Lucy, along the Saint Lawrence:  Benjamin Franklin once noted, “There are three faithful friends: an old wife, an old dog, and ready money.”  Well in today’s day and age one might get in trouble about the “old wife” remark, but old dogs still remain man’s best friend.  The landscape below depicts Lucy, a faithful loving Labrador retriever, along the Saint Lawrence River, the international border between Canada and New York State.

Lucy, along the Saint Lawrence, 11x14 (SOLD):

Fifteen arches, the Dividing Weir Bridge:  New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP) announced the Dividing Weir Bridge, also known as Fifteen Arches, will be reduced to a single lane of traffic beginning February 25^th, 2015 until the fall of this year.  The century-year-old bridge is due for repairs.  It separates both basins--- upper and lower--- of the Ashokan Reservoir and serves as the only causeway across NYC’s impoundment.  Sometime during the next decade it will be replaced entirely.

The landscape below was originally painted as a 5”x7”, but was commissioned to be redone as an 11”x14”.

Fifteen Arches, 11x14 (SOLD):

Winter on Rondout Creek:  American naturalist John Burroughs wrote glowingly about the Rondout Creek.  In his essay “Speckled Trout” he called this headwater brook “one of the finest trout streams in the world."  And in “A Bed of Boughs” he wrote, “The scenery was wild and desolate in the extreme, the mountains on either hand looking as if they had been swept by a tornado of stone.”  Plus, “My eyes had never before beheld such beauty in a mountain stream.”  Yet one wonders if this well-traveled natural historian ever laid eyes on the upper Rondout Creek during the winter months, which seem to fill about a third of any calendar year in this mountaintop valley that lies in the shadows of Peekamoose.

Winter at Morrell's, 8x10:

Somehow the powers to be in state government lost all sense of history calling old Morrell's Field now Trailer Field.  How tacky and insensitive; but those who appreciate what once was, can still visual it in that which exists today.

Mount Jo:  Mount Jo is located in North Elba, New York in the Adirondack Mountains, on property owned by ADK, and has an elevation of two thousand eight hundred seventy-six feet.  The site of Adirondack Loj, the historic lodge built by Henry Van Hoevenberg Sr., and Heart Lake are located at the base of this picturesque mountain.

Mount Jo, 11x14 (Sold):

Five Arches Bridge:  The Five Arches Bridge in Boiceville, New York has long been an iconic landmark for Esopus Creek anglers.  Many a wild rainbow and brown trout have passed under this viaduct on their spawning runs upstream into the Esopus from New York City’s Ashokan Reservoir less than a mile downriver.

Numerous books and stories about fishing this legendary Catskill stream often mention Five Arches, built in 1911, by name.  Perhaps one of the best stories was written by the late Arnold Gingrich in his book, The Well-Tempered Angler.  Gingrich told of fishing the Esopus one cold, twenty-two degree day, on November 22^nd, in the shadows of the arches, falling in and breaking his prized bamboo rod.  Yes, ask any serious Esopus Creek angler where Five Arches is, and they can tell you.

Sadly plans are underway to replace the bridge as it has become a source for flooding the hamlet of Boiceville in recent years.  Nothing is forever.

The landscape below was done from a November photograph of the old bridge taken while standing upstream and flyfishing the Esopus.

Five Arches aflame, 11x14 (DtC):

The Pool:  Long before Ed Van Put’s excellent book, Trout Fishing in the Catskills, was published I explored, wandered, and fished the upper reaches of the West Branch of the Neversink River.  As the title suggests, Van Put's work reveals details of the history of trout fishing in these Catskill Mountains.  And with regards to one stream Van Put wrote, “The valley of the West Branch has long been known as Frost Valley and has a wild and rugged landscape that has been a deterrent to early settlement.”  And even today pristine parcels of the Catskill forest flourish while the cold, clear West Branch remains home to wild brook trout.

One such image graces a portion of the dust jacket of Trout Fishing in the Catskills.  It is a pool on the West Branch lost in the Catskill Forest Preserve, which I was lucky enough to have found and enjoy for many years now.  The seasons and time have changed this hidden treasure a little, but for the most part it's the same today as it was decades ago when I first came upon it.

Trout Fishing in the Catskills by Ed Van Put:

The Pool, West Branch Neversink, 11x14:

B W S Road Bridge:  Not far from the shadows of New York City’s dam, and the first bridge over the legendary Neversink downriver of the reservoir, is the B W S Road bridge.  This location holds special meaning to Ed as it was the first place he ever saw the Neversink back in the early ‘70s.  Throughout all these years since, this location has not lost its charm.

B W S Road Bridge, Neversink 11x14:

An earlier variation of this landscape, titled Neversink, B W S Road Bridge can be found on this blog using the LABEL: Neversink.