Talking Up My Town
Erin Lindsey is the creator of Escape Brooklyn, a travel and lifestyle website for New Yorkers. Since 2013, she and a tiny team of travelers write about and photograph the best day trips, weekends, and destinations beyond New York City. After nearly 10 years living in Brooklyn working as a graphic designer in the fashion world, she moved to Livingston Manor where she recently bought and renovated a cottage atop Shandelee Mountain. Read a snapshot of a typical week pre-Covid as she juggles her home life, travel, and her love of summer. *Please note that many of the business Lindsey mentions may be temporarily closed or are open with pandemic-appropriate modifications.
Sunday:
Sunday is hands-down my favorite day of the week. I live in the Catskills, and a lot of my friends have jobs that keep them busy most Saturdays. But, I think we have an unspoken rule about Sundays in the summer, which is this: On Sundays, we swim.
6 am My day begins early. Since moving to Livingston Manor, I generally wake up with the sun.
9am I call my dad, and to keep my hands busy during our conversation, I begin tending my garden and yard. Our conversation only lasts 45 minutes, but two hours later, I’m covered in sweat and dirt and still working in the yard. If you’d told me this would be my life five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you.
1 pm A group of my friends (some full-timers, some weekenders) all descend to the swimming hole (Not sharing the secret location!). It’s walking distance from Upstream Wine & Sprits, which sells swimming-hole-friendly cans of rosé. We all catch up and share stories from the week while sitting in the river for a few hours until the sun disappears.
6 pm It’s family dinner at the swimming hole, which is also walking distance from Madison’s, a local pizza joint that’s been in Livingston Manor forever. Bonus: they serve soft serve ice cream from a takeout window.
Monday:
It literally pours all day, which is good for two reasons. (1) we’ve been in a drought and my flowers will be happy (2) it keeps me inside, aka super focused. I pretty much work all day, retouching photos, answering emails, writing for the website, and planning my travel/Instagram calendar for the week.
By the time I look up, it’s the end of the day. The grocery store is closed, and realizing I have no food in the fridge, I look to the freezer and find a sad DiGiorno. This is definitely one bummer about living upstate: if you don’t plan your meals in advance, you’re kinda screwed. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it won’t be the last.
Tuesday:
7am I wake up and am so happy to see that it’s finally stopped raining. I begin my usual morning routine, which includes a visit to my dahlia garden (before coffee because I’m that excited) and snapping photos of whatever flowers I’m cutting for the day. This has been a really good year in my garden, and my house is full of flowers.
8 am I’m meeting my friend Meg at the Robin Hood Diner in Livingston Manor; we have a standing girls date once a week to catch up over breakfast. She owns the wine shop in town, Upstream Wines, which is amazing, and she’s just opened a wine bar, Sunshine Colony, on Main Street.
12pm On my way out of town, I meet a friend for lunch at Main Street Farm. We share two seasonal veggie sandwiches before heading to the back deck, which overlooks the Willowemoc River. On weekends I don’t even bother coming here because it’s so good and the lines are insane. But on a Tuesday? It’s perfect.
2pm I set off for this week’s Escape Brooklyn feature: King Harvest House in Saugerties, NY. I photograph the house for a few hours, retouch the photos, and by 8:30 I’m ready to post them to the Escape Brooklyn Instagram. At 9 pm, it’s finally time to think about dinner and I quickly whip up some stir-fried Udon. I pass out shortly after.
Wednesday:
I travel most Tuesdays through Thursdays, so Wednesdays are usually really busy for me because it’s my day to shoot all the Instagram content I need for the week. I make a shot list of what will get me through the next few days: so far, I’ve planned two hikes, two town visits, and a swimming hole.
8 am I’ve already put in two hours of work and realize I haven’t had breakfast. I head out to (the aptly named) King Harvest House’s garden and pick some of the season’s’ first tomatoes. They accompany some eggs (from the farm down the road) and basil, also from the garden.
10:30 am I leave for my first hike, Kaaterskill Falls. It’s the most popular trail in the Catskills, and so the parking lot is full by the time I get there. At 12 pm, I pull into the alternate trailhead near North South Lake that has a bigger parking lot and a shorter (but more intense) walk to the bottom of the falls.
1 pm I stop for lunch at Circle W in Palenville where I run into my friend Taylor, a local artist whose family has an old ski resort called Cortina Valley just outside of Tannersville.
