Sitting in my small living room this morning, I watched the faint golden glow of sunrise tinge the air along the mountain tops toward the north. How I do love life in the Catskills! There are mountains surrounding this river valley village providing ever changing views through the seasons, and I enjoy them all.
I had Dana Lamb’s 1965 book “Woodsmoke and Watercress” in hand, fishing with him all down the Beaver Kill, and dreaming with him of salmon camps and the glorious days and nights on the Maine lakes. I took note of a special mention of one particular Beaver Kill pool, one that I haunt for a number of days both early and late in our Catskill seasons. That pool appears in several stories, enough so that I wonder if it may be the salutations of the great writer’s ghost I hear on the winds.
In and after the Golden Age, Lamb fished not only the abundant public waters of the region’s most storied river, but the private club held waters above Roscoe. Though I followed his ghost to his beloved Pigpen Pool, I have never shared the privilege of angling those hallowed club waters of the upper river. It is a pleasure though to realize that I may have indeed sat upon the same rock on a downstream riverbank, staring across the wide currents at a rise on another closely watched rock on the opposite riverbank, and listened to his voice in the wind.
Bright Waters Catskill 