The Impulsive Traveler: Following in the footsteps of the Hudson River School in Catskill, N.Y.

It was so easy for Mary Poppins. She sees a charming little chalk picture on the sidewalk, and quicker than you can say “a spoonful of sugar,” she’s jumped into the drawing and is strolling arm-in-arm with Bert through the countryside.

If only.

More on this Story

• Following in the footsteps of the Hudson River School
• Details: Hudson River School Art Trail and Catskill, N.Y.

My own recent attempt to get to the heart of several works of art proved far more arduous. I’d come to Catskill, N.Y., a town about two hours north of Manhattan, to retrace the steps of the Hudson River School, the 19th-century movement of landscape artists who walked the mountains of this verdant slice of the Northeast in search of inspiration.

The people at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, a.k.a. Cedar Grove, the movement founder’s historic residence, have made the reasonable assumption that visitors would enjoy exploring the same places the artists did. So they’ve put together a guide to eight sites (more to come later this year), creating the Hudson River School Art Trail. Armed with that, and not a whole lot else, I found myself on a bright May day wandering the wilderness and channeling my inner artiste.

The first two stops on the trail, Cole’s Cedar Grove and Olana, the elaborate Persian-style mansion of painter and Cole student Frederic Church, was the most leisurely part of my day. I strolled their grounds, taking in the views perfumed with the heavy scent of lilacs. But with six more stops to go, I couldn’t dally too long.

Cole (1801-1848) would have used his own two feet to get to the next vantage point — or the next half-dozen, for that matter. Cedar Grove Executive Director Elizabeth Jacks said that he recorded his many rambles, sprinkling in declarations along the lines of “Merrily we walked the first eight miles.” While feeling sufficiently merry, I couldn’t see myself hoofing it that far — nor does the trail brochure encourage it. Off by car I went.

Arriving at the stop for Catskill Creek, I envied Cole. When he took in the view, he probably wasn’t standing at the side of a busy road, worried about ditching his car in the parking lot of an Italian restaurant. Only when you take a narrow view of the scene and focus on the tranquil water framed by trees does it begin to resemble his 1833 painting.

The intrusion of modern times is fitting, though. Cole took up both his paintbrush and his pen to decry the degradation of the Catskills’ natural beauty by the axe and the railroad. Today, his estate occupies a mere fraction of the original 100 acres. What’s left is now surrounded by heavily trafficked roads and other trappings of suburban development.

Beyond the creek stop, the centuries melt away as the trail climbs into the mountains. At the next point, I surveyed the view from the parking lot. The brochure said to look for Kaaterskill Clove, a gorge that was a popular subject for the Hudson River School. In the end, though, I wasn’t sure whether I was looking through the correct clearing in the trees at the correct intersection of hills.

Easier to pick out would be Kaaterskill Falls, a two-tiered 260-foot cascade that’s taller than Niagara Falls. To get to the trail head, I had to walk along a twisting highway with little to no shoulder. Given the challenge ahead of me (my guide at Cedar Grove had warned me about the slippery path to the falls), it would have been easy to stop before I began. Right off the road is a smaller feature called Bastion Falls, which would have been a fine place to fill my waterfall quota. But I pushed on.