3 pm I’m back at King Harvest House, and it’s gorgeous outside. I grab my laptop and get some work done in-between sunbathing and cooling off in the house’s outdoor shower. This is the best part of my day, and exactly why I love this job, despite the constant hustle.
5 pm I justify some Alleyway Ice Cream in Saugerties because I’m about to go on my second hike for the day. It’s this really cute, really hard to find ice cream window in town. I take it to-go then make my way to the Saugerties Lighthouse for sunset. Sidenote: this is barely a hike (more like a walk), but I’ve earned this ice cream anyway, okay?
8 pm I’m in Woodstock for dinner to try out the new wine bar, Early Terrible, at the suggestion of one of my followers. The vibe is incredible; it’s owned by the same people as Mud Club, a wood-fired bagel place that opened next door a few years ago. I eat by myself at the bar and chat with the bartender before heading home. I’m in bed by 10.
Thursday:
6:45 am I’m pulling tomatoes out of the King Harvest House garden for breakfast again. The menu is the same this morning: eggs, tomatoes and basil. I answer emails, do some retouching, and am out of the house around 10 am. On the way out of town, I stop at a swimming hole and read a book for 45 minutes before the reality/stress of work starts to hit. I reluctantly leave.
12 pm I arrive at the first of two back-to-back photoshoots today for Escape Brooklyn Real Estate: the first is a tiny cabin, and the second is an octagon-shaped treehouse. By 2 pm, I’m back in Livingston Manor. I work for a few hours, then meet some friends at local wood-fired pizza joint, the Kaatskeller, for some pizza al-fresco.
Friday:
Because my weeks are long and often mean 12+ hour days, I try really hard not to work on week- ends. This means Fridays are insanely stressful. After a few years of living up here, though, I’ve found that gong meditation is an amazing way to start a Friday, and gets me ready to face my Friday work-load with clarity and grace!
10 am I head to my friend Marc Switko’s place for a private gong meditation session, and by noon I’m back at my computer. I don’t look up again until work is finished.
5:59 pm my last work email goes out. I quickly get showered, dressed, and head to the Catskill Brewery. After a beer, I’m starving, and I inhale a jackfruit burrito from the Catskill Brewery Taco Truck. I thank my lucky stars (and the taco truck people) that their vegetarian option isn’t some lame “ vegetables/beans” combo.
9 pm The brewery closes, and my group of friends all move to the Kaatskeller for a cocktail. The big Friday night dinner crowd is mostly thinned out at this point, so we’re able to grab a spot by the bonfire for a nightcap.
Saturday:
7 am I’m enjoying some coffee on my deck, which overlooks a big field, a pond, some 100 ft tall pine trees, and far-off mountains. The neighbor’s cows are out and milling around, and for the millionth time this week, I wonder how I got this lucky.
9 am I can’t resist obsessing over my garden, so I head out to cut back some pineapple mint that’s been taking over. I wonder what I could do with all this fresh mint, and so I text my friends Erik and Megan of traveling-chef duo Have Knife Will Travel to see if they have any ideas. By noon, they’re at my house teaching me to make mint chocolate chip ice cream.
3 pm Post-cooking-lesson, I enjoy some swim time at the nearby lake. The group includes my friend (and photographer) Peter Crosby who’s here with his girlfriend and two kids, plus some others. We tie a bunch of tubes together and float aimlessly to the other side of the lake before some nice stranger with a paddleboat tugs us back. By 6, we’re all back at my house and grilling; we watch the sunset and surprise the kids with sparklers. It’s been another amazing week in the Catskills, and I can’t believe I got this lucky.
A note from Lindsey: This summer is going to look quite different for me than the last. I spent the first part of 2020 in California collecting content for my new venture, Escape LA, when Covid shut down the country.
In May, I traveled back to Livingston Manor in the Catskills – the place I call home. My business, Escape Brooklyn, has pretty much come to a halt, and so I’m continuing to spend this time looking inward: at myself, at my business, and at my home community in the Catskills. I look forward to slowing down this summer – studying nature, gardening, hiking and meditating as much as possible.
In the words of Robert Frost, “The best way out is always through.” While there’s no way around our collective current situation, we’ll eventually get through it. My hope is that there’s something beautiful waiting for all of us on the other end. In the meantime: be kind to yourself, be kind to others, and embrace the slower lifestyle this moment has granted to all of us – because it is temporary.
By Erin Lindsey, Founder of Escape Brooklyn
Photography by Peter Crosby and Erin Lindsey
