If you fly south from Albany down the Hudson River toward New York City, the Catskill Mountains will be seen off to your right, their green stretches of forest coming all the way from the western horizon. Closer to you, less than ten miles away, the rippling blanket of pine and hemlock drops precipitously down an escarpment to a flat plain of mixed hardwood forest and open fields that run to the waterway gliding by beneath you. The river is the Hudson, a stretch of water that is edged with towns named Red Hook, Saugerties, Kingston, Poughkeepsie and Port Ewen.
Push the stick forward a tiny bit and move your feet to adjust the ailerons and your plane will swoop around and point west toward the mountains. Follow a glide path gradually sloping down to just below the top of the mountain wall ahead of you. Aim right at it, losing altitude as the mountain grows larger and details begin to show. Between the trees you’ll see a house here and there. Look for an old summer resort that is long past its prime, a cluster of buildings with a dilapidated tennis court. There! Among the trees. Atop the highest roof of the resort sits a man in a monk’s robe. You wonder why. Well, because I’m a monk. And you’d better pull up now because I don’t like airplane crashes. I’ve been in one.
I don't spend much time up here on the roof. Most of the time I can get a wifi signal down in the cellar. The abbot here at Our Lady’s Monastery at West Saugerties has told me on more than one occasion to stay below decks. So I spend most of my day in the cellar. In the monasteries of olden times I might have been the cellarer … the monk who kept track of the wine. Given the predilections one might expect to find among a bunch of old celibate guys, any wine we use today comes from the a liquor store in town and is held under close guard by the Abbot. We don’t need to have that kind of spirit sitting around beckoning to us.
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