View of the Hudson River from Olana.
I want to preface this entire post by saying that I grew up north of New York City, in what people would technically refer to as “upstate,” and I believe that it is one of the most beautiful places in the world. That said, I’ve spent very little time in the equally beautiful, but much less population-dense, up-upstate New York…until last weekend.
The trouble started when I read Tom Lewis’ book The Hudson. It was lent to me about two years ago, by my friend Todd, when I first moved to New York City, and I didn’t pick it up until the beginning of this month, when I had finished everything I could possibly read about the history of the British royal family. The Hudson is a beautifully written, yet short, history of the Hudson River, starting from lower Manhattan and New Jersey, all the way up to its origin at Lake Tear of the Clouds. Toward the end of the book, Lewis discusses Frederic Edwin Church’s mystical mansion, called Olana, which still stands overlooking 60 miles of the Hudson River in Hudson, N.Y. I had to go to there.
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