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Kaatscast: the Catskills Podcast is a biweekly series featuring Catskills culture, history, sustainability, local interviews, literature, and the arts. Shows are hosted by Brett Barry and produced by Silver Hollow Audio, in the heart of the Catskills. Subscribe and experience what reviewers have called “delightfully informative” storytelling with “great production quality.” Voted “Best Regional Podcast” three years in a row. Episode archives, transcripts, and a robust search engine at kaatscast.com. Enjoy!
[00:00:00] Brett Barry: "The autumn leaves are too heavy with color. The slender trees on the Vulcan Road are dressed in scarlet and gold like young courtesans waiting for their lovers, but soon the winter winds will strip their bodies bare, and then the sharp, sleet-stung caresses of cold will be their only love." That's "Poème d'Automne" by Langston Hughes. I'm Brett Barry, and this is "Kaatscast" with an ode to fall in the Catskills. We're pairing up for peak color with our friends at the Cidiot podcast for fall discoveries on both sides of the river. Tune in to Cidiot for a deep dive into the science of leaf color with Dr. Amy Zanne, a senior scientist with the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. It's a fascinating conversation, and here at "Kaatscast," we're speaking with guests west of the Hudson about what fall means to them and favorite Catskill spots for taking in the colors. To begin, I thought we might all benefit from a brush-up of our own on the science behind the colors, so I headed over to our local grade school for a little classroom time with their environmental scientist in residence.
[00:01:32] [Intercom]: Hello, how may we help you?
[00:01:33] Brett Barry: Hi, I'm here to meet with Matt Savatgy. I'm Brett Barry.
[00:01:36] [Intercom]: Oh, sure, come on in!
[00:01:37] Brett Barry: Thank you.
[00:01:41] Matt Savatgy: My name is Matt Savatgy. I work for Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program. I am the youth and community education leader there, so I've been working here in the Onteora School District for almost 20 years now as the environmental scientist in residence, and so I do a lot of work with the kids trying to get them outside on the nature trails and learning about natural history and all things science.
[00:02:10] Brett Barry: So I think fall colors, the colors of fall foliage, is a phenomenon that we all learned about in school, and most of us probably forgot the mechanics of it. Can you remind us why the leaves change?
[00:02:25] Matt Savatgy: Absolutely...
[00:02:25] Brett Barry: What's happening on a biological level? It's not just to show off its colors.
[00:02:32] Matt Savatgy: ...and it's timely. Not only is it about to be fall, but it's a topic that we talk about here at school frequently, so I get this question a lot because people see the amazing colors here in the Catskills that are going to start popping out here in just a few weeks, and that's the big question: "Why do leaves change color?" Well, they actually don't change color, most of them, so plants [trees are plants] make their food in their leaves, and they do that by absorbing sunlight and taking in water and carbon dioxide and using the energy from the sun, they convert that into sugar, which is their food, and then they give off oxygen as a byproduct. In order to attract the sunlight, they create chlorophyll, that green pigment that makes everything look so dark green all summer long, spring and summer long. Well, as we get into fall and the days start to get shorter and the temperature starts to change and the angle of the sun changes, it sort of tells the trees that winter's on the way, and so deciduous trees, the trees that have broad, wide leaves, are the ones that start reacting to that by—they stop making chlorophyll, and so that green pigment goes away, and what's revealed is the actual color of the leaf underneath, right? So you're seeing those oranges and those yellows and all those amazing colors reveal themselves to the world. That's the color they were. They just got covered up by that green pigment. Now, the bright reds and some of the purples we see as the result of a chemical reaction that happens when some of the sugar gets trapped in the leaf, and when it's exposed to sunlight, there's a reaction that happens that creates that really bright red and those maroons and purple colors as well, but that's basically what's going on.
[00:04:14] Brett Barry: Why cease production of chlorophyll? Isn't this something that could be useful throughout the year to continue producing food and energy?
