Fall Cometh

When I woke up on Sunday, I could smell Fall. For the first time this year, I stepped outside my apartment and the smell of dank earth and dying leaves punctuated the air. The sky was grey, the temperature was below 20 degrees Celsius and the smell was definitely Fall.

I think I'm ready. We had such an incredible summer, I can't complain now about the dropping temperatures. It signals a total overhaul of the clothes cupboards, moving the whites to the back and the camels and darker colors to the front. It means shorter days and colder nights. Cups of hot chocolate instead of pineapple juice, and thick, yummy soups instead of salads. It also means a totally different color palette surrounding me; red apples, bright orange pumpkins, burnt yellow grass, chocolates, caramel and tartans. I know I'm ready.

To herald this change, I stole the Anesthetist's car while he was tinkering on the boat and went for some heavenly ambles in a new-found and now favorite Ward Pound Ridge Reserve, an hour north of the city. It is 4200 acres of rivers, pastures and forest. A great place to relish these wonderful fall colors and smells!

Palm Springs

I love the desert.  I love the vastness, the stillness, the silence, the light, the colors, the smell, the feeling of being so tiny and insignificant. It puts the whole world and our place in it, in perspective.

The first time I went to the desert was in my early twenties when I was backpacking. I arrived in a tiny oasis town in the north of Chile by rusty bus and spent a week in the Atacama Desert, purportedly the driest desert in the world. It was unforgettable. (The fact that I had a lovely affair whilst there with a native Indian who breathed into my hair as we rode bareback together into the desert as dawn broke over the mountains, may have had something to so with it.)  Since then, I have been to the Moroccan desert, the Bolivian salt flats and the Australian outback, but never the American West.

That is why I was so excited to visit Palm Springs. Everyone said, "Don't go. There's nothing to do and it's full of retirees wearing pastels." OK. There was that. But there was also beautiful architecture. And the desert. Wonderful barren, rocky desert surrounding the PS oasis. So I left the golf courses to the men in lemon and pink and immersed myself in tumbleweed, palm gullies and cacti.

Catskills

We went to the Catskills on the weekend. It was time for me to channel my inner hippie. I'm not very good at that any more. Too many Park Hyatts with work. But the anesthestist is an old hippie at heart; herbal toothpaste, organic veggies and early morning sun salutations. So it was off to the bucolic county of Delaware, 4 hours north of Manhattan. Think rolling green hills, lots of cows, local markets and red barns. All the hallmarks of a stunning east coast pastoral setting in summer.

There we stayed in a cottage that looks like it should have been pulled down a decade ago but holds cherished memories for the anasthetist of his boys growing up there during school holidays,

we cooked up a storm using veggies straight from the farm's organic fields,

bought fresh, young local lamb at the famous Round Hill Barn,

went swimming in the water hole up the back of the property,

sat and listened to the roar of the waterfall as it gushed into the water hole

and drove through the neighbouring countryside dreaming of milking cows, collecting eggs and selling our own organic produce one day.

Hiking in the Hudson

Spectacular day last Sunday. The perfect day to climb to the top of Bull Hill!

Also known as Mt Taurus, this mountain overlooks the charming town of Coldspring, an hour out of Manhattan in the Hudson Valley. You take the train from Grand Central and follow the Hudson River all the way up. The river keeps going and you get off and walk to the bottom of the mountain. It was a little early in the season as the leaves weren't fully formed, but what an exhilarating way to spend a Sunday! Here are some visual moments along the trail:

Typical forest low down

Abandoned farmhouse

Some slimy creatures in an old well

Reservoir

Another abandoned something

 A swampy part

 The final ascent

View from peak over the Hudson toward the Catskills

On the other side looking over the Hudson River & Valley

 The slow descent

An old quarry