Walking the Long Path: From Manhattan to the Catskills

Transcript by Jerome Kazlauskas

[00:00:00] Brett Barry: Let's go back to your normal voyage to the Catskills. How long does that trip usually take by car?

[00:00:09] Casey Kelbaugh: I would say it averages 2 hours and 15 minutes, maybe 2 hours and 30 minutes.

[00:00:15] Brett Barry: But you found another way and increased that time to 27 days.

[00:00:20] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, I mean, how could I resist?

[00:00:23] Brett Barry: If you're heading back and forth to New York City anytime soon, Casey Kelbaugh found a way that avoids tolls, traffic, road rage, and congestion pricing. It just might take a while. On today's Kaatscast, discovering the Long Path and Casey's recollections on a walk from East 4th Street in Lower Manhattan to his cabin in the Catskills, so stretch your legs and stay tuned...

[00:00:52] Campbell Brown: This episode is brought to you by Briars & Brambles Books, the go-to independent book and gift store in the Catskills, located in Windham, New York, right next to the pharmacy, just steps away from the Windham Path, open daily! For more information, visit briarsandbramblesbooks.com or call (518) 750-8599. Kaatscast is sponsored by The Mountain Eagle, covering Delaware, Greene, and Schoharie counties, including brands for local regions like The Windham Weekly, Schoharie News, and Catskills Chronicle. For more information, call (518) 763-6854 or email mountaineaglenews@gmail.com.

[00:01:30] Brett Barry: On September 12, 2024, The New York Times printed an article titled "Walking From Manhattan to the Catskills on the 'Long Path,'" and the writer Casey Kelbaugh writes that he discovered the path by spotting one of its trail markers behind his house in Edgewood, Greene County, New York. Here's Casey.

[00:01:51] Casey Kelbaugh: My name is Casey Kelbaugh. I am a photographer, and I have a small boutique photo agency called Casey Kelbaugh Associates. I'm based between Alphabet City or the East Village, East 4th Street, and my house in Edgewood, which is, you know, a hamlet within Lanesville within the town of Hunter. I try to split my time about half and half in a perfect world, depending on work and seasons and so forth.

[00:02:19] Brett Barry: I admitted that I didn't know too much about the Long Path, and Casey offered to hike a small but significant stretch of it with me. We met in Phoenicia, and he drove us to the Romer Mountain Trailhead. Along the way on a road I knew well, he pointed out a series of Long Path trail markers that I was now noticing for the first time.

[00:02:42] Casey Kelbaugh: So we're actually currently on the Long Path. There's a—you see that swatch right there?

[00:02:46] Brett Barry: Oh yeah.

[00:02:46] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, so we're just along the southern banks of the Esopus River, and I mean, we're sort of driving through a neighborhood, but we're also on the Long Path.

[00:02:58] Brett Barry: Unless you are intentionally on the Long Path, you're not gonna see those swatches.

[00:03:04] Casey Kelbaugh: Do you see them?

[00:03:05] Brett Barry: Oh my God.

[00:03:05] Casey Kelbaugh: There's one right there. Yeah, no, it's a...

[00:03:08] Brett Barry: On a telephone pole.

[00:03:09] Casey Kelbaugh: It's something I didn't realize at the time.

[00:03:12] Brett Barry: In the 1930s, Raymond Torrey rallied support for the Long Path through a series of New York Post columns called "The Long Brown Path," named after a line in Walt Whitman's poem "Song of the Open Road." Today, the path stretches 358 miles from the George Washington Bridge in New York City to the Adirondack Park, or you can stop halfway in the Catskills. The path utilizes a network of existing trails and roadways, and it's marked by aqua trail markers and blazes on trees with directional symbols reminiscent of the hobo code. We followed some of those blazes to Phoenicia's Romer Mountain Trailhead, where Casey Kelbaugh offered me some hiking poles.

[00:04:03] Casey Kelbaugh: Do you wanna borrow a pair, or are you okay?

[00:04:05] Brett Barry: That's okay. I like to hike totally unprepared—no poles, no water.

