I had the pleasure yesterday to visit Slabsides. It is the
name of the cabin in the woods that John Burroughs built and is held sacred
today by a trust to preserve his presence in the Catskill Mountains and the
Mid-Hudson region.
Slabsides was his getaway and if I dare to use a term I find
distasteful, his “man-cave” in the late 1800’s and into 20th
century.
He did much of his writing in this cabin. He wrote essays
for leading magazines at the time. He penned twenty-seven books on nature and
relationships. He was a thinker, a philosopher, a naturalist and a keen
observer of nature.
Visitors to Slabsides included President Theodore Roosevelt,
John Muir, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone and poet Walt Whitman. He and Burroughs were good friends. The spirits of his many visitors linger in sustained appreciation. John Burroughs was a
farmer intellect and people gravitated to him because of his simple insight
into mankind’s relationship to nature. His writings had a profound impact on
the emerging conservation movement in America.
As I stood inside his cabin I could feel the latent energy
of past greatness. It was powerful and docent Patrick McDonough was skilled in
Burroughs’ history as he recounted stories of Burroughs living here.
I loved it and I will return again and again.
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