When I was a youngster growing up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, I lived on a horseshoe-shaped street lined with ranch-style and split level homes. My family knew all of the folks who lived in them. Like us, they were also mostly families with young kids. I was friends with most of the kids on our street. But my “best friend” lived on the other side of the horseshoe, directly behind us. So I could either ride my bike all of the way around to the other side of the block, or I could walk out the back door and scale the 8-foot sun-bleached cedar slat fence that separated our backyard from his. In the summer months, my hands and knees were perpetually covered in splinters from taking the backyard shortcut to my friend’s house.

My experience with neighbors in NYC has always been a bit different than what I experienced as a kid in the ‘burbs. It’s true that the anonymity afforded by large cities can be one of its main perks. For the huge buildings I lived in, this was especially true because of the sheer number of people living there, and I kinda liked it that way. Often I would not even recognize the people getting out of the elevator on the floor where I lived. But even my experience living in smaller buildings has been one where everyone pretty much keeps to themselves. Again, this is not necessarily a bad thing, just different. Adjusting to big city life meant learning to derive a sense of community based on various friends spread all over separate parts of the city while oftentimes not even knowing the name of the person living in the apartment next door.

Britt and I didn’t really know what to expect when we moved into our Catskills house. Even in non-pandemic times, after so many years of city life, Britt and I were conditioned to keep to ourselves. Pandemic notwithstanding, we made more friends in our Catskills neighborhood after the first few weeks at our new place than we had made during the past 5-ish years in our 12 unit building in NYC.

In most cases, one of our neighbors would see us doing something in the yard and pop over to introduce themselves. One of our neighbors brought us freshly baked homemade banana bread! It was so cool to have all of these new friends, especially given the fact that the world was on lockdown at the time. It wasn’t that we ignored CDC protocols or anything like that. We (us and our neighbors) literally were just very rarely around any other humans outside of the neighborhood. It was like our own insulated little bubble of friends here in the woods of upstate New York. Not being able to see our blood relatives for such an extended period of time was really tough. But our little Catskills community became a surrogate family of sorts and we felt very fortunate to be a part of it.

In addition to the walk-by intros, we met a few of our neighbors via social media. Britt started a Catskills-centric account on IG, mostly to get to know local business. In doing so, she ended up connecting with some neighbors who lived in the house directly behind us. We had hiked around our yard quite a bit, but always turned around whenever we could see another house, or thought we may have crossed onto someone else’s property. So we kind of had a sense of where their house was even before we met in person. These neighbors are a couple who are roughly our age and had transitioned north from the city roughly a year prior to our purchase.

We ended up meeting them in person for some beers on the deck, then subsequently hanging out with them quite a bit. Since Britt and I were living in a construction project, and dining out was not really happening at the time, they would invite us over for dinner on a regular basis. It was awesome.

To get to their house, we would drive a half-mile up our hill, then turn onto their street and drive another half mile. On Labor Day weekend 2020, we were hiking with our backyard neighbors and the dogs at Kelly Hollow when the trail markers gave one of us the idea to create a trail between our houses. Later that weekend, Britt and I spent an afternoon raking and moving downed trees, creating a meandering path through the woods toward our neighbors’ house. Our neighbors were doing the same thing from their side. After a few hours, we met somewhere in the middle. We could now easily walk/hike back and forth about 1/3 of a mile each way rather than having to get in the car and drive the long way around.

In the months and years since then, we have become accustomed to bringing along headlamps and bear spray for the afterdark return trips. There have also been plenty of occasions during the winter months when snowshoes were necessary. It’s not exactly the same as hopping over a cedar fence in the suburbs, but I can’t help myself from musing about how some things have appeared to come full circle.

Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, Jake Breinholt has been an avid outdoorsman and photographer for as long as he can remember. He moved to New York for school in the early aughts. After about 15 years of the desk jockey grind, he and his wife made good on their years-long dream of owning a home in the Catskills. As he’s spent the past few years fixing up the place, he’s also getting back in touch with his roots through time in the great outdoors. Check out his Personal Blog + Photography.

Hiking with the neighbors in 2020. *Photo by* *Jake Breinholt*.

This column first appeared in the HVNY newsletter, This week in the Hudson Valley. Sign-up to get it delivered for free every week.

Building trails, not fences between new neighbors