[00:04:09] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, well, the good news is we're bound for a spring, but I will say these poles prevented upwards of a hundred sprained ankles and, you know, broken ribs and so forth. I was able to prevent a lot of falls with them.

[00:04:29] Brett Barry: The spring we were hiking to had been at the tail end of Casey's hike from the city, a very welcome discovery.

[00:04:37] Casey Kelbaugh: I have no firm recollection of how far in this thing is, but it was, you know, a classic desert oasis kind of situation because I was coming from Peekamoose up over Slide Mountain, Wittenberg, Cornell, all those mountains... I was on a ridge for days and days, so there were no water sources. I hadn't seen a water source at Slide Mountain, so I went, like, a good two-plus days with, like, no—so I was really, really making my water last and not able to bathe or anything, which kind of wears.

[00:05:20] Brett Barry: At least you're hiking solo?

[00:05:21] Casey Kelbaugh: Yes, yes, yeah, that's a good point. Now, it's more just like when it's a thousand degrees and 400,000% humidity, it's not ideal to climb into a sleeping bag at night or climb into anything when you haven't cooled your body down in a few days.

[00:05:40] Brett Barry: Now, have you been hiking for a long time before you decided to embark on this?

[00:05:46] Casey Kelbaugh: So I am—I grew up primarily in Seattle—hiking, climbing, and doing things in the mountains is kind of, like, it's what we did, you know, especially in high school, and then through college in Vermont—spent a lot of time in the outdoors, spent two summers in Glacier National Park in Montana, so yeah, I would say a great depth of experience, but I had never [a] done a solo trip overnight and [b] done a trip that lasted more than, say, eight days, so this was a very different experience. The most significant thing I changed [rather than sleeping in a tent], which is what I had always done in the past—I opted for a hammock system, which I can't say enough good things about. You know, I wasn't sure I would be able to do this. I didn't know if I would finish, you know what I mean? I started it kind of quietly because I didn't want to have to bring my tail home between my legs. Sorry, little elevation here, huh, Brett?

[00:07:00] Brett Barry: It's harder when you're talking.

[00:07:03] Casey Kelbaugh: I just—it was something I felt I needed to do. I couldn't quite explain why, and I couldn't quite justify it, nor did I want to talk about it much because I was a little bit unsure of how things would pan out. My biggest fear was probably ticks, and in the end I saw a total of four ticks. I was also concerned about various foot and ankle injuries that would've put me out, and so hiking with trekking poles was a lot of extra insurance. It's like having two extra limbs, you know.

[00:07:43] Brett Barry: You weren't enough to set any records. You just wanted to complete it, complete that stretch from your house to your house or your apartment to your house.

[00:07:53] Casey Kelbaugh: Yes, you are correct. I was in the opposite of a rush. Yeah, I didn't consider it, like, in any way like a feat of athleticism, you know. It turned out to be really, really hard. I, for some reason, having hiked a lot, just assumed I just had to stack up a number of days of that, you know, but the cumulative effect, I think it's pretty significant. You know, I probably averaged a little under 11 and a half miles a day, which, with a 35-pound pack in, like, peak summer heat and humidity, was a lot. Sometimes I walked for upwards of 10 hours a day. You know, I'd stop, I'd take pictures, I'd write, I'd listen to things on the AirPods, and I would engage with the local towns, communities, natural features, and so forth.

[00:08:54] Brett Barry: Normally describe your route from the Lower East Side to Lanesville, New York.

