The Forgotten Beauty of Kaaterskill Falls

This past Wednesday, May 2, our class took a field trip up and down the Hudson River making stops in Hudson to meet with the mayor as well as a tour of Newburgh both on foot and by boat. However, the highlight of the day for me was undoubtedly the hike up to Kaaterskill Falls. I knew the falls were beautiful from seeing them in a number of paintings done by artists from the Hudson River school of painting, most notably Kindred Spirits by Asher Durand. What those painting failed to capture was Kaaterskill Falls' sheer size and majesty. Visuals like paintings and photographs aren’t able to truly convey what a natural beauty, like Kaaterskill Falls, is like. These resources are limited to describing only one sense at a time, which isn’t fair to Kaaterskill falls, which bombards all your senses. The views of the raging water tumbling over the cliff combined with the sounds of that water plunging over the stream and the smell of the spring time air as the mist from the water washes over your skin was an unbelievable experience.
Through out the semester our class has spent much of its time discussing the environmental mishaps of the water. Terms such as ‘Super Fund’ and ‘PCB’s’ became entrenched as part of the class’s vocabulary. In all the talk about dredging and floaters many people have lost sight of the natural beauty of Kaaterskill Falls and other parts of the Hudson Valley region, which are still very much alive.