We came to the Beaverkill on weekends and summers until my father had a health problem in 1945. He was working late hours and traveling a lot for Raymond Loewy, a design firm in New York City, and had a physical collapse. Upon his recovery and because of some wonderful coincidences, he and my mother decided to make our camp in the Beaverkill our permanent home. This was quite a radical decision for the time, when the city was considered the “land of opportunity.” People asked my father why would he want to bury himself way out in the sticks – and whatever would you do there?

My mother’s parents, Frank and Josephine Keener, owned the Antrim Lodge, a small hotel in nearby Roscoe and this gave my father a place to stay during the renovation of our camp into a home.

He took a position with the New York City Board of Water Supply to design the roadways that went around the Pepacton Reservoir which was being built to serve New York City. 1947 was the year that my father began this new adventure and it was not until August of 1948 that we were able to call it home.

I began the first grade with Miss Pomeroy at Roscoe Central School in September of 1948. My sister Barbara, called “Bonnie”, stayed at home with our mother.

Bonnie was four years younger than I. Bridget Ann called “Bridie”, our younger sister, didn’t arrive until one late night in September 1954. She is twelve years younger than I, and consequently has different stories to tell of the 1960s Beaverkill life. Our little family of Benedicts in the late 1940s consisted of Tom and Dorothy, Bonnie and Susie (me), and my father’s Aunt Hannah, in her late seventies, an accomplished artist, and on weekends, my father’s sister Barbara who would join us as often as she could.

There was no electricity until 1950. We lived with the simple but charming light of oil and kerosene lamps, and an ever-faithful Delco generator to run our appliances. We did have a telephone that was there from the time our place was a camp. There was never a television until our friend Russ Hodge erected a cable tower for everyone to connect to in the late 1960s.

The dirt road in front of our house had grass growing down its middle and was often impassable because of landslides that blocked the road. Even with the help of our Willys Jeep we were sometimes marooned for days at a time. Until the trees and mud were cleared away, we were virtually shut off from the outer world. We loved to have these reprieves from school, and we always found wonderful things to do at home or in the woodlands. The river was forbidden to us when it was flooding season.

Our Delco system was sometimes a great mystery to my father and he often had to rely on the expert mechanical advice of Art Parrish, who lived about a mile or so below Hodge’s barn. Art and his wife Goldie did odd jobs for us, fixing things and doing occasional household work.

When we lived in Westchester County, Art and Goldie would always open up our camp and light a fire in the fireplace to make a warm welcome for us after the long drive. They were definitely a fascination to Bonnie and me. We followed them everywhere they went when they were at our place. It was mainly because of their peculiar eccentricities that we were so enthralled, especially with Art who was a wizard with mechanical things but who never, ever bathed. According to Goldie, he would go down to the river on a warm day in July and have a yearly, ceremonial wash. He had a beautiful brown patina to his skin and a distinctive odor of crankcase oil and kerosene. I can remember little three year old Bonnie just a few steps behind him with her hands clasped behind her back, trying to walk a loping walk just as he did.

It was still possible to farm with horses and oxen in those early days and farmers could survive with just a few milking cows, no tractor and very few luxuries. Our friends Carl and Pauline Gray and their two daughters lived up at the head of Pelnor Hollow when we came to our camp in the early days. We have some family movies of Carl working his farm with a team that was made up of an ox and a bull. The bull was kept in line with a chain-type whip, and the team seemed to behave quite well.

The Grays moved to Meridale, near Delhi, in the 1950s where they farmed with modern machinery. I was always glad to have experienced their simple but fine life. We were able to reconnect with them when my husband and our children moved to Cherry Valley in 1970.

Our move to the Beaverkill was in many ways a dream-come-true for my father who had so many boyhood memories and acquaintances from the days when his mother and father and their family came to fish and hunt at the camp.

He told us that when he was about twelve years old he came to spend Christmas vacation with his friend Jim Sprague who met his train in Roscoe in the middle of a blizzard with a horse-drawn sleigh, and they set off for a wild ride to the trout club that was just up the river from our place where the Spragues were then caretakers. This property was later owned by James Marble and still later by The Clear Lake Corporation.

He loved this rugged life of living independently and always fancied he would like to try it when he was an adult. He admired farming and although he did always have a beautiful and bountiful vegetable garden of great renown, his attempts at animal farming were less than successful. Chicken farming and egg selling were slightly successful, but later attempts at beef cattle raising were disastrous, which would be for another story at another time. So he returned to his major source of income – design and architecture – which were much more lucrative.

Our mother had lived on Staten Island as a young child and later moved to Roscoe when her parents the Keeners inherited the proprietorship of the Central House which then became the Antrim Lodge, the well known fishermen’s watering hole and place of good food and comfortable lodging. When she finished high school, Mother returned to Staten Island to live with her cousin Margaret and her family while she went to secretarial school and later worked until she married my father. The newlyweds lived for a few years in Crestwood near the city until they moved to the Beaverkill.

