When I was a child in the 1960s, Altamont meant cows and farms, hayfields and apple trees, old houses and open spaces. We had moved from the village mid-decade, but we never really left it. We’d head back to the village at every opportunity — to visit friends, go to church, or often just to “take a ride.”

Franklin Roosevelt loved trees. As a lonely only child, he spent countless hours tramping the woods of his family’s estate at Hyde Park, Dutchess County and was said to know each tree on the place.

For centuries, a great primeval forest stretched uninterrupted from the Hudson River to Lake Erie. But, after little more than three generations of European development, the landscape was completely transformed.

The first days of winter are the best time to admire the architecture and ingenious engineering of trees. The maples and oaks, having shed their leaves, now reveal their powerful super structures of trunk and branch silhouetted against the winter gray sky.

This is the second of a two-part series examining how views of — and from — the Helderberg escarpment have shaped our development and how this asset continues to provide unique definition to

The Helderberg escarpment is a singular natural landmark. This is the first of a two-part series examining how views of — and from — this landmark have shaped our development and how this asset continues to provide unique definition to the communities that share the Helderberg viewshed.