THE FINGER LAKES — fletch.nyc

Every once and awhile a mysticism-focused theologian farcically laments that the sciences are merely vehicles for breaking down the singular universe into smaller parts and then labelling them to feel as though we’ve accomplished something.

As a geographer, I’m given the pleasure of several lenses with which to break the world up, sometimes at once and across the same space. Are we in a particular state? Trudging through a mountain range? Crossing a fluvial plain? Entering into a new linguistic realm?

Some are better suited than others, all made useful only insofar as the few people interested in discussing them are willing to entertain their frameworks in discussion.

Still, when it boils down to it and let myself get sloppy, no, get honest,

I think of the world in regions.

There are a great number of egregious words in the human lexicon. “Region” has to be up there. Defining an area through an undefinable categorization reeks of the arrogance of the scientism to which I both eye-roll and half-subscribe.

But really, what on Earth (see what I did there) is a region?

Allow me to turn to my great friend, the recipient of a whopping ten dollars of monthly recurring revenue pulled straight from the Wells Fargo WAY2SAVE Checking Account I opened back in 2012 when people’s biggest concern was whether the Mayans were right about the end of the world (some folks still feel let down)…

Wikipedia.

I’ve ripped definitions from Wikipedia several times for this blog before. Let’s face it, sometimes volunteer contributors push past the great scholars of Oxford and Merriam Webster. For the word region (a French word, as are a remarkable 30% of all words in the English language due to the Norman conquest of the British Isles in 1066), I suspect whomever wrote the opening line was a geographer as well:

In geography, regions are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and the environment (environmental geography).

Now not all three categories need be used in understanding a place as a region, nor are the mutually exclusive. I happen to to have an unfounded and subjective theory that the best places are clearly defined by all three (physical, environmental, and human).

Why am I talking about regions? What happen to the millennial clickbait film photography content and the pictures of buildings?

Because I’m convinced when setting out to understand places, “regions” are the best tool at the disposal of the lay explorer.

The Finger Lakes Region, today’s topic of discussion, flies with passing colors.

Political boundaries are often (though not always) arbitrary, or worse , they were at one point logical but then manipulated successively until the origin story was lost (hence why mainly countries have squiggly boundaries following logical geographic obstacles or delineators and then suddenly take a direct line or otherwise unnatural course…think the Oklahoma Panhandle in relation to other sides of the state).

Geographic boundaries are somewhat better, though a region may self-contain several boundaries (think a series of mountains, like the Base and Range Region, which can be read about in legendary Princeton University Professor and Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee’s book of the same name).

Human boundaries are a whole other dimension. They change faster than the other two. Think Williamsburg 1990 vs Williamsburg 2020.

Now with these undulating harangues out of the way, we’re prepared to digest the point I’d like to make:

I think the best way to consider the world as a traveler is through the lens of regions.

I believe the best regions are places that are identifiable through all three lenses of the word: physical, human, and environmental.

The Finger Lakes of New York’s Upstate stand as a perfect example. If you just looked at New York as a state on the whole, the Finger Lakes would fail to pop their heads out for attention among New York City, Long Island, the Catskills, Lake Ontario, the Adirondacks and countless other features.

Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Elena and the owner of the farm. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Goat Whisperer. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Len. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Film burn. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Ready for takeoff. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Getting towed up, shot from the front seat of a glider. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Preparing for the tugging plane to pull the cord and let us loose. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Half a second after the cord is release, the tugging plane takes a dive bomb and we follow. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Looking out of the cockpit. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

Watkins Glen. Fletcher Berryman. Pentax K1000, Kodak Portra 400. 2019.

If you only looked at the area from just the human lens, it’d be difficult to ascertain where nearby regions end and the Finger Lakes begin…you’d have more of a slow fade until it dawned on you that the buildings and people who occupy them have a distinct character to them.

If we noted just the physical geography, we’d certainly see from as far away as space that long, finger-y lakes draped the rolling, smooth mountains and hills south of Lake Ontario. This would tell us little, however, about what spending time there feels like. We’d know nothing of the musty 70’s diners still intact and operating, the smell of the goat farms and damp leaf-laden backroads nor the freshness of the streams that may well be stolen from the cover of Brad Pitt’s adaption of A River Runs Through It despite thousands of miles of distance from that book and movie’s actual Montana setting.

