Into the Woods

NEWS ITEM: Nelson Bryant, New York Times “Outdoor Life” Columnist, Dies at 96.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/sports/nelson-bryant-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1

Big Sky Country – The Bronx, New York City. Photo credit: M. Kleinman

I always loved the woods more than the seashore. Growing up in outer borough New York City, we had access to both. A ride on the 12 bus would take us to Orchard Beach, on the Long Island Sound. Beach-loving families would ride down to Manasquan, New Jersey for a week of ocean fun.

I, however, preferred the 90-mile car ride to Sullivan County, in the Catskill Mountains — the Jewish Alps — where many working class families summered in bungalow colonies for a few hundred bucks a month. Ah, the woods! The cool, fresh air of early morning and evening. Weenie roasts. Catching fireflies and salamanders after a soft summer rain. And oh those rainbows.

Still chasing rainbows, even here in New York City.

No wonder I joined the Boy Scouts, which were decidedly uncool back in the sixties. In my rainbow coalition troop, we learned how to handle ourselves in the forest. We kids became skilled in the art of cookouts, camping, hiking — skills so foreign to the tenement apartment dwellers of the Bronx.

I loved reading Nelson Bryant’s work in The New York Times, once I graduated from the tabloids to the Times. Bryant was the outdoorsy dad I wish I had, sure-footedly explaining the fine points of fly fishing. Duck hunting. Deer tracking.

And his descriptions of his Martha’s Vineyard stomping grounds — my goodness! I finally got to The Islands in my late twenties, first at a Nantucket B&B and, then a lengthy rental of a stone house on Lobsterville Road, in the Gay Head section of The Vineyard.

Oh my. Here I found both “the woods” and the seashore. Nelson Bryant’s outdoors proficiency inspired me and, in time, my family rented homes in upstate New York where I initiated my son into the wonder, the majesty, of forests. Today, he vacations upstate with friends, hikes, swims and fishes, and dreams of owning his own place up there one day.

Large mouth bass, soon to be dinner!

So, here’s to you, Nelson Bryant — and to your fellow NYT writer Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of the stunning series “The Rural Life” — for keeping the campfire flames burning in my heart. Yours was a life well-lived. Congratulations.