In those early days of our life in and near Roscoe, the Keeners were a constant for us. We would often walk from the school to the Antrim and make ourselves ice cream sodas under the careful eye of our grandmother or grandfather, spilling and slurping as we bantered with our cousins the Flemings, and later the Burys. My mother was happy to be near her sisters and parents, especially because I don’t believe she was totally content with leaving the city life behind. Although she loved the beauty of the natural world, I think it bewildered her a bit and perhaps intimidated her. She was a ‘people’ person and loved to entertain and did so with grace and style. I can scarcely remember a time when the outdoors was enticing to her except for an occasional sun bath or lawn party. Mother was always an admirer of my father’s garden and its produce and did an admirable job of putting food by, and cooking wonderful dinners, but she had a powerful fear of snakes that I believe kept her from exploring the outside.

There was always the river. Moving, changing, flooding and flowing, it shaped our lives. Sometimes the Beaverkill was quiet and warm on the days that were sunny, and on stormy days it was cold and cruel. On most evenings my father would take us for walks up or down the river road studying the mood of the river and its fish and what flies were hatching. We learned so much from Father’s wealth of knowledge of everything, from the natural world, to politics, and the aesthetics of art and design, music and much more. We played on the ferny banks of the river while he fished our lower pool for the beautiful trout with their silvery, spotted backs. We built little secret forts and hunted for dogtooth violets (trout lilies) and so many other splendid wild flowers hidden in the grassy grove below our house. We rode our bikes everywhere exploring and playing in the brooks and streams.

When we were older we swam under the covered bridge at the Beaverkill Campsite or in the bridge pool at Craigie Clair. We built dams in front of our house to try to make our own deep swimming hole or we teetered across Mr. Marble’s swinging suspension footbridge which spanned the river about a quarter of a mile from our house. Sometimes I even sat on the bridge in the middle span reading a book and watching the trout swimming way beneath me in the clear waters that rolled endlessly over the multicolored stones. We would often cross that bridge with my Aunt Barbara on our way to walk the steep path to Clear Lake where we spent many of our summer days.

It was on the halcyon, laurel-laden shores of the lake that we dreamed and lolled our endless summers away. It was there that we were taught to swim by my father, Aunt Barbara and by our dear friend Mrs. Foote who instructed us from mid-lake while she effortlessly kept herself afloat holding an elegant parasol, never raising so much as one ripple. I couldn’t figure out how she managed to do that, and I would watch her intently, trying to catch her splashing about, but always she was there undisturbed.

She enchanted me the very first moment I saw her. Her clothes were most often diaphanous and flowing, always vintage, or from a forgotten era, and she moved with an elegant grace that was totally bewitching to me. When I first became her friend, her hair was already a shock of white and her complexion until she was in her eighties was flawless and soft pink in color. She was like a beautiful fairy godmother in those days. Always a bit provocative and insightful, she knew how to stimulate a conversation and never failed to do so.

Jessie Foote was a special guide and teacher for me as a child and later as an adult. She had a home on a hillside above the Beaverkill near Clear Lake. My sister Bonnie and I played on the lawns of her magical home, an old Christian monastery converted to a residence. It was from this amazing woman that I learned nature and forest lore of plants, flowers, animals, as well as poetry and literature. We discussed philosophy and ideas on her grand verandah where the beautiful columbine grew all around. We used to perform plays in her great-room by the fireplace, and ballet on her lawn under the lilacs and amidst the “fairy handkerchiefs” (dewy spider webs in the grasses). She gave us little piano lessons when we visited, in the charming billiard room.

My sister and I spent the night at her place once. I remember that she came to pick us up one afternoon in her 1929 LaSalle convertible with a rumble seat. She ceremoniously bundled us into the rumble seat with goggles and scarves and blankets, and we wound our way along the banks of the Beaverkill to her beautiful home to spend the weekend. We had a quiet little supper that evening, and told stories and tales. We probably asked question upon question until she trundled us off to our beds. Of course one of the things that made an indelible impression on our fertile minds was the great toilet that flushed when you pulled the chain on the waterbox way above us on the wall. I think we must have flushed and flushed until she had to ask us to stop. Sleeping deeply and peacefully, once our chattering stopped, we awoke in the early morning and rose to a soft summer mist which covered the entire place and eventually gave way to a warm sun-filled day.

After eating sumptuously of toast and marmalade by the fire that morning, we went down the path to the lake. It took us quite awhile to reach the lake because we found so many wild flowers and treasures along the way. We swam for hours in the cool green waters, tried to catch sunfish, and then filled our bathing caps with the luscious blueberries that grew bountifully by the side of the lake. It was with reluctance and contentment that we returned to our home. We never forgot any of those special moments, ever. Bonnie and I still talk about little details of that experience as though it were only a few summers ago.

