The other day a friend of mine who lives in Palenville, Greene County, told me that a bookseller in Saugerties, Ulster County, with whom he was having a conversation about the Catskills told him he should contact Diane Galusha. Since you live and work in Margaretville, Delaware County, I was wondering how your name came to have a three-county reach? In other words, who are you in terms of the Catskill mountains? Well, a few people know me in Broome County, where I was raised, and a few in Dutchess County know me from the voracious year I spent working at the Culinary Institute. And I know some people in Sullivan and Otsego counties too, since I’m nosy and ask a lot of questions and people remember you when you pry. But really, I am an adopted daughter of the Catskills, a listener, a reader, a writer, an appreciator (is that a word?) of all things Catskills.

As the President of Woodchuck Lodge, can you tell us what is being done to preserve that historic site and why those of us who love the Catskills should care about its preservation? The Lodge, built in the early 1860s, is a simple little farmhouse, not unlike many you’ll find in various states of disrepair in the hills and hollows of the Catskills. But this one has been stabilized and tended to with loving care because it is a treasure with a story to tell. John Burroughs, who made the nature essay an incredibly popular literary form, spent the last ten summers of his life at the Lodge, most of it on the front porch he built, or in the barn up the road, where he wrote on a board over a packing crate. He was born nearby, in 1837, and is buried a stone’s throw away, so his roots and his heart were here on this Roxbury hillside, which hasn’t changed a whole lot since he listened to the birds singing at sunrise, and cursed those pesky woodchucks. It’s a peaceful place to celebrate or contemplate Burroughs’ amazing life, or your own.

I believe that you were once editor of an important Catskills’ newspaper. Does your newspaper work ever inform or touch upon the work that you do now? Today’s news is tomorrow’s history. I spend a lot of time looking through old papers for information about the past and have a deeper appreciation for the importance of journalistic accuracy and integrity. Reporters and editors should step back from time to time to consider whether their words, composed under deadline and other pressures, will be a genuine reflection of the times 20, 50 or 100 years from now.

Your latest book, Another Day, Another Dollar: The Civilian Conservation Corps in the Catskills, has a foreword by Bill McKibben. I admit it: I’m impressed. How did that come about? I met Bill when he spoke at John Burroughs Community Day in Roxbury in 2005. I have long admired his prescience, his steadfast commitment to environmental advocacy. His “Step It Up” campaign of 2007 to get people to pressure our government to set carbon limits and begin to do something about climate change was brilliant. Plus, he’s a fantastic writer. When I contacted him to ask if he’d write a forward to the CCC book, maybe touch on the need to bring back the CCC to help with all the environmental work we have to do, he said he’d already written an essay on that very topic that had appeared in The Nation last spring. He graciously allowed me to use it, and so I did. I sent the book to Obama with a note suggesting McKibben would make a great environmental advisor. Haven’t heard from him yet. Guess he’s been a little too busy to reply, with bank bailouts and Korean missiles and Mexican drug wars and new dogs and all.

What did Another Day, Another Dollar teach you about the Catskills? That some of the most wonderful places, the campgrounds and trails and forests we enjoy and take for granted, were built by young guys, most of them scrawny teenagers who enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps needing three quare meals a day and something useful to do. The CCC gave them a way out of poverty and hopelessness during the dark days of the Depression, and they in turn gave us these sanctuaries of peace and pleasure. We owe those guys—and the leaders who created the CCC to give them a chance at a better life—a huge debt of gratitude.

You are also the author of another important book about the Catskills, Liquid Assets. What did you learn while researching and writing that book? I learned that water is the key to our history, and to our future. And that people in the Catskills have very long memories.

Are you currently working on a new book? And if so, can you give us a sneak preview? I’m not writing any just now, but I have a reading list as long as my arm.