“There aren’t any wild animals in the Catskills,” Charlie Seabury said.
“There are wild flowers,” I said, “but they won’t hurt anybody.”
“How about poison ivy?” Westy Martin said.
All the while as we hiked along the road toward Saugerties, we kept joking about the wild animals in the Catskills. Harry Donnelle said there used to be lots of wild cats and foxes, but not any more. He said there were some foxes, though.
Westy said, “I bet there are some bears; once Uncle Jeb saw a bear; he said there weren’t any foxes any more.”
“I guess there are some grey ones and maybe a few silver,” Harry Donnelle said.
“Silver?” I shouted. “Oh boy!” Then I asked him what they fed on mostly.
“Mostly on ice cream sodas,” he said; “they’re very dangerous after a half dozen raspberry sodas.”
We didn’t go near Saugerties, because we wanted to keep in the country, so we hit down southwest along the road that goes to Woodstock. Then we were going to hike it south past West Hurley so we’d bunk our noses right into the Ashokan Reservoir. And the next day we were going to spend trying to keep out of Kingston.
When it got to be about five o’clock in the afternoon, we hit in from the road to find a good place to camp. Maybe you think that’s easy, but you have to find a place where the drainage is good and where there’s good drinking water.