A Spectacular Hike

Restless for a high flying, breezy excursion? A lengthy one? Complete with history, incomparable views of clouds, ships, water, a place for people walking their dogs, or sprinting half naked back and forth, or couples, all kinds, dreamily holding hands? The Hudson River Walkway is for you. Really. Just ignore that touch of acrophobia, and that secret fear that a river span will stand until you’re on it, and head for — at 1.28 miles—the longest pedestrian bridge in the world. This span, built in 1889 for rail traffic, bore Pennsylvania coal to fire New England industry. And it did its job until 1974 when a blaze destroyed the lower bed of the 85-year-old steel bridge. There it stood, between Poughkeepsie on the east side of the Hudson and Highland on the west, lame and useless but costly to dismantle, an eyesore, and, maybe someday, a menace to navigation. And though the idea of reclaiming it as a stunning, 212-foot-high walk above the Hudson bobbed around for a time, not much happened until 2004 when Walkway Over the Hudson, a group started in 1992, got serious and raised public and private money to turn a wreck into a walk. Five years and $38.8 million later ($10 million less than tearing it down, some figured), the Hudson River Walkway opened Oct. 3, 2009. Finished, beautiful, and a little wild up there with the wind blowing, and trains chattering on the shore and ships in the river cutting wide wakes in the dark water, it’s a hit, filled with walkers and cyclists and runners and skaters and just plain gapers, sunny days and overcast alike. People talk to each other, pick up after their dogs, wave at the police patrolling the span, or examine the photographs of workmen building the walkway in thin air. It’s a treat. And for some, it’s very special spot. A marker alongside the walkway notes the death of one Robert J. Lay who passed away during a stroll above the Hudson River, July 2, 2010. We found our way to the Poughkeepsie entrance by locating the bridge and then winding through local streets to get there. For information and real directions, call 845-454-9649, or go to www.walkway.org.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less