Fall in love with the tiny little space around you.
—Vincent Bilotta

Some years ago, I asked my friends and family not to buy me any more stuff for Christmas or my birthday or any other Hallmark-sanctioned obligatory gift giving event. No more stuff. Never again stuff. My life and apartment were literally stuffed with things that collected dust and sat forlorn and unused and—I was convinced, secretly multiplied in Gremlins style—for years and years. When I transitioned to full time Catskill Mountain life I discovered that I really needed very little: essentially, the basics. A roof over my head, food in my belly, clothes (especially thermals) to keep me warm in winter and sometimes in cool mountain summers and a pair of good hiking shoes to aid my ascent to various ridgelines and visit the wind blown hemlock, spruce and fir. All the Gucci sunglasses and the Burberry hats in the world could not give me what the air, the trees, the sunlight and the water of these mountains bestow upon me on a daily basis. My friend the digital imager, Vincent Bilotta has a way of making life sensibly beautiful. When life gets rough for him, he packs up his overnight gear and camera equipment and spends several nights atop any one of the Catskills high peaks. Usually, when he arrives back down the mountain, plonked back in the humdrum ploddings of daily living, things have worked themselves out sans his fretting and plotting.

This year’s charitable giving focuses on local organizations or people who are making a difference within the Catskill Region. Who have fallen in love with the tiny little space around them and now seek to educate, to beautify, to strengthen the local economy or lighten people’s spirits. I asked several people who live and work in the greater Catskill community for their suggestions of favorite organizations or individual people whose work involves the following: nature, agriculture, sustainability, regeneration, health, spirit, food, art, beauty, joy. They were welcome to suggest an organization or a single person—a chef, a farmer, a yoga instructor, a healer, a teacher, an artist, a gardener—anyone making a difference in the general consciousness of things. The more local the better. Here are the results, in alphabetical order.

Adaptive Sports Foundation, Windham
In recent years, the Northern Catskills have earned a reputation for winter skiing and snowboarding, and Windham Mountain offers more than just a rollicking good time on the slopes and après ski fireside drinks. Since 1984, the not-for-profit Adaptive Sports Foundation has been providing services to children and adults with cognitive and physical disabilities. Starting out as the Ski Windham Adaptive Ski Program, Gwen Allard began teaching approximately 20 students with 10 or less volunteer instructors. Since then, the Adaptive Sports Foundation has grown to 1300 student visits a year and a volunteer roster of 200 plus. As the largest adaptive sport program on the East Coast and considered among the top adaptive programs in the country, the Adaptive Sports Foundation now offers both winter and summer sports to a wide range of special needs children and adults. With a brand new Adaptive Sports Center located slopeside to Windham Mountain, they are able to provide both winter and summer sports. Activities include skiing and snowboarding seven days a week from December to March and a variety of summer camps and activities including paddling, biking, horseback riding, tennis, swimming, fishing and windsurfing. Participation in sports gives the disabled individual increased self worth and self esteem. Students are often heard saying, “If I can do this, I can do anything.”

The construction and opening of the Gwen Allard Adaptive Sports Center was only half the goal of the Adaptive Sports Foundation’s $4.5 million Capital and Endowment Campaign. The ASF’s goal now is to raise the remaining $1.5 million to establish an endowment fund. The ASF Endowment Fund will provide funding for the following areas: specialized adaptive equipment, instructor training, volunteer recruitment, outreach programs, public relations (i.e. speaking engagements and tours to rehab centers, schools and community centers to inform the disabled population of the recreational opportunities available to them), building maintenance, new program development and the general costs of the existing programs.
www.adaptivesportsfoundation.org

Ashokan Center, Olivebridge
Much ado has recently been made of Industrialized humanity’s disconnect with nature. This affliction has a name—Nature Deficit Disorder—and there is a book, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, detailing this phenomenon. Long before this current NDD realization, the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge, New York has been offering outdoor/environmental education and living history programs for school groups since 1967. A veritable pioneer in the world of outdoor education, 5,000 children now annually attend programs and many organizations and retreat groups such as Fiddle & Dance Camps, Summersongs, Wayfinders and the Northeast Herbal Association also call Ashokan their home. The Ashokan Center acknowledges that “people today are growing increasingly isolated from one another and from nature. Many feel a need for community and a sense of place,” and so the organization “serves schools, organizations, families and individuals who wish to re-connect with the natural world and with one another through shared experiences in outdoor education, living history, art, music and dance.”