[00:04:22] Matt Savatgy: Great question. So the trees in our area, we live in what's called a mixed forest, right? So we have two main groups of trees. We have deciduous trees and we have evergreen trees. Evergreen trees—most people think of pine trees, but any tree that has a needle-shaped leaf in our area would be considered an evergreen. Deciduous trees are trees that have broad, wide leaves, and one of their defense mechanisms that they figured out is that they have to shed their leaves every year and go into a state of dormancy for the winter. You've seen occasions when we've gotten early snowfalls, and there's still leaves on some deciduous trees, and they're all bent over, or we get a bad ice storm, and the branches start snapping off, and all this happens so if the leaves stayed on the tree all year long and the snow got on them, it would damage and potentially kill the tree, so it's their way of dealing with winter, almost like hibernating. They go dormant for the winter. They're using the stored energy from all that sugar that they built up all spring and summer, and then once things start to warm up in the late winter and early spring, those sugars start moving around, and people like to take advantage of that, especially with maple trees, and tap into that sugar and make some maple syrup and what have you.
[00:05:35] Brett Barry: Can you talk about the variations in color based on the species of tree and how that plays into it?
[00:05:40] Matt Savatgy: Yeah, so, you know, the two broad categories, the deciduous and the evergreen, all have their individual species within those groups, and you know a lot of the names, things like maples and oaks and beech and ash and birch and so on, are all examples of deciduous trees. There's many, many more. Well, they each have their own distinctive characteristics, just like we see in animals. You know, you have groups of animals like mammals who have similar characteristics, but they all have unique traits, so the leaf color is individualized based on the tree species.
[00:06:13] Brett Barry: Okay, so some fall seasons, the colors are magnificent, and they last a long time, and then others not so much. They kind of just go straight to brown and/or fall off very quickly, so what is it about the weather or the season characteristics that impacts that kind of color change?
[00:06:32] Matt Savatgy: Yeah, that's the big question. A lot of people are worried that this year things aren't going to be so bright and vibrant, and it has a lot to do with the weather conditions in the spring and summer. The last few years we've experienced a lot of drought conditions in the summer, where it hasn't rained much going into the fall, and so a lot of trees will start their shutting down process early and even shed their leaves before they even change color as a defense mechanism because they don't have enough water, so things like drought, but also on the other side, too much rain can impact as well, so one of the things we saw this year was we had a lot of rain, we had a dry spell in the spring, but then we had a lot of rain. We had a dry July but a very rainy August, and so when the forest is wet and stays wet, that allows things like, you know, fungus to develop on the leaves of trees, so we often see maple trees have these black spots on them occasionally. People are seeing that a lot this year. That's a fungus. It's not going to kill the tree, but it does impact this year's development of the tree in terms of how much food it produces and how much it'll grow, and so when trees have a fungal infection on their leaves, they often won't have bright, vibrant colors, and those leaves will come off a lot sooner.
[00:07:45] Brett Barry: Is there something happening this time of year that is concentrating those sugars down so that it's kind of like a pre-winter injection to make sure that those trees have enough food? Is something happening at a greater rate than when the leaves are actively converting sugars throughout the whole summer and warm season?
[00:08:04] Matt Savatgy: So unless the tree is having some sort of issue—lack of sun, got damaged in a storm, something like that—the sugar production, if it's getting what it needs, if it's getting enough water, if it's getting enough sunlight, if it's getting carbon dioxide, the production rate is going to be pretty, pretty steady throughout the season, and what it does is it makes the sugar in the leaf, and then it moves it down the trunk of the tree and stores it in the roots, and then those sugars will move around throughout the winter and next spring to give the tree the energy that it needs to come out of dormancy and start its process all over again, which is kind of amazing.
[00:08:45] Brett Barry: When I think of, you know, places to go for the best fall foliage, it's really New England, the Northeast. Is this a phenomenon that is special to our area? Where else in the world does this happen, and maybe not even the same, so, you know, how unique is the situation for us who happen to be here?