[00:09:01] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, so it's a pretty straightforward drive. It's actually one of the reasons I kind of fell in love with this area because there was—it was such a nice experience getting up here because you go from Palisades to the Thruway to Route 28, which takes you right into Phoenicia, as you know, and then it's Route 214, so not a lot of strip malls and kind of suburban sprawl, but I, you know, having gone back and forth hundreds of times, I was starting to wonder what the connective tissue looked like between these two places, and you'd get little glimpses. The Thruway is like—it doesn't show a lot of leg. You know, you don't see any of these roads. You don't get to see much behind the sort of, like, screen of trees, and you're kind of left. I'm guessing you see a corner of an old stone house here, and then you see a little of what looks like a—there's just, like, little hints of interesting communities along the way, and so I was curious to see how it all connected and fit together, and I do an annual hike with some close guy friends every year, and one of them was on the Devil's Path, which is up behind my house, and I saw this trail marker that read "The Long Path," and it was actually just very nice graphic design, to be honest, that drew me in, and I was like, oh, well, that looks like it's something. It's not nothing, you know, and I looked it up when I got home and realized that it went essentially from the George Washington Bridge to the Adirondacks and that I could potentially get from house to apartment with three turns. You know, 4th Street to Broadway, Broadway to the GW Bridge, GW Bridge to the Long Path, and that was just a little too seductive not to at least entertain, and when, you know, life circumstances allowed for a gap in between. I kind of saw the window and realized that I needed to go, and that cabinet coincided with the first day of summer 2024. I had spent a couple of months prepping and researching gear the weekend prior. I was, you know, beta testing the hammock system with the tarp and the bug envelope that goes around it if needed in friends' backyards and stuff and sleeping, you know, in people's, you know, backyards, including my own. Yeah, so I was kind of dialing in my kit, so to speak, and I did have my best friend, Alex Ammerman—shout out to Alex. Basically, he used my car to meet me every eight days with food if I had to swap out any gear and so forth, and then I would continue on, but every time I met with a friend or stayed at a friend's house, you know, they were obviously off trail. I would be dropped back in the exact same spot.

[00:12:02] Brett Barry: Let's go back to your normal voyage to the Catskills. How long does that trip usually take by car?

[00:12:09] Casey Kelbaugh: You know, I'm usually running an errand or two along the way, but I would say it averages 2 hours and 15 minutes, maybe 2 hours and 30 minutes.

[00:12:19] Brett Barry: That's pretty good.

[00:12:20] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah.

[00:12:21] Brett Barry: But you found another way and increased that time to 27 days.

[00:12:27] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, I mean, how could I resist? You know, I'm sure it could have been done more quickly, but I was constantly, there was a constant tension of, do I stay and sit and have a barbecue with this Dominican family outside of this public pool I found in the middle of High Tor State Park, or do I continue on? Do I stay and try to get this specific photograph that I have set up, or do I try to get another mile in before dark? You know, there's always this sort of tension between trying to, you know, not make the hike like ungodly long, you know, get from point A to point B within the same season.

[00:13:14] Brett Barry: While enjoying yourself along the way?

[00:13:16] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, enjoying it and trying to actually absorb what I was seeing, experiencing the people I was meeting, you know...

[00:13:26] Brett Barry: Had you already contracted to do a story for the Times?

[00:13:28] Casey Kelbaugh: I had not, in fact, you know, as I mentioned, I was unsure of whether I was gonna make it. From the outset, I knew I wanted to make a book. What the form of that was is a little unclear, but I thought that to publish something right off the bat would be a good way to kind of get some momentum for the project, so I reached out the next morning. After this, I arrived on July 16th. Brian Lehrer on WNYC had a call-in for, like, what is this? We're halfway through summer today. What is the best—your summer best or whatever, like the best thing you've done that: best ice cream, best whatever?

[00:14:11] [The Brian Lehrer Show]: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and for our last 10 minutes, we will lighten it up. We're about halfway through summer, and with these last few minutes of the show, let's spend just a little time away from the news and politics.

[00:14:23] Casey Kelbaugh: So I've hemmed and hawed for a second, and then I called in, and within 60 seconds I'm on air with Brian Lehrer.

[00:14:30] [The Brian Lehrer Show]: How about Casey in Edgewood? You're on WNYC. Hi, Casey!

[00:14:33] Casey Kelbaugh: Good morning, Brian! How are you?

[00:14:35] [The Brian Lehrer Show]: Good, what you got?

