Country Life
Introducing my new book with William Abranowicz
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“It used to be said that you could tell where the Catskills’ boundaries lay by the way the crows flew. You watched a flight of crows heading toward the mountains and when they turned aside that was where the Catskills began. The crows were too smart to fly over the Catskills—they knew that the landlords had picked the place so clean that a crow would starve there.”
From The Catskills (1972) by Alf Evers, Herodotus of the hills
In 2020 my parents sold my childhood home in Bedford, New York and resettled to our ski house in Margaretville, a two-hour drive northwest.
The change of scenery inspired my father, photographer William Abranowicz, to start documenting the properties of interesting people in that sparse and ill-defined stretch of New York known as “upstate.” He wanted to see how his new neighbors were creating civilization in the wilderness, and community in isolation, and situate their stories in the context of local history, architecture, and lore.
As this project coalesced into a book, he invited me to write brief texts to introduce each home. My role sat somewhere between ghostwriter, researcher, and author. I brought order, sequence, and color to the notes he would record after interacting with his subjects and their residences. I was also free to draw on my own interest in the region, from indigenous heritage to bizarre footnotes like the Anti-Rent War.
William and I had honed this unusual way of working during the creation of our two previous books: American Originals (2018) and This Far and No Further (2021). I say unusual because first, I’m credited as writer, but the book is voiced entirely from William's perspective. Second, I only visited two of the book’s twenty homes, relying on his images for clues I could build into each write-up from my desk in Virginia.
Country Life: Homes of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley is published by our friends at The Vendome Press. It features the extraordinary dwellings of museum curators, architects, pit-masters, writers, farmers, film directors, world-famous artists, shopkeepers, activists, and many more. With 272 pages of richly printed pictures and words, we hope it inspires your own home life, wherever you’re planted these days.
A special thanks to the homeowners who graciously allowed us to share their private worlds with a curious public.
And finally, a note from my father, included in the book’s acknowledgements: “And lastly, to my mother Margaret who passed away during the making of this work. Every time I look at the pink of the sun on these mountains around me I think of her.” I know she would’ve been proud of this one.
Below, I offer a preview of Country Life in the form of a single chapter dedicated to the house of Maria and Thomas Cole, godfather of the Hudson River School — “America’s first true artistic fraternity.” And below that, I recommend some items and tunes to get into that upstate of mind.
Country Life
Homes of the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley
Chapter 7: Maria + Thomas Cole
Thomas Cole is the quintessential artist of the Hudson River School, and this is an artist’s house. Perched in Catskill overlooking Cole’s beloved “blue mountains” to the west and the Hudson River to the east, the farm known as Cedar Grove served as the painter’s studio and residence from 1836 until his death in 1848. Cole was a pioneering American landscape artist, documenting the undeveloped expanses of our Northeast with sweeping views of its mountains, valleys, and creeks; skies pregnant with storm clouds; and subtle characters—picnickers, sportsmen, Mohicans—dwarfed by the worlds they occupy. These were not just pretty pictures, but powerful statements in defiance of Andrew Jackson’s destructive environmental policies. Cole’s paintings, along with the works of fellow elite artists of the Jacksonian era, were instrumental in mobilizing the federal government to take conservation seriously, and are considered a catalyst for the creation of the national parks system. The stool that once supported Cole now rests beside an easel in his studio, as if the artist rose one day to stretch his legs and never returned. A monogrammed trunk (“TC”) and the collected works of Byron reinforce the image of a man on the move. Appropriate for this astute observer of nature, the outdoors bleed into Cedar Grove in wonderful ways, with painted walls of periwinkle and terra-cotta, shells and starfish, floral tiles and carpets, and layers of pattern on pattern recalling the tangled forests Cole explored with pad and pencil. His method of sketching en plein air before committing romanticized visions to canvas back at his studio drew an entire movement of artists into the hills, notably Frederic Church, whose home is situated just across the Hudson in poetic symmetry of master and student. Cole wasn’t the only accomplished artist in the family: his sister Sarah’s paintings grace the walls as well. Stare into Thomas Cole’s works and you become drunk with the majesty of untapped wilderness. His home has a similar effect, a monument to unmitigated kinship with nature.
Uncompensated Endorsement
A paean to what moves me
Country Life Edition
Beanie by Le Bonnet, for alerting hunters to your presence in the woods
Schwarzbier by Kingston Standard Brewing Co., for after building a stone wall
Denham Jacket by Noah x Lavenham, for brisk mornings at the farmers market
Camp Blanket by Homestedt, for fireside movie nights
Longjohns Ikar by Hemen Biarritz, for forest bathing in the hemlocks
Ultra-light Closed Clog by Aigle, for wading muck to access wild mint
Rail-Splitter Jeans by Filson, for chopping and stacking wood
The Deerslayer by James Fenimore Cooper, for porch reading with a good view
Type 752 Wide Rib Shawl Collar Pullover by Tender, for après-ski cider at the lodge
Fifty Sail on Newburgh Bay by Ed Renehen & Pete Seeger, for campfire singalongs
Sonic Landscapes
A mix, echoing my old college radio show
Country Life
To accompany Country Life I’ve assembled 10 songs that set the stage for driving Route 28, building bonfires, or swimming cold springs. One-way Adirondack Trailways bus ticket not included.
This is a Land — Ed Renehen & Pete Seeger
The Foggy Dew — Barbara Monocure
‘Cello Song — Nick Drake
I Won’t Hurt You — The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band
Long Black Veil — The Band
Claudy Banks — Shirley Collins & The Albion Country Band
You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go — Bob Dylan
Hard Traveling — Woody Guthrie
I Shall Be Released — The Box Tops
Clear Away in the Morning — Gordon Bok
Image credits, top to bottom: Thomas Cole, unknown, Andrea Raisfeld, Zander Abranowicz, William Abranowicz
Something You Should Know
A sharp fact for your cocktail party quiver
The title “Country Life” was inspired by Roxy Music’s 1974 studio album of the same name
The book is quite frankly blowing my mind. A DIFFERENCE OF KIND AND NOT DEGREE. We had a long talk about it today at the Alameda monthly antiques (flea) market. Some friends got breathtaken and stalled a couple days before even the first house -- at the dive shot! It's the first interiors book i made a conscious decision to read. The intro page to each home is the richest door opening to the house that lies beyond the front door. I visit one home a day. From the writing it's really hard to believe you haven't spent days in each home. I can't being to detail just what a (anything i write sounds trite) "magical" adventure I"m on sinking intoi the houses AND spotting little ties, echoes, recurrences, nods throughout. Anyway -- I love all of the books you've done together. You had me at the first sentence of American Originals: I told my friends: no interiors book ever began with THAT sentence. Again -- i wish I could put into words even approaching how beautifully and deeply introduce the reader to each home. Wow. Thank you.