[00:09:06] Matt Savatgy: Yeah, so we like to think of the Northeast, particularly New England, as the sweet spot in the United States for this to occur, but it happens out west as well, particularly in the northern western latitudes, but it actually has to do with where a place is on the Earth relative to the equator, so if you move around the Earth at our latitude to places like South Korea or, you know, other parts of the world that are at the same latitude as us, trees are doing the same kinds of things. The biology is very similar. People travel around the world, and they're often surprised when they end up in places, and they say, "Wow, this is a lot like the Catskills," or "This is a lot like home," and again, latitude factors in the angle of the sun, you know, how much direct sunlight a plant is receiving, and as we move into the fall, you know, North America is starting to face away from the sun at an angle that it doesn't get direct sunlight.
[00:10:02] Brett Barry: What are some of your favorite places in the Catskills to catch those colors?
[00:10:06] Matt Savatgy: Yeah, there are some obvious amazing places to go that aren't and don't require too much work. Places like the Escarpment at North Lake, locally here for almost no work, if you visit the Ashokan Quarry Trail within 10 minutes, you get to this—Overlook that gives you almost, not quite, I would say, about 180-degree view of the Ashokan Watershed in this part of the Catskills in Ulster County, and there's barely any man-made objects to see. Another favorite of mine that is a little more work-intensive is Giant Ledge, not too far from Slide Mountain. Overlook Mountain, obviously, if you're willing to trudge up the dirt road to the top, is a beautiful place. There are so many places. You could list a million.
[00:10:54] Brett Barry: What do you like most about working with this group, this age range, and the questions that come up on things like fall foliage and, I'm sure, a whole range of other science questions?
[00:11:05] Matt Savatgy: Yeah, absolutely. So as we're here at Bennett School, I've reminded the kids for years how lucky they are to go to school in an environment like this. You know, when you go out on the playground here, and you take in that vista, you know, formerly Phoenicia School, you take in the vista there. You can't help but appreciate where we live, especially as we get into October, and everything is starting to pop and look amazing, and that's when all those questions start coming. You know, so trees is a big, big topic that we cover in the fall with those grade levels, and we're outside. We're investigating. We're asking those questions. The thing I like best about this age range is they're old enough to get it, but they're not too old yet to be disinterested in it, so they're excited about it, and they also have the ability to understand what's going on, which is exciting.
[00:11:57] Brett Barry: Two summers ago, "Kaatscast" visited the Platte Clove community of the Bruderhof, a worldwide community of 3,000 Christians who, inspired by the early church, share their money and possessions and practice full-time discipleship. To get a feel for fall on the mountaintop, I returned to the community and reconnected with our episode guest, Milton O'Connell.
[00:12:22] Milton O'Connell: So we live right on the Eastern Escarpment, and if you climb up any of the Catskill Mountains that immediately surround us, you'd be looking down toward the Hudson River and the valley and across at the different mountains, which include Indian Head and Plattekill Mountain and Kaaterskill High Peak. Those are the most eastern of the mountains right around us. I'm very blessed to have five children, and we often hike on the weekends and live in a very beautiful area for that, of course, and the typical hikes that we do just about every fall might include up to Kaaterskill High Peak, which, like I mentioned, is a beautiful mountain that looks down over the Catskills across from it and then down into the valley, and then we occasionally do the Indian Head Mountain, which is a bit of a longer hike, but one of our favorites is Plattekill, which I think I mentioned, and it's not the Plattekill Ski Mountain over near Roxbury. It's a smaller mountain in between Overlook and Indian Head, and if it were a nicer day today, you could see that, the shoulder of the mountain, there's old bluestone quarries that are just beautiful, and in the fall with the leaves, there's no place better. One place that I've definitely enjoyed hiking, in fact, just last fall I did that with my youngest son, is a place called Dibbles Quarry, which is up on the shoulder of Twin Mountain. Many local people know it as a beautiful spot to peer down across the valley. So that type of, maybe a shorter hike, but just where you can take your time and enjoy the blue sky and the yellow leaves. That's how I celebrate fall, so each year we celebrate the autumn season by having a fall festival, and this year it's going to be on October 3rd, which is a Saturday, and the public is very welcome to that. It runs from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM, and we have hayrides and pumpkin carving, cider making, and all kinds of fall activities, mostly for the children. Every season I've raked a big leaf pile behind the house, and my kids, especially my youngest son, who's going into third grade, up on top of the picnic table, jumping into that pile, doing flips, and rolling through the leaves, like every fall. Just the simple things are what they enjoy the most. You know, I got to remember that too. My older son is in a soccer club down near Esopus, so we do a lot of driving, and that's also a fun thing to do. The kids love it and get together for soccer and practicing, but you can also enjoy the things right next to you just as much.
