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The Wildlife of John Burroughs At His ‘Slabsides' 
by BETTY GROTH 
IAS Vice President for Conservation 
Seventy-nine miles north of New York City, off route 9W at West 
Park, Ulster County, N. Y., today remains what may be the wildest, 
most unusual scenic region in the mid-Hudson valley. It is a haven 
for wildlife. Near the heart of this forested area, through which Black 
Creek flows, is located a now-famous cottage, ‘Slabsides,’ built 
in the 1890s by the great American naturalist, John Burroughs 
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Mr. Burroughs gave us some of the finest nature writing of all 
time. Once, tiring of the grandeur of the Hudson River Valley in sight 
of all the world, he advised that “‘it never wise to build your house 
on the most ambitious spot in the landscape.’’ When offered a tract 
of wild land ‘‘that contained a secluded nook and a few acres of level, 
fertile land, shut off by a wooded mountain from the vain and noisy 
world of railroads, steamboats and yachts,’ he quickly closed the 
bargain. 
There he “‘built him a rustic house called ‘Slabsides,”’ and he 
explained that