Places with “all three” get three stars. That’s my new system. The Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York is a three-star part of the world.

I hope you get the chance to go there one day.

As it’s name suggests, the area is anchored by long, finger-y lakes. There are eleven of them, running North-South and some exceeding 30 miles in length. The lakes generally are flanked by hillsides on either shore, which in turn are patch-worked by vineyards sloping down to the water’s edge.

This is New York’s wine country. And it’s spectacular.

I’ve spent a good amount of time in California Wine Country as a Californian. Napa, Sonoma, Mendo, Santa Barbara, and more. All of it is stunning. Most of it is sophisticated. All of it is expensive.

California Wine Country is to Whole Foods as the Finger Lakes are to Costco.

People enjoy both, and finds are to be found in the depths of either’s aisles.

It’s just that…I’m more of a Costco guy. So please, New York, do not take this as an insult. It’s my highest compliment. They haven’t changed the price of their hot dog and 20 oz soda combo ($1.50 !) since 1985. Likewise, I don’t believe much has changed in the Finger Lakes since then.

Elena and I were stunned by just how pretty the place is. It’s tough to communicate beauty time and time again about physical places in written form on this blog. If I say that India is one of the most beautiful places on Earth (it is), what do I then say about The Finger Lakes (they are)?

I can tell you this. To the non-Americans reading this, and the many more American readers who live outside the Northeast, this is one of those places that your imagination conjures when thinking of really, well, American landscapes.

Red barns. Foggy valleys. Rain on misshapen window panes. Creaky steps in old wooden Victorians. Every leaf in every color.

Clouds. Friendly people. American flags flying, proudly kept lit at night. Humble, smiling people, excited to share their home with you.

High calorie meals. Slow drives on empty, soaked roads. I’ve been on a weird run of obsessing over decomposition and its symbolic and literal significance since reading a Walt Whitman excerpt on the subject in lockdown (hint: decomposition proves reincarnation IMO). Places defined by their moist understory and detritus have been stealing my heart this year. The Lost Coast, Puerto Rico. The Finger Lakes slide right into this category…one filled with places where the soil feels soft and squishy whether on or off the trail.

Then there is the human side. The people here, again, are nice, genuine, and sure…. you can say that about many parts of the world. But they seemed, well…happy. Actually happy. Hmmm, suspiciously happy? The opportunities for full-time work are slim to none. The weather is deplorable for more than eight months of the year. It’s not easy to get to at all. Shit, the nearest proper city is in another country, Toronto (sorry Buffalo and Rochester, you are awesome towns but not cities in my book). The region’s best output is perhaps its wine or the alum of Cornell University, and both are overshadowed by more notable members of their respective fields.

And yet, people exude a contentment that flows from their innermost cores. Am I stretching? I must be. There are dissatisfied people everywhere on this God-forsaken planet. But if the Finger Lakes were good enough for my all-time favorite author, a famously dissatisfied and well-travelled fellow known to most as the one and only Mark Twain, then shit yeah they’re good enough for its inhabitants and at that, for me.

Twain, America’s voice alongside Whitman, wrote classics such as A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court, Tom Sawyer and the only and only Huckleberry Finn while summering in Elmira. We had the chance to visit the very hut in which he wrote them (see photos).

In winding from notable landmarks like Watkins Glen’s waterfalls and the campus of Cornell to lesser known areas like the local farm featured below, we found this idea, that people want to be here, all throughout.

It makes sense. The Finger Lakes aren’t a fussy place, but they also aren’t so easy in weather and spirit as to cultivate a Floridian sloth. You need to chop wood to live here, but you also need to love wandering without aim and staring at birds across the four seasons.
And sometimes we can be illusioned by the simple fact of being engulfed, only to zoom out and see that a place is more underwhelming that it feels at the ground level.

Well fret no more.

I went up in a fucking glider plane and soared above the goddamn fields of glory to confirm their wonder.

Confirmed.

Welcome to The Finger Lakes: authentic, imperfect, and a little too damp, a little too cold, a little too tough to be ruined.

Come here.