Solarpunk Movement Seeds Climate Hope in the Valley
Set above highly urbanized and tech-forward New York City, the Hudson Valley offers nature reserves and varying topography that help make it a perfect experimental ground for a global environmental movement to take root. Solarpunk is the newest movement capturing...
#PaddlePower: This Summer, Gear Up to Paddle (Safely) on the Hudson
Paddling is — in our admittedly biased opinion at Hudson River Riders! — one of the most versatile ways to enjoy our waters and to connect with nature. Whether you’re kayaking, canoeing, rowing, or stand-up paddle-boarding, you’ll get both physical...
Looking Good for 200 Million Years Old: Gorgeous Dragonflies and Damselflies
Dragonflies and their daintier cousins, damselflies, are such fixtures of warm, sunny Hudson Valley days that perhaps you’ve taken them for granted. Come late spring and early summer, they seem to be just about everywhere (especially if you live near...
The Old-School Charm of the Irish Alps
As a child, Boston filmmaker Kevin Ferguson spent nearly every summer in the Catskills among a clan of Irish immigrants and first-generation natives in what was known as the Irish Alps. What the Borscht Belt was to Jews, the area...
For Olmsted’s 200th Birthday, Appreciating Newburgh’s Downing Park
Farmer, merchant, seaman, journalist — nothing on Frederick Law Olmsted’s résumé before 1857, when he turned 35, even hinted that he would become America’s foremost landscape architect. Yet throughout 2022, to mark the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth on April 26,...
Vernal Pools: The Valley’s Special Spring Amphibian Habitat
“Fairies” no bigger than a human fingernail, frogs returning to life after a winter suspended in ice, salamanders assembling for an underwater congress. What might sound like a scene invented by Lewis Carroll or Hayao Miyazaki is really just a...
#ValleyPathbreakers: Seven Women Who Improved Life Here
They fought for working women’s rights, advocated for vulnerable children, even rescued drowning sailors. And of course, they called for cleaner river water and greater public access to the Hudson Valley’s natural abundance. To celebrate Women’s History Month, reflect on...
#HudsonInspired: Wood Artist Reclaims Regional Trees
Megan Offner was surrounded by forests in her early life in Montana — yet the forests of the Hudson Valley region hold a special appeal. “When I first came East in college, I fell in love with New York’s deciduous...