photo courtesy of Brushland Eating House.

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Brushland Eating House

This weekend: Rails to the Catskills premiere

Forgotten history is what interests filmmaker Tobe Carey most. His latest film, the documentary Rails to the Catskills, is an attempt to encapsulate the history of the railroad lines that abounded in the Catskills area for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"I had been asked for years to make a film about the railroads," Carey said. “Many people don’t have a sense of the vibrant railroad industry.”

The 95-minute film, which will premiere on Sunday, June 1 at 4 p.m. at the Mountain Cinema, Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter, highlights the cultural and economic impact the railroads had on the area.

According to Carey, the film tells the story of the railroads in chronological order — beginning with its predecessor, the Delaware and Hudson Canal — and its original intent to “connect waterways.”

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catskill mountain railroad

Tobe Carey

Hunter

Railroads

New York City Department of Environmental Protection

Catskill Mountain Rail Trail

Delaware and Ulster railroad

Fresh: Goods Luncheonette

After five years as executive chef at Full Moon Resort and a career in traditional restaurants before that, Adam Kowalsky knew he wanted to do something different when he finally opened his own place. Living in West Hurley and raising three kids, the Chinese food and pizza options did not impress him.

“I wanted to come up with scratch-made fast food, where a family could come in, eat a nice healthy lunch, and move on,” he said.

Last week, Kowalsky and co-owner and partner Zach Johnan, who also lives in West Hurley, opened Goods Luncheonette in Boiceville, where everything on the small menu costs less than $10 and can be prepared in less than 10 minutes.