[00:15:12] Brett Barry: To hear more from Milton and other members of his community, just search for our episode entitled "Bruderhof: A Christian Community in the Platte Clove." We'll link to it in the show notes. Crossing from Greene to northern Ulster County, I checked in with artist and friend, Christie Scheele, who describes her minimalist landscapes as having a sense of being suspended between two breaths.
[00:15:41] Christie Scheele: I'm Christie Scheele, and we are in my Chichester painting studio, by the Ox Clove Stream, surrounded by my work. What's important to me in my painting is to create an experience for the viewer, so I want to draw somebody in, and then they can have their own experience, and that's one of the reasons why I don't create a very brushy surface, which tends to bring the viewer's mind to the artist and their hand. I kind of want to step out after I've created the piece so that somebody else can have an experience. I invite the viewer in by reducing detail, particularly often in the front of the canvas, and by creating subtle color shifts. I kind of relate to the color field painters actually more than traditional landscape, but there's a bit of a koan in that the inspiration for every painting starts with a view, and so it's all about that view, but then when I start painting, the priority has to be the painting. It has to be the compositional elements that move the eye around that help create that experience. It has all the problem-solving of the painting has to be the focus to create the kind of sort of serene intensity of what I'm after, and very often in that process, the details of the view itself sometimes have to get dropped out in order to get the look that I'm after and the feel that I'm after, so I can have a discussion about painting fall and enjoying fall on its own terms with no plan. I do paint fall, but the Catskills version of fall runs a little bit counter to how I compose my paintings, so I have painted fall—California, other places that have broad swaths of field, and I do tend to pick those places in the Catskills as well. Coming down from Mohonk Mountain, there's this huge bend in the road that goes all the way around a big field, and then the Catskills are in the distance. That's a favorite place to paint because the field has all of the warm color in it, and it's kind of more unified, the way that I like to handle my color field paintings, but the trees—that are so outstanding that we love to look at [that we actually glory in] in the fall—they get a little polka-dotty, and they have a lot of detail to them to be handled properly, or if you're a painter that works in a very brushy style, that can address that kind of grouping of light, almost clumpings of light, much better than my open areas with subtle color shifts, so I do paint the things in the Catskills that work for the way I paint, and I do often appreciate the late fall when most of the leaves are down. The oak trees still have their deep red leaves, which kind of unite with the browns of the trees that have lost their leaves, and especially on a rainy day, that can glisten those reds, and I do love painting that. So what happens, though, often when I'm just driving and enjoying the views and the really sparkling and varied color, is almost more like a Buddhist "be here now" kind of moment. I'm just there enjoying it. I'm not planning anything around it. I'm just in the moment, and that's a gift, and I love doing that with other things that I don't paint, like, for example, a butterfly. It's not an issue for me at all, but it is kind of interesting that our most outstandingly, gloriously beautiful season is one that I paint a little bit less. One of the views that I love from above is the view from West Kill, or there are similar ones a little bit lower closer to home for me, and that's stunning looking over at Slide, Cornell, and Wittenberg, but a lot of the fall glory happens just in the very common experience of driving around, so for me, there's a lot of 28s in both directions, but especially heading west on 28, you find enough openness that's why they built the road there that the light really comes in, and you can see out, unlike the little roads where you're really in the woods. Moving west, things shift, and there are some areas where there are larches, which are absolutely magical trees, so you'll see them in the late fall, and they just pop out so beautifully. They always almost take me by surprise, like how can they even be here? They're so amazing, and I think I wasn't aware of them in my childhood, and that's part of it that there's this amazing species. Yeah, I think it's driving. It's this constantly changing, and so you take a hike, and you get up to a view. That's a lovely thing to do, but it's a view, and when you're driving, it's just constantly something new happening. The light might change as well. The weather might change while you're driving, so I think that's when I most enjoy it, particularly on a sunny day when it's earlier fall, but later fall, the rain can make the colors look absolutely amazing.
