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Catskill Mountains from CR 351 and Johnny Cake Road

Driving down through Westerlo on NY 143 I was looking at the Northern Catskills and thinking how much I truly miss that view, one I saw through most of my youth going to school. I really like the the wild country of Westerlo and Rensslearville, although there is more wild country even further out.

Sitting back at the overlook on the Long Path over Switz Kill Valley

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Sitting back at the overlook on the Long Path over Switz Kill Valley… ⛲

I really enjoy looking at the rural country, the hill towns I grew up in. While I doubt I’d ever want to live within an area so close to a city or even in New York, I do love 😍 the beautiful rural country. I’ve been to Partridge Run a million times, I know the land as well as any avid hunter, but living in the city I don’t get out here all that much anymore. I probably should spend more time out here, I love how the views stir my soul and the feeling I get out in the rural country but when you live in city motoring becomes such a hassle with the traffic, the cops, all the regulations. 

There is no shortage of rural remote, hilly farm and forest country in America. Even the hill towns of Albany County aren’t that unique – you can find even more wild and remote country a few miles west in Schoharie and Madison County, to say nothing of Chenango. And I know there are states with much more freedom and a very different outlook on life, with a government not so detached from rural life. Eventually I’ll be there but first I have to hike back to my truck before it gets really dark and cold out. 

I think the Albany County Rail Trail was slightly busier than the Belt Parkway this morning

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I think the Albany County Rail Trail was slightly busier than the Belt Parkway this morning… 🚲 🚶 🚶 🏃 🚲

They really need to add ramp meters to the rail trail as people are queuing up getting on an off the trail. I normally don’t hike the rail trail in nice weather because it is busy but I thought today would be quiet – a pleasant morning but still early on a Sunday morning in January with the forecast for rapidly dropping temperatures and high winds. I was wrong. The trail was packed to the gills in places with dogs, children, bicyclists and joggers. Maybe I should have instead walked out to Five Rivers Environmental Education Center but I knew it would be super swampy out there with the recent rainfall and frost thawed in the ground. 

So I got one of those Neilsen commercial surveys with a buck taped to it

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So I got one of those Nielsen commercial surveys with a buck taped to it.… 💵

I would have probably just tossed it into the paper garbage bin I have in my apartment ♻ but I opened it after reading a few years back about somebody who had tossed it in their garbage and ripped the dollar bill out when they were burning garbage out back on a farm forum. So I opened it up. ✉

I got the dollar bill and being the sucker I am I filled out the survey. They promise to send me a ten dollar check for doing it, I’ll believe it when I get it. It asked a shit ton of questions, took much too long to fill out on my smartphone 📱 but I did it anyways. I figured the youth demographic is often under represented in those kind of surveys and I always like to share my opinion. It wasn’t like I was doing anything else at the time – I was baking the qeiche in the oven.

I do most of my shopping at Walmart and occasionally tractor supply, I don’t own a television, I wildness camp and I like downloading and watching YouTube videos on dairy farming, tractors, HUNTING AND TRAPPING, skinning and butchering animals, rural life, camping, off grid homesteads and sometimes electronics – that is building shit at home with capacitors, transistors and resistors ordered from Ali Express and soldered together with lead solder. 🐮 ⛺ 🌲Not commercial television! Real people who shovel manure and preg test cattle with the long plastic gloves. Don’t watch no ads! 📺 I like Dick Curless and Dave Dudley trucker country from the 1960s. 🚚 I make good money, I’m saving to buy an off grid property and hobby farm out west. I’d rather be in the wilderness than in front of a screen, a dirt road and a roaring fire I prefer to any fancy resort or hotel. I love wilderness camping in the mountain laurel of WEST BY GOD VIRGINIA ! If I had a million dollars I’d rather have cows and an off grid house with an outhouse and burn my own trash rather than something in the suburbs with vinyl siding that would lead to the cops being called if I shot a coyote out my bedroom window.

Granted I’m probably not the typical Delmar suburbanite wanna be redneck.