Tag Archives: Slabsides

Two gems from Richard Parisio

Several years ago, Richard Parisio hosted a group of us for afternoon writing retreats at Slabsides, John Burroughs’s rustic getaway cottage beside a swamp that once hosted his celery crop, a fact that inspired at least one of us to … Continue reading

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“A Walk on the Comeau” by Richard Parisio

(On Sunday, July 8th, Richard Parisio, a retired DEC interpretative naturalist who teaches at the Mohonk Preserve, will lead a “Family Nature Walk” for “kids of all ages” at 5 pm to conclude our “Woodstock Celebration” at the Comeau Property … Continue reading

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John Burroughs: The Anti-Santa Naturalist

(Originally published in the June 11, 1998 Woodstock Times.) By 1912, John Burroughs, a celebrated and opinionated author on the sublime importance of nature for one’s personal character, had noticed the birth of the automobile. And he didn’t like it. … Continue reading

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Whitman Land, by John Burroughs

(Today, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson reign as the King and Queen of Nineteenth Century American poetry. It wasn’t always so. In 1896, four years after Whitman’s death, John Burroughs, one of America’s most beloved authors at the time, published … Continue reading

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From Slabsides to Gowanus

The old adage holds true: to meet interesting people, go to interesting places. On the front porch of Slabsides, John Burroughs’s rustic writing cottage that still sports bark on its logs, I met James Walsh at an open house in … Continue reading

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The Slabsides Poets

I’ve visited Arrowhead in the Berkshires, the yellow house where young Herman Melville set himself up as a country squire to finish Moby Dick, perhaps inspired by the whale-humped profile of Mt. Graylock outside his window. I’ve also been to … Continue reading

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Alison Koffler’s Mythical Beasts

I’m partial to Alison Koffler’s mythical beast poems because I was present at the inception. For the first, we gathered on a gray winter Sunday at the Pond House downhill from Slabsides, John Burroughs’s historic writing cottage nestled on a … Continue reading

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