Ashokan was a Field Campus of SUNY New Paltz from the 1960s until May of 2008. When the Field Campus came up for sale, the Ashokan Foundation, Inc. a tax exempt, non-profit organization, was formed by Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, musicians and songwriters who operate a music camp on site to preserve the property (read: save from development), continue the programs, develop a new vision for the future combining nature, history and the arts and to rebuild the camp as a model of sustainable/energy efficient operation and design. The Ashokan Foundation has joined together with the Open Space Institute and the NYC DEP to make these goals a reality. Why rebuild? The Ashokan Center campus was initially constructed on an island in the middle of the Esopus one half mile below the Ashokan Reservoir. Since the construction of the reservoir, the Esopus South of the reservoir is a mere trickle compared to the mighty stream that foams and gurgles its way further north, before entering the reservoir. Since the flood of 2005, the DEP has developed plans to mitigate future potential floods by opening, at will, large valves, waste channels of water—about 600 millions gallons of water a day—in necessary situations such as heavy spring snow melt or a large storm. The Ashokan Center location puts it at risk and has to early 2012 to vacate the river valley part of the campus because of its conversion by the DEP back to natural river valley habitat. The Ashokan Center’s partnership with the DEP allows them use of the land in the river valley to continue the outdoor education courses, especially unique in that the center was built around a former farm with many outbuildings such as a blacksmith’s workshop that add an historical component to the Outdoor Education. The Ashokan Center is currently in the development, design and planning stages with Ashokan Architecture to design on higher ground a new facility that blends old style architecture with modern green materials. Since the main mission of the Ashokan Center is environmental education, they believe it most appropriate to construct new buildings that take into account land stewardship and sustainability. Their goal is to create a model facility of sustainable practices from architectural aesthetic to include agriculture as a primary focus—to provide food for guests but also as a learning tool in the event that more and more people might be responsible for feeding themselves, growing food or at least buying local. A permaculturist is involved with the design of the new facility to ensure that buildings aren’t plonked down on prime farming site. Funding has been secured to recreate the square footage to basic New York State building code but the Ashokan Center wants to go further—for some degree of LEED certification which takes more funds. A fundraising program is in development.
www.ashokancenter.org

Columbia Memorial Hospital, Hudson & Ulla Darni, East Windham
In recent years, Western Medicine has come under attack for isolating and treating parts of the person, not the whole—the spirit, the physical, the emotional. Often, hospitals and care centers are bland, bleak, sterile atmospheres that tend to suck the remaining life out of both patient, staff and visitor. Think shades of corporate gray or beige or even worse, pastel rose. Columbia Memorial Hospital is doing things a bit differently. CMH is a 192-bed acute care facility that focuses on advanced surgery, primary care and health-based education and serves more than 100,000 residents in Columbia, Greene and Northern Dutchess counties. Ulla Darni is an artist renowned for her magical, some might say mystical, paintings of lumiscent flora on glass. CMH’s Hospital Administrator, the Head of Fundraising and the Head of Nursing visited Ulla’s Gallery in East Windham and saw a work of art entitled “Angel of New Light” and experienced especially strong heart energies from the painting. These three CMH staff members knew that these feelings are the ones that help people get well. The painting—a reproduction at the highest level of technology—hangs in CMH’s Family Waiting Room in their new intensive care unit. The painting measures about 4 feet high by about 6 feet wide, mounted in two parts, directly onto the window. The original is 24’’ x 36’’. One of Ulla Darni’s framed originals is now hanging on loan in ICU1, a patient room; and one of her Light Studies hangs on loan in the ICU conference room. The waiting room piece is Ulla’s donation. The work was officially received at the ICU Presentation Gala earlier this year, with wonderful compliments by the hospital staff, doctors, administrators and donors.
www.columbiamemorial.com
www.ulladarni.com

Earthbound Herbs & Acupuncture,
Kingston and Accord
Hillary Thing, MS, LAc re-designed her practice in mid-town Kingston to become a Community Acupuncture Center with a sliding scale of $15 to $35 for full treatments. A former Professor and Clinic Supervisor at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine in New York City with over ten years experience, Hillary also is one of the few acupuncturists in the country who grows her own Chinese herbs and uses them for treatment and in her line of herbal products and herbals teas. Her apothecary specializes in local, organic Asian and native herbs available in bulk, tincture, tea mixes and much more. She is co-steward with her husband Jeff Davis of of WEN Barn & Gardens where, beginning in the summer of 2009, she will begin holding classes, workshops, and apprentice training weekends. At WEN the studies of the heart, arts and earth converge in unique yoga classes like Yoga as Muse that ascribes to the belief that yoga can help access creative faculties and strengthen creative discipline. WEN also features a community yoga class in which people can donate money or eggs or a loaf of bread or whatever they want or can give, in their 19th century barn that integrate awareness of the natural world. WEN also has teaching gardens where Hillary will grow Chinese medicinal herbs and will teach acupuncturists and non-acupuncturists how to grow and process local herbs. Small workshops and classes for visiting teachers in permaculture, smart gardening, seed-saving, spiritual ecology are some of the classes planned for 2009. WEN hopes to be community hub for visionary activists who are ready to take small steps toward building workable communities and neighborhoods based on spiritual ecology, environmental justice, and social justice.
www.wenbarn.com
www.earthboundapothecary.com