[00:21:24] Brett Barry: Christie has an episode of her own on this podcast and was also a guest on our arts and culture audio driving tour, which you can call up at drive28.com. Moving from paint to photography, we called up Casey Kelbaugh, who we profiled in an episode about a hike he chronicled in The New York Times. The episode is called "Walking the Long Path: From Manhattan to the Catskills," and again, we'll link back to it in the show notes.
[00:21:57] Casey Kelbaugh: My name is Casey Kelbaugh. I'm a photographer based between New York City and the Catskill Mountains. I run and own a photo agency. We work a lot with arts and culture and in the tech and business community, and October brings my ten-year anniversary of being rooted in Edgewood in the Catskill Mountains as well. It's a dream. In my opinion, I think it's the best of both worlds. When given the opportunity to sneak away for some autumn glory, I will do so, even if it's, you know, an eighteen-hour stretch in between meetings and shoots, or if I can stretch things out to a week or more, that's even better, but, you know, the drive. I love watching the sort of progress into the future I guess you could call it as you drive up through the Palisades and the Thruway and Route 28 and beyond. Yeah, I find it really fascinating just to watch how things change, not even week-to-week, but day-to-day, and I find that actually throughout the entire year, especially if you're given, like, breaks or, you know, by a few days or a week between when you're observing, you know, there's always a different species that's out and about, a flower that you didn't expect or a leaf turning, or, you know, a series of trees shedding their leaves at the same time. It's really exciting to watch how things are just constantly in motion, and fall is a huge part of that. I mean, it's obviously one of the—perhaps the most dramatic expressions of that. For those fall foliage fanaticists out there that want to capture it on film or on their digital camera devices, I often recommend days that are a little more overcast tend to provide a really rich palette that's a little more subtle and nuanced, especially kind of closer to dawn or sunset, you know, dusk. You get a really kind of moody and rich palette that I think is really appealing. As well, you know, if you can capture sort of peak foliage on a really bright blue sky day, then that's fantastic. You're probably going to be contending with a lot of contrast, and if you have the ability to pop your flash or use some kind of fill lighting, that will be really advantageous to you, especially if you're trying to include people in the photograph. When photographing with your mobile device or your iPhone, ideally you would shoot in the highest resolution possible, and you can go, you know, do that through your camera settings, but, you know, whatever your storage will allow, just to get the most detail and most information as possible in the photograph, I don't use filters, nor do I have great experience with the recent release of different types of filters. Sometimes I'll try the kind of auto adjustments. I find they're always adding contrast where I don't want it. In many cases, I'm actually reducing the contrast as opposed to increasing, and I think that'll give you a lot more latitude in terms of detail in the darker tones. Sometimes I will use a tiny bit of saturation and vibrance, just add just a little bit or even remove it, but, you know, with this kind of, like, with these really bright colors, you don't want it to look like "Candy Land" too much, so if you really bump it, it just looks false, but lastly, I like to, the very last setting in the iPhone is vignette, and that just will darken or brighten the corners a little bit, and I like to just put one or two or three points of darkening around the edges just to draw the eye into the frame of the image, and it's a really subtle thing that doesn't happen in the auto setting. It's a nice addition. My favorite walk to do in the fall. In order to really do it perfectly, you leave a car at the far end as well, and in this case, it would be driving to the end of Diamond Notch Road parking there and walking up through the Diamond Notch Valley over the saddle, and that area, if you have never seen it, is just stunning, especially if, you know, you're going along these old rock walls and alongside a beautiful creek. The tree cover is stunning. It's not a very challenging hike. I mean, it's a few miles, but it's a gentle trip over this saddle. Then, you descend on the other side into West Kill