[00:14:36] Casey Kelbaugh: So I just completed last night a 27-day hike on the Long Path, and I left my apartment on East 4th Street in Alphabet City on the first day of summer and walked to my house in the Catskills here in Hunter, so...

[00:14:53] [The Brian Lehrer Show]: That's great!

[00:14:55] Casey Kelbaugh: I'm telling him about this, you know, 27-day hike, and I got an audible gasp out of him, which I felt like was a real success, you know, so that was a nice reminder that it was something that others would maybe find interesting, you know, so then I started talking to various editors at the Times and elsewhere, having contributed photographs to the Times for almost 20 years. I had some relationships, and they were, you know, supportive, and thankfully the travel section was receptive, and they enabled me to tell the stories pretty close to how I intended to.

[00:15:34] Brett Barry: And so you say in your article...

[00:15:36] Casey Kelbaugh: Okay, and so I leaned in and sought out every swimming hole, public pool, and waterfall into which I could sink my battered body. I tried to decipher songbird operas. I picnicked with Dominican families. I took field trips to Woodbury Commons for massage chairs and grocery shopped in Hasidic villages. I joined the citizens of Chester for a blues concert overlooking an onion field. I shared a bucket of balls at a driving range in Goshen with a veteran just back from Kuwait. I slept atop a pile of crushed gravel the size of a bodega in the hamlet of Slate Hill, and I broke bread with as many friends along the way as I was able.

[00:16:13] Brett Barry: And so that's a big part of it too, just meeting people and immersing yourself in other cultures and environments.

[00:16:19] Casey Kelbaugh: Definitely, definitely, and trying, yeah, trying to have those interactions that I wouldn't necessarily, you know, come upon in my daily life, people weren't immediately interested in what I was doing or even curious. They were just like, "Oh, a guy walking through town, like, whatever," you know, but yeah, no, I met a lot of nice people. There were great moments in the Alpine. I don't know if there's a deli in Alpine. That's a lovely town, and we're very close to the Palisades, where, you know, I was eyeing this muffin. I had lunch there. I left, and then the storekeeper ran out after me to gimme the muffin, you know, to send me on my way, and this, you know, Dominican family offering me chorizo, an amazingly marinated skirt steak, and a hardware store owner in Goshen handed me a mini American flag because I was, you know, eyeing it and put it, so I put it on my pack. This was all around the 4th of July. You know, there was a lot of moments of, like, beautiful human kindness and wonderful gestures and senses of community, like this one specific night. It was my first night on this Heritage Rail Trail, and it was, like, you know, kind of late afternoon, early evening. I was pretty exhausted, and, you know, in the town of Chester, there's an old railroad depot, so I dropped my bag, and I'm kind of thinking about dinner and where I'm gonna kind of bed down for the night, and I see that the whole town, I mean, everyone, is walking briskly in the same direction with, like, lawn chairs and picnic baskets, and I'm like, okay, something's afoot here, so I kind of just followed them, and it led through the old village and into this sort of natural amphitheater that looked out over this onion field. It was the day before the 4th of July. You had a blues singer on stage. There were probably, I don't know, 400 people, and the fire department was cooking burgers, and, you know, there's a local brewery slinging beers, and it was just like this. Oh yeah, America. This is the America that, you know, everyone's always referring to. Everyone's just there together and enjoying lying on blankets and dancing, and, you know, kids blowing bubbles, and it was wonderful. It was really lovely.

[00:18:36] Brett Barry: Did you have a decent amount of cell service along the route?

[00:18:39] Casey Kelbaugh: I was surprised. I had more than expected. I didn't know that I would be kind of like in and around towns and resources for a lot of it, you know, I could replenish, I could, you know, communicate when I needed to. I also put AirTags in different places so people could track me.

[00:19:03] Brett Barry: How did you stay on the path? Did you have an app or a paper map, or how did that work?

[00:19:10] Casey Kelbaugh: That's a good question. I used AllTrails, which I thought was not particularly good for this, and I think most thru-hikers use another app, and I had 14 different printed maps that covered pretty much most of it, but frankly, I needed both. There were times when one was more useful than others or more accurate.