The valley was filled with so many people who were strong individuals, or who left lasting impressions on us. The names of these people are often still on the lips of those of us who love the Beaverkill and its history.

Dundas Castle, now the Prince Hall Foundation, was a strange mysterious place to us. It was a forgotten and unfinished castle that had only briefly, if at all, been inhabited by its builder and then abandoned for many years until it was finally purchased by the Prince Hall Masons who wanted to use the vast grounds for recreation and for a fresh-air summer camp for city children.

On the land were two farm houses, barns, and a caretaker’s home. My family became good friends with the foundation’s first caretakers, Elwood and Edith Medley. They always let us explore the castle and play as long as we wanted, as long as we returned to their house in the afternoon for cookies and tea. We would ride our bikes a mile down the river road to their house, get a note of permission, and then hurry up the hill to play our medieval fantasies in the beautiful but lonely castle. There were turrets and vaulted ceilings and lovely windows that let in a splendid light; it was glorious to explore. The doors were open and we could just let ourselves in and play for hours.

A large green courtyard that was totally overgrown always sparked my fancy as to how it would have looked if someone had landscaped it with flowers and trees. Instead it emanated loneliness and sadness. It was as if the castle had some kind of a spell cast upon it, almost like that of fairy tales – but we couldn’t discover where the evil witch was living.

We were never afraid there, just saddened sometimes that the work had never been finished. I always left with my imagination spinning wildly. Wondering what had happened to the dream of Mr. Dundas and why had it ended. Anyway, it certainly was to us like a big piece of scenery just plunked down on a bend in the river, and every time we passed it on our way home or to town, it made us a little bit dreamy.

I had one other playmate beside my sister in those early years, and that was the now renowned Emory Campbell, who came to live on the Beaverkill with his mother, who married Babe Hardenbergh. Emory, who was a fascinating friend, and a few years older than I, knew about all sorts of things from animal lore and fishing tricks, to fixing motors and how to solve mathematical problems. He taught me a great deal and was a good companion.

He showed me how to tickle a fish one day when we were mucking around in the binnacle (a backwater of the river), just about a quarter of a mile below our house. On hot days the fish would try to stay cool under rocks and if you were quick enough you could reach in and tickle the fish’s belly. This would have the amazing effect of hypnotizing the fish. He would turn belly-up, and you could catch him by hand. And, we did. He was a beautiful trout almost 12 inches long. I was so proud. Emory generously gave him to me to take home to cook for supper. I cleaned him carefully as I had learned to do from my father, and put him in the refrigerator.

When my father came home, I led him to the kitchen to show him my prize and to tell my fish story. To my dismay he was NOT amused and gave me a lecture on sportsmanship and fishing with the knowledge and skill of using flies and only flies. I was stunned and I still think it was a pretty good sport to catch a fish with your bare hands. I was never really thrilled with the hooks and the lines getting caught on everything. I just liked eating trout and still do whenever I get the chance.

Often after dinner on winter evenings, we read together from all types of books. Some of them were favorites of our parents, and others were suggested by family and friends. And we had wild tournaments of cards and board games, viciously trying to best each other at Scrabble or Canasta or some other game. Later when Ed Hamerstrom began to play Scrabble, none of us were able to beat him.

On warmer evenings we usually sat on our front porch and listened to the crickets, or in spring, the “peepers”. We would talk over the day’s events, or not talk at all; we would just listen to what our city friends called the “impressive quiet”. We were often joined by family or friends such as Lucy Ackerly, Newman Wagner, the Whitehills, the Hamerstroms, the Hodges, the Osborns, the Hartwells, the Lambs, Bill Naden, and so many others. Laughing and digesting my mother’s excellent culinary efforts, we watched the weather move in or move out and listened to music or sang songs. Our mother had a very good voice and could sing all the songs of the ’30s and ’40s. She always sang to us and when my husband Peter came on the scene in the ’60s, he accompanied her on the piano, so that she could really live out her fantasy of being a “torch” singer. She still sang in her eighties.

We talked politics sometimes, spoke of world events, and local happenings, but mostly it was about the river and its people, and the nature that embraced us all. We rhapsodized about the fall colors and the spring flowers and whether the fish were biting or if the snow was soon coming.

We had a very fine life in the Beaverkill Valley, not without hardships and even some tragedies, but somehow more bearable whatever came our way, because of dear friends and precious surroundings. The river and the hills were ever-present to lift us from ourselves into the understanding of time and timelessness. Whenever I have had occasion to return to the valley, I am always comforted by the thought that although I may never again live there, it is truly my homeland and always will be.