Heifer International
There is a saying: Give a man a fish, you have fed him for the day; teach a man to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime. This is the inspiration behind Heifer International’s mission of ending hunger and caring for the Earth with a holistic approach to build sustainable communities. Heifer has developed a set of global initiatives—areas of emphasis that must be addressed to meet their mission of ending world hunger and poverty and caring for the earth. With over 800 projects in 50 countries, Heifer International is a varied organization with the following projects: Agroecology, Animal Well-Being, Gender Equity, Microenterprise, HIV-AIDS Education, Urban Agriculture and Young People’s Initiative. Heifer International is also active in North America and has assisted farmers in Katrina ravaged Louisiana.

In all countries Heifer’s goal is to work with the very grassroots efforts of farmer collaborations—groups of farmers who have an identified need to get greater support of resources and materials or pursue a more viable agricultural business endeavor. Heifer is essentially a granting and community development organization with the priority of creating and strengthening robust local food systems as well as food sovereignty. “Pass on the Gift” is the cornerstone of Heifer. In order to receive any sort of support, funding or training recipients have to sign a “Pass on the Gift” contract. For example, a group of farmers will come together or community members come together and have five families. The first family will receive a female heifer who hasn’t “calfed in” (given birth) yet. Once the cow calves in, she will produce milk for the family. The calf is passed on to another family and this biological passing on the gift allows for a big switch in food security level. In the United States Heifer’s work is more about providing an increase in an existing herd or giving 20 laying hens so that a family is able to start their own business endeavor in egg production or providing training in organics.

Rebecca Morgan, a New Farmer Senior Specialist based in Heifer’s Walton offices helps new farmers—both city folks with resources but no knowledge and rural folks with knowledge but no resources—and immigrant farmers across the country get access to land, capital, equipment to make their initial foray into farming viable. Her job is to bolster and empower farmers and create a robust agricultural landscape. Heifer allows Rebecca to work from home with flexible 9 am to 3 pm work schedule with two pick-up hours either before 7 am or after 7 pm when her children are in bed.
www.heifer.org

Hunter Foundation, Hunter
Bearing witness to buildings slowly collapsing into ruin—pelted by snow, baked by the summer sun, drenched with rain—can provoke something of a heartache. A little over one hundred years ago, the northern Catskill villages of Hunter and Tannersville were the country’s premiere vacation spots. Grand hotels perched atop lofty peaks. Boarding houses were hubs of summer social activities. Many of the buildings—Victorian and Colonial architectural gems—are still standing but have lapsed into disrepair since the area’s glories have long since faded. The Hunter Foundation, established in 1997, is dedicated to improving the Town of Hunter through beautification of the corridor of Route 23A that runs through Hunter and Tannersville. The Hunter Foundation purchases, renovates and sells residential and commercial properties in the area at cost. The Foundation also aids others in upgrading their property. The goal is to beautify Route 23A, by providing attractive housing for local residents, and by making renovated space available to businesses. Architecturally valuable buildings will be given a priority and the goal will be to make a significant contribution to the character of the area with each project. Buildings will be renovated in a way that is consistent with a Victorian and Colonial style. During its nine years of existence, the Foundation has renovated or contributed to the renovation of over 85 buildings in the Town of Hunter. Another success is an award in the amount of $400,000 from the Governor’s Office for Small Cities to implement the “Rip Van Winkle Trail Micro-Enterprise Program,” which provided grant monies to create new businesses, invigorate established businesses and ultimately create 22 new jobs. Thus far, the Micro-Enterprise Program has provided assistance to six existing businesses and has aided the start-up of eight new area businesses.
www.hunterfoundation.org

