Where the Mountains Meet the Sky
On one of the most spectacular evenings of this or any other summer, the biggest crowd in the history of the Belleayre Music Festival, fifteen hundred of us, made the pilgrimage up the mountain. It started with a shower, a powerwash, followed by a huge, perfect rainbow which arched across the northern sky. One end of it sat a stone's throw from the crowd where it soared above Birch Creek Valley and Rose Mountain and came down east of Halcott and west of Westkill. Seven miles end-to-end more or less, perhaps four as the crow flies and two hundred feet wide. And when it finally faded, the clouds above Belleayre's summit glowed peach and pink against an azure sky, in the close to an opening act nobody could have booked and few will forget. We'd come for the music, but what we all saw was that the marketing slogan for our region's premier music performance venue barely did it justice.
Tough act to follow, but then came Ray Charles, a true national treasure and an icon of American music for more than 40 years. Now almost 73, Ray still puts out the magic that's earned him a place in the R & B, Jazz, and Rock & Roll Halls of Fame, with or without his big band and sultry singers behind him. Most of the magic was that great crossover sound itself, but a lot of it was just Ray, and it's hard not to feel a sense of privilege seeing him perform. Blind since age 6, composing and performing since 16, Ray's living proof that genius doesn't age or fade, and that inspiration is something one can give as well as get.
For those of you who haven't been to the Belleayre Music Festival yet, you've been missing something great. Reserved seats are a bit pricey, but there's plenty of lawn seating, some of it closer to the stage than parts of the great white tent are. At $15, it's a deal. But more than a deal, it's a big deal for Shandaken and for the region. Because it's helping, really helping put us on the map for all the seasonal and other businesses that rely on visitors to our region. And just as important, it's helping put us on the map of places people want to live, and live close to. That's reflected in our growing real estate values, positive on the whole but still a mixed blessing as anyone who's tried to buy a house in the past 18 months knows. What's important though is how that's shoring up our local tax base, just as second-home development has for years here. And that of course is only a very small part of how residential redevelopment contributes to our local economy.
Look across the river at the Berkshires. Nice mountains, maybe not as big or as wild or as beautiful as ours but nice. You wouldn't want to drink the water from every stream there, Lyme Disease is a growth industry, the drive to NYC is longer than it is from here, and most houses cost $300,000 or more. But it does have Tanglewood and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and it does have Jacob's Pillow, one of the world's great centers of dance. And that makes people want to go there, want to have homes there, because it offers them something not quite tangible but none the less real for them: the sense that they're going to a place where they can experience both the natural world and the better parts of our culture. What's better? That's different for everybody, and it might be great music or dance or performance or it might be lots of visual art, terrific food, maybe even fun local newspapers. But there are some things that most people are able to appreciate when they see, and a big one is the level of creativity that surrounds them. That's what they're looking for when they leave their urban or suburban settings in search of something a bit more real and a bit more connected to nature than they normally encounter. And where they find it they treasure it because it's something most people, even subconsciously, are struggling to reconnect with.
If that's true and we think it is, it's been good news for the Berkshires for a long time but it's going to be great news for us from now on. Because what visitors want that we haven't had in abundance we're getting fast, and things like a world-class music festival are a big part of it. This is happening all around our region, from the new Frank Gehry designed concert hall at Bard College, to the Kaatsban Dance Center in Red Hook, from some of the programs at the Ashokan Field Campus to the Arts Center in Lexington. And of course there's also a slew of great stuff going on over the notch in Hunter under the auspices of the Catskill Mountain Foundation.
Not interested? Okay, but don't underestimate its positive significance. We all know lots of people downstate have figured out our local cool quotient has moved up fast. But those who know that have also figured out something we've always known around here: cool has nothing to do with money, and everything to do with the creativity with which people and businesses respond to the opportunities that present themselves. We're starting to do a really good job of capitalizing on that around here and it shows. And how our creativity takes form through the pride and the work and the investments we ourselves make in our community is the other, deeper reason, why our future around here is as bright as it is. And as people see that, they come, they want to be a part of it. And their money comes with them, just as it did in the Berkshires. So to Mel Littoff and Joe Kelly and all the folks who've worked so hard for so many years to bring us a great regional music festival, thank you. We needed that.