[00:19:33] Brett Barry: And how important were the turquoise blazes or aqua blazes?

[00:19:36] Casey Kelbaugh: Very, very, very, very, yeah, by far it was the most well-marked trail I've ever trodden, you know, and at almost any point you'd stop, you could see one ahead of you and one behind you, which is really impressive, you know, for hundreds of miles.

[00:19:53] Brett Barry: It's kind of cool to think about, especially kind of post-9/11, post-pandemic, that if you really had to, you could get back to your Catskills home if everything was closed down.

[00:20:08] Casey Kelbaugh: That is something I really wanted to try to help people understand: that this resource is unparalleled. You know, you can go from the heart of, arguably, the greatest metropolis on earth to the forever wild forests and mountains of Upstate New York, which are vast and incredible. There are two things I've—on an advocacy level I'm interested in one of which is to get a trailhead marker at the 175th Street subway station in Washington Heights, where the trailhead was moved to in 2016. There's nothing there. There's no, you know, it took me so long to get there, and I get there, and there's nothing. No, and I asked people no one had heard of it. No one knew about it, so why not make some awareness around it? So some, you know, little kid growing up in the neighborhood, going to the park right behind it, would kind of like have this thing in the back of his head. I'd love to see the first two stanzas of the Walt Whitman poem for which the trail was named on that plaque.

[00:21:12] [Song of the Open Road]: Afoot and lighthearted, I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune. Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing. Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms. Strong and content I travel the open road.

[00:21:58] Casey Kelbaugh: The second thing I'd like to see is that, somewhat like the Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, you would register with the Long Path, whether it's for a week or, you know, a weekend, even if you want it, or a longer section, and you'd get a trail tag that you put on your pack, and that would enable you to do primitive camping in the state parks that primarily close at dusk so that there was a viable way to do this without having to kind of second-guess yourself and without having to look over your shoulder to see if, you know, you were gonna get ticketed or something at any moment.

[00:22:39] Brett Barry: Yeah, so tell me about that. I know that camping, especially in the downstate, was not necessarily allowed, but you had to do it, so there's kind of a blind eye toward it.

[00:22:51] Casey Kelbaugh: It was confounding. I, you know, understood that this was a thru-hike and understood that people had done it before. I intentionally, again, didn't have a strong relationship with the trial counselor reach out to people too much in advance at all because I wanted to do this, you know, on my own terms, but I also was amazed. There was nothing really set up for camping, and I had a hammock, so I just needed two trees, 10 to 15 feet apart, and so it was really low impact and short, you know, I'd get there in the evening and leave in the morning. It was unnerving at times because, you know, I didn't know who was gonna come upon me, and I didn't know oftentimes exactly where I was because I was getting there in the evening or sometimes, you know, when it was dark. I think it would. It would scare a lot of people away. You know, I know it will, and it does, and it has for decades, so my wish is that one can register for any amount of time on the Long Path and get a trail tag they put on their pack, which enables them safe passage through all these parks that close around dusk for primitive camping and otherwise to be able to do this, you know, in an effective way where they're not looking over their shoulders and worried about getting in trouble with the law.

[00:24:12] Brett Barry: A path from the George Washington Bridge to the Catskills and beyond can't be totally picturesque from start to finish. Were there stretches that were like, am I still on the path?

[00:24:21] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, definitely. I mean, the most sort of soul-crushing part of it was coming down from Harriman and kind of near all around sort of like Monroe [Woodbury Commons area]. You kind of break left on this Heritage Rail Trail, and it's just flat as the day is long, and, you know, you do see more people, and there's a lot of activity on it, but just to walk it, you know, with a heavy pack day after day is pretty tough, and then from there you end up in sort of like suburban, like exurban, suburban, I don't know, Port Jervis for at least a day, and it's like, it's pretty-pretty tough walking because you're on roads, you know, you go past a big mine, which was really interesting and secretive and weird. There are areas where [there's] things aren't very well taken care of, you know, a lot of garbage and so forth, or people where they go to dump stuff outside of town—are there bodies? Who knows? Yeah, no, it's not all sunshine and roses, but it's definitely interesting. Every day there was something that I was really surprised to come upon, and, you know, I think just slowing down and taking the time to take things in was a big part of that, you know.

