It certainly occurred to me, ahead of last month’s post, that the blog’s left turn into environmentalism might’ve whiplashed those expecting the customary deep dive into craft or culture. As part of our training as Climate Reality Leaders, we’re asked to reflect on our personal climate stories—the origins of our interest in the movement—something I’ve invested no small amount of time doing this past month. To that end, it dawned on me that the very same formative circumstances inspired both my passion for horror fiction and climate activism; they are not unrelated callings but very much part and parcel.
It was at the confluence of the Harlem and Hudson Rivers, my old stomping ground, where many of my first boyhood adventures were undertaken. My friends and I would scale the towering steel foundational girders of the Henry Hudson Bridge as high as we could climb. We’d cross Spuyten Duyvil Creek by way of the century-old railroad swing bridge to explore the Indian caves in the vast, lush expanse of Inwood Hill Park at the northernmost tip of Manhattan. (Incidentally, those caves feature prominently in the 2003 historical fantasy Forever, Pete Hamill’s centuries-spanning ode to Gotham. Great novel.)
On weekends, my parents would drive us up the Hudson Valley—to Sleepy Hollow or Nyack or Bear Mountain—which was a particularly spellbinding delight this time of year. It’s a truly magical region that in many respects looks just the same as it did to the Dutch explorers who first arrived in the early seventeenth century—and, more to the point, the Lenape Indians who called the valley their home for a dozen millennia before that. For the conservation of this land, you can thank—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—J. P. Morgan.
And not just him—George Walbridge Perkins and John D. Rockefeller, too. Owed in part to the efforts of these forward-thinking businessmen-philanthropists at the turn of the twentieth century, much of the woodlands on the banks of the Hudson was spared from development, as were the Palisades, the magnificent cliffs along the west side of the river. Consider it: These capitalists preserved the natural harmony of the Lower Hudson Valley from the ravages of capitalism itself; on account of their preemptive actions, much of it remains to this day virgin forest to be (re)discovered by successive generations.
The woodlands just blocks from where I grew up in the Bronx (photo credit: Sean Carlin, 29 December 2012)
As a writer of supernatural fiction who continues to draw inspiration from this region—virtually all my stories are set there—I walk in the footsteps of literary giants. Two of the first American authors—horror authors, no less—lived in the area and wrote about it: Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe. Savor the way Irving lets this “region of shadows,” pregnant with manes, cast a spell over his receptive imagination in the Halloween classic “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”: Continue reading
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