CITY DESK: The Upper Upper West Side.(the Catskill Mountains of New York)

One of the goals of hopeful New Yorkers is to have a place outside New York, to escape periodically the crush and fret. But can they ever escape other New Yorkers?

Our place is two hours from the city, in a valley on the flank of the Catskills. This August the town of Rochester (not the city), where our house is located, celebrated its tricentennial. The party began with a perfect parade, only 25 minutes long. The line of march included a town official in colonial costume, riding a golf cart; the trucks of three local fire departments; a snowplow from the highway department; the Pop Warner football team and its cheerleaders; the VFW; an active-duty soldier in this FW, recently home from Iraq (big cheers for him); assorted old cars; somebody's Belgian draft horses; somebody else's llamas; trucks from three big local farms. One of these bore a sign with a proud boast: "Saunderskill Farm, Est. 1680 / Salutes Rochester, Est. 1703." Even a weekender deals with many of these people regularly. Those born and raised in the valley, of course, have been dealing with them, in some cases, since the 17th century.

The valley sleeps like Rip Van Winkle, yet it is only two hours from Metropolis. How is it still different? There is no place to go for coffee. There are two diners where coffee can be gotten, but people go there (early) to eat. You have more luck finding maple syrup or heirloom tomatoes. The whole concept of coffee as an off-hours jolt is out of place, since all hours are given to work or rest. The many weapons in the valley are perfectly legal, and fired at targets or creatures. Soon enough the bow hunters and their camouflage will appear, followed by the rifle hunters and their anti-camouflage of orange vests. No one walks. A few kids ride bicycles or ATVs; everyone else drives cars, or trucks filled with lumber, tree limbs, or bulky unfamiliar machinery. Peg Leg Bates, a one-legged tap dancer, had a resort up in the hills that drew a black clientele, yet almost no black people live here. There are plenty of Mexicans, though, harvesting all those tomatoes. NR would tell the farmers to invest in new machinery, though I can't see how it would pick the bosomy, misshapen heirlooms. There is more fauna in the city than we usually think, though except for birds, vermin, and pets, it is confined to the city's parks. The fauna in the valley is freer and stranger. Once we saw in the trees out our kitchen door a fisher, a low-slung bounding beast like a large weasel, evidently furtive and somewhat dangerous. My wife named him Fisher Ames, after a Federalist congressman of the oldest school. We imagine him in the hemlocks, berating democrats and Jacobins. In the middle of the night we have heard barred owls, in their exigent baritones, asking "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?" ...