[00:25:39] Brett Barry: And you interacted with people. You stopped at Woodbury Commons for a little shopping or maybe some food?

[00:25:44] Casey Kelbaugh: I had to actually get these shorts that I'm wearing right now because I was losing weight really quickly, and nothing would stay on me, so I bought some shorts and hit the massage chair. I think a double stack of 20-minute massages. It was really wonderful.

[00:26:01] Brett Barry: Much later in the journey and within just about eight miles of his Catskills home, that massage chair must have seemed a distant memory, as the desire now was for something more elemental. That's when that spring [Casey and I were now revisiting] made its well-timed appearance.

[00:26:21] Casey Kelbaugh: The sweet, sweet sound of Catskill spring water coming directly out of the earth. In this particular case, it's coming through an old pipe that was—that just goes straight into the side of the mountain. I mean, I don't have to tell you this, but there's just no better water than this stuff. You know, my neighbor of state tested the water because we have a lot of springs around us as well. It's like off the charts clean. The pH balance is, like, perfect. It's, like, so ideal, you know.

[00:26:54] Brett Barry: Tell me about the spring as it pertains to your adventure on this Long Path.

[00:27:00] Casey Kelbaugh: So there's like two-plus days where I wasn't able to, you know, refill any water, and for someone who drinks a lot of water [cooks with water] is made out of water, I was getting a little bit uncomfortable, and I was working my way down to Phoenicia, where I knew I'd be jumping in the Esopus Creek, but this little spring was like a literal oasis or a Shangri-La moment. My very last day was actually my hardest. I climbed Mount Tremper, and then I followed the Long Path behind the part that goes behind my house, right? I climbed Edgewood Mountain, which is directly behind my house, and then bushwhacked from there to my property, so it was a few miles, and it was sort of like raining when I left, so it was really slippery, a few miles of, you know, with no trail and just using GPS and so forth, just a really challenging section of bushwhacking [through] down a slippery mountainside to my creek and across it to my house. How about you? Are you convinced? Are you gonna be hiking the Long Path anytime soon?

[00:28:18] Brett Barry: I'd like to do some sections of it.

[00:28:20] Casey Kelbaugh: Yeah, why not? It's a good place to start. In fact, I came to realize from this article how many people are doing segments of it, you know, as a group, and they're slowly completing it. There are a number of different groups that seem to be doing it piecemeal, which is also great. You know, any time spent walking in the woods is never wasted time. It's never regrettable. You know, there's always something great that comes of it, and so I think, you know, I encourage those that are interested to take it in, you know, small bits and pieces or to tackle a longer section, and it need not be the Long Path either, just whatever path is around you.

[00:29:18] Brett Barry: To read Casey Kelbaugh's New York Times article, "Walking From Manhattan to the Catskills on the 'Long Path,'" click the link in our show notes. Many thanks to Boyd Gaines for his reading of Walt Whitman's "Song of the Open Road." Transcriptions by Jerome Kazlauskas are available at kaatscast.com. In our last episode, we explored Cave Country with historian Dana Cudmore, and listeners entered to win a signed copy of his book, "The Cave Electrician's Widow: The Tragedy at Howe Caverns & Dramatic Courtroom Fight for Justice," available now from Purple Mountain Press, and the winner is Dave Losee. Congratulations! Join us next time for a profile of the Catskill Forest Association and hear how my own forest consultation led to the urgent removal of several unexpected hazard trees alongside the house. Until then, I'm Brett Barry. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:30:24] Campbell Brown: This episode is supported by Hanford Mills Museum. Explore the power of the past at their 2025 events that feature woodworking, historic machines, and even ice cream. You can find a calendar of events and more information about visiting the museum at hanfordmills.org.