Valley. You find yourself at Diamond Notch Falls. Also, it's a crossroads of a number of big trails like the Devil's Path, and then the final stretch of, I don't know, maybe it's another mile or half mile. I think it's just basically, you know, a complete maple leaf canopy above you. I'm sure there's other species in there too, but it just can be an absolute firestorm of color, and you end up at the West Kill Trailhead, which is about a half mile from the West Kill Brewery, and to, you know, climb that hill and end up with a Kaaterskill IPA or a Brookie lager in your hand overlooking the whole valley, and all of the, you know, the remarkable tree cover and foliage across the valley is a really splendid afternoon, so you can go all the way over the saddle and back to Diamond Notch, or you can access it from the West Kill side and just do West Kill Trailhead to the falls, and there's a lot of iterations in there too. You know, you could climb over from Hunter Mountain, over Becker—from Becker Hollow—and come drop down in there. Any of those, I highly recommend this time of year. You'll be handsomely rewarded.
[00:28:10] Brett Barry: Four years ago, "Kaatscast" profiled pharmacist Ed Ulman and what would become the first nonprofit pharmacy in the nation. Ed started Wellness Rx in Tannersville, and it's since relocated to Main Street, Phoenicia, where it's established itself as a steady source of care for the community. We'll link to the original show entitled "Wellness Rx: A Prescription for Rural Healthcare," but now we're off to Phoenicia, where Ed shares some of his thoughts on fall.
[00:28:45] Ed Ulman: Hey, my name's Ed Ulman, and I'm the pharmacist at Wellness Rx at downtown Main Street, Phoenicia. Well, it's my favorite season, and I would argue that anyone who's been in the Catskills, especially where we are with the Romantic Mountains, would also probably see fall as one of the most beautiful. There is a ramp up to fall, which is where we are. We'll start in about a week or so, and there is a more silent energy that people start to feel. Everything is green, and then all of a sudden there's the beginning of the burst of color, and everybody gets excited because you don't know what kind of season we're going to have. Is this going to be a "WOW!" season, or is it going to be nice? But when it becomes a "WOW!" season, it is the most beautiful beauty that you could see, and it's also a beautiful time of reflection and walking and trying to put things in order with this magic all around us, so boy, I'm getting excited.
[00:30:01] Audio: [MUSIC STARTS]
[00:30:01] Ed Ulman: So our bodies are going to be shifting too now, the change of the season. We are going to get colder weather. There's going to be antigens coming from all over in the air, so the allergy season is just beginning. We'll be introducing more antigens with heat and fuel, which many people are allergic to. Everyone will react differently. Number one, boost your immune system. We just are coming off of two bad years of the flu, and especially for seniors, or anyone who's out dealing with the public, I would recommend very much getting a flu shot. Now's a very good time, right into October, and then the flu season should last right through April. COVID is different. COVID is a year-round virus that we have not come out of COVID—as well as I was hoping that we would. The American healthcare system is still struggling quite a bit, so we have to become more and more of our best investigator. I think, for COVID, anyone at high risk is very, very highly recommended to get a COVID booster, and that generally lasts for about a six-month period of time. If you are a senior, we also would highly recommend that you consider getting a booster. A little bit more optional for people under 65 who are not sick or have not had a bad experience with COVID. The flu shot, though, I think it would be highly recommended for everyone. The more that we're prepared with a strong immune system, and it could be as simple as elderberry, which is antiviral and also a good immune system, the mushroom tinctures—zinc is excellent. Vitamin D in a higher dose is excellent, and as you build that up, you then are better prepared than when you are taking in these antigens or a suspicious virus. The body has a better chance to attack it and kill it before it takes over, and I think early detection of when you're not feeling too good and not getting enough hydration or maybe not enough rest—then your immune system needs to be even stronger, and if one does that, yeah, we can get through this season.
[00:32:27] Audio: [MUSIC STARTS]
[00:32:28] Ed Ulman: Right, going in Mount Tremper on 212 and 28, when you just make that turn and you look up at that, at beautiful Tremper Mountain, that is as magnificent as it gets. You're right in the vortex. I also very much like the up in the mountaintop up by Hunter and driving the roads all the way there. It is quite beautiful, and I think also the side roads people should not miss because that's sometimes where the greatest action is.
[00:33:01] Audio: [MUSIC ENDS]
[00:33:05] Brett Barry: For our final segment, all we had to do was cross Main Street and enter the Phoenicia branch of Ulster Savings Bank, where branch manager, Samantha Awand-Gortel, offered some tips on fall finance and, of course, her favorite spots to take in the colors of the season.
[00:33:24] Samantha Awand-Gortel: Hi, I am Samantha Awand-Gortel, manager of the Phoenicia branch of Ulster Savings Bank, and a lifelong resident here in the Catskills. Some of my favorite things about the fall around here growing up as a kid were when you raked the leaves and you jumped in that big pile of leaves. I think that was probably one of the best. Fall means to me the change in the season, the end of the summer, the end of the busy season, going into beautiful fall foliage, and then unfortunately winter. I think the fall brings people into, like, the realities of—it gets a little bit more expensive in the winter, which follows fall, but this is the time of year you want to start doing home improvements, you know, getting ready for the winter season, saving up money to pay for the higher fuel and electric costs, and, you know, at Ulster Savings, it's a good time of year to start looking into home equity loans or other sort of lending opportunities, as well as, like, a Swipe and Save, where your change on your card when you purchase something goes into a savings account. You kind of don't miss it. A lot of people don't use cash, so it's a good way to collect your coins and your change, and then also we do have a new feature for a budget bundle. It's three accounts that you open. One's to pay your bills, one's to save, and one is to spend, so that's a good opportunity, again, to save for the higher costs of winter.
[00:34:59] Audio: [MUSIC STARTS]
[00:35:04] Samantha Awand-Gortel: I'm so grateful to have this front-row view of the mountains and to see the changes. The fall foliage is always beautiful outside my window. I love going up to Belleayre and Hunter Mountain for their Oktoberfests and seeing the fall foliage from the tops of the mountains there over by the Phoenicia Diner, even on Route 28, and then the Emerson—they have great views of the mountains as well, so it's really lovely to work in Phoenicia. I would not want to work in a city environment, that's for sure. I can't stand the concrete. I need my trees. I need to feel like I'm breathing.
[00:35:42] Brett Barry: Samantha was a "Kaatscast" guest in 2023 when she offered a crash course in financial literacy. We'll put a link in the notes, so how about you? What are your favorite ways to celebrate fall foliage in the Catskills? If you head over to kaatscast.com, just click over to the contact page and let us know, and if you're really brave, there's a "Send a Voicemail" button on the side of our webpage. You can leave a voice memo on your fall favorites, and you might hear your own voice on a future episode. Also, don't forget to check in with our friend, Mat Zucker, who hosts the Cidiot podcast for his East of Hudson fall guide featuring Cary Institute scientist Amy Zanne. "Kaatscast" is produced at Silver Hollow Audio. Production Intern: Elana Healy, Transcriptionist: Jerome Kazlauskas, and I'm your host, Brett Barry. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.
[00:36:45] Audio: [MUSIC ENDS]