Mountaintop Arboretum, Tannersville
Gardens provide respite, beauty, safe haven, contemplation and healing in a world where the opposite is usually the norm. The Mountaintop Arboretum is a public garden 2500 feet above sea level in the rugged northern Catskill Mountains that is open dawn to dusk every day of the year. Native trees, shrubs and wildflowers live side-by-side with exotic transplants hardy enough to survive the elevation and harsh climate. The Mountaintop Arboretum is an active cultural resource in the Region, offering lectures and programs on nature, the arts, and local history. They grow trees and shrubs and experiment to see which will be the hardiest and healthiest in the northern part of the Catskill Mountains. MTA has an American Chestnut plantation as part of the national effort to develop blight-resistant chestnuts that will be hardy locally. They showcase green growing practices and demonstrate ecologically sound garden practices like rain gardens and meadow-lawns. Educational programs, as well as admission, is free. The Arboretum is one of the most lovely spots in the Region to stroll or sit and contemplate the natural beauty and peace of the Catskill Mountains. The Arboretum is an open space for all to enjoy, a living museum and an ongoing research project.
www.mtarbor.org

Mt. Tremper Arts, Mt. Tremper
For millennia, the act of breaking bread with others has held significance as a way of communing, of welcome, of shared experience. Only in this century and in the one prior has the spiritual act of eating as a family, a group of friends or community and with it the nourishment of shared laughter and banter surrendered to the myopic, industrial view of food as mere fuel to continue the materialistic drive to produce and consume. Mt. Tremper Arts was founded by fine art photographer Mathew Pokoik and choreographer Aynsey Vandenbroucke, artists who work both in New York City and upstate. They wanted to integrate the two experiences and are dedicated to supporting both the solitude of making artistic work and the community needed to share it. The mountains invite a sense of time and space that is different from New York City. Something happens when artists have access to beautiful and private workspace and playtime. Work develops in the studio and around the fire. A different sense of community grows. MTA celebrated a successful first season in the summer of 2008. Gardens designed by Mathew are an integral part of the milieu of the artists’ residency and factor in several of the performances and art installations. In Mathew’s own words: “Our core mission is to support and sustain a community of leading contemporary artists, to provide them with intensive time and space to create new works of art, while also building an audience for challenging works of art among our Catskill community. As the contemporary artistic community has become an international community, we believe there is both great need and great value in re-injecting some good old locally grown flair. In the spirit of promoting artistic and intellectual exploration and risk-taking, what could be better than good food and drink, and the conversations that emerge amidst our mountain setting at MTA. While the general public might experience a leading contemporary dance company exploring new directions in movement-based art. That same company is being cared for while in residency with meals grown in our gardens or from local farms, late night discussions by the campfire, and the space/time to slow down which is sorely missed in the big city.”
mttremperarts.wordpress.com

NY/NJ Trail Conference
Anyone who has every attempted—in an inspired spurt of wilderness spirit—a bushwack up a Catskill Mountain knows firsthand the relative luxury of hiking along a maintained, marked trail. Thank the folks at the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference, a federation of 104 hiking clubs and environmental organizations and 10,000 individuals dedicated to building and maintaining marked hiking trails and protecting related open space in the bi-state region. They are also dedicated to providing recreational hiking opportunities in the region, and representing the interests and concerns of the hiking community. This volunteer-directed public service organization develops, builds and maintains hiking trails, protects hiking trail lands through support and advocacy and educates the public in the responsible use of trails and the natural environment. Constituent clubs have a combined membership of over 100,000. The NY/NJ Trail Conference maintains all of the Catskill and Shawangunk trails and publish the tyvek maps that are the standards to which all hiking books refer.
www.nynjtc.org

Regional Food Bank, Latham
The Regional Food Bank, located in Latham, New York, has been helping to feed the poor and hungry in our communities since 1982. It is the only organization of its kind in northeastern New York. The Food Bank collects large donations of food from the food industry and distributes it to charitable agencies serving hungry and disadvantaged people in 23 counties. From Plattsburgh to Newburgh, in urban, rural and suburban communities, the Food Bank provides nearly 20 million pounds of food a year to over 1,000 agencies. The mission of the Regional Food Bank is to be a leader in reducing hunger and alleviating poverty. They work toward this mission by ensuring that all products available for donation reach the Food Bank and are distributed judiciously to member agencies; by practicing responsible stewardship, and by actively participating in the community to increase awareness of hunger and poverty. Folks who donate food and non-perishables include farmers, manufacturers, retailers and wholesalers, and the recipients include organizations like food pantries, soup kitchens, emergency shelters, youth programs, senior programs and programs for the disabled that feed children, single parents, seniors, working poor households, unemployed people and homeless people. New York State counties served include Albany, Clinton, Columbia, Delaware, Duchess, Essex, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Hamilton, Montgomery, Orange, Otsego, Putnam, Rensselaer, Rockland, Saratoga, Schenectady, Schoharie, Sullivan, Ulster, Warren and Washington.
www.regionalfoodbank.net

Ridgley Vivekananda Ashram, Stone Ridge
Yoga is a term familiar to many people these days, but the yoga usually referred to is Hatha yoga, the practice of body postures to prepare the body— tomake it limber and allow the Prana or life force to flow—for meditation. Yoga also is a way or path of coming into union with divine. There are four distinct types of yoga: Gyana Yoga—the path of knowledge, Bhakti Yoga—the path of devotion, Karma Yoga—the path of action and Raj Yoga—the path of meditation and inner silence. At the Vivekenanda Retreat at Ridgley in Stone Ridge, a new Sadhana or practice, meditation is materializing. The Green Yoga Sadhana initiative aims to create a true community garden based on permaculture principles and Eastern philosophy practice to benefit local people in need of good, fresh food. Green Sadhana Yoga is a group of locals who share interest in food and agriculture and eastern philosophy and a concern about state of world and the possibility of going off the grid and growing their own vegetables. Some members are from the High Falls Co-op, or from the sustainable farming sector, or have knowledge in passive solar housing or alternative affordable energies. The belief behind the Green Yoga Sadhana is an acknowledgement of the spiritual aspect of the environment—that a person can’t just meditate but has to be concerned with and active within the environment. One can’t say God is in everything if one is still abusing the environment. The group hasn’t developed a practical program yet but practice ancient Vedic chants as part of Bhakti Yoga.

The Ridgley Vivekananda Ashram has been located in Stone Ridge for 10 years, housed in an old family estate that includes the manor house and two side buildings. The estate’s historical significance is in its former resident, the Hindu Swami Vivekenanda. A great national hero in India, Vivekenanda arrived penniless in San Francisco, journeyed to the Chicago Exposition of 1893 and gave a speech so popular as to put him on national circuit. Already at that time people were interested in eastern spirituality. Frank Leggett, the owner of Ridgely, was at the World’s Fair, met and made friends with Vivekananda invited him back to his estate in Stone Ridge where “Swami Vivekananda spent in all at least twelve weeks of rest and revitalization at that beautiful estate, speaking day and night of God and of things of the Spirit, transporting those around him.” Now, Ridgley is a pilgrimage site for disciples of Ramakrishna, a19th century Svengali holy man, and Vivekananda. Ridgely is operated by the Ramakrishna order, a small order comprised of five main members who keep up the buildings and the grounds. Anyone at all—regardless of spiritual belief—can come and stay. The atmosphere is low-key and familial, with shared meals in the manor house, classes on weekends and evenings and mostly quiet time. Since Ridgely is a pilgrimage site, oftentimes Indian musicians will visit, stay in residence for a few weeks and perform as benefit concerts open to the public.www.ridgely.org

Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper
Located on 230 acres in the Catskill Mountains, the Zen Mountain Monastery is the main house of the Mountains and River Order of Zen Buddhism. The Zen Environmental Studies Institute is a not-for-profit religious corporation that exists to provide training, education and practice of Zen Buddhism and its relationship to the environment. It sponsors and conducts workshops, training and research on the environment and the teachings of the insentient. It provides space, facilities and opportunity for teachers, students and researchers in environmental work and ecology to interface and practice meditation, study nature and the teachings of the insentient in relationship to the teachings of Buddhism. The thrust of the Zen Environmental Studies Institute programs is based on trust of the inherent intelligence of wildness. For almost 4 billion years, earth has been functioning as an intelligent self-organizing, self-maintaining organism that supports life-sustaining relationships. If left undisturbed, this web of life ultimately creates an ecological balance for life processes. It provides diversity and balance without producing non-degradable waste nor contemporary society’s abusiveness and exploitation of people and places. This year in 2008 the Zen Mountain Monastery tripled the size of its vegetable gardens and added a hoop greenhouse to grow winter vegetables in hopes of reducing its carbon footprint by not trucking in vegetables. For the very first time they are aiming to become self-sustaining for residents and retreat participants with all of the farming accomplished in an organic way with the help of one of the residents who has extensive experience in organic gardening.

The ZMM has plans for a new building called Dragon Hall—a space needed to explore the growing interest in the relationship between spirituality, Zen Buddhism and the arts. The LEED-certified building will minimize reliance on fossil fuels and the impact on the natural environment with the following design elements: super-insulated exterior walls, geothermal heating and cooling, solar panels to generate energy for heat pumps, windows protected by louvers adjusted to the movement of the sun, day-lit interior spaces with natural ventilation, A central operable skylight providing continuous airflow from the outside, floors made of local bluestone and suffused with radiant heat. Appropriately, the Dragon Hall will house the Zen Environmental Studies Institute.
www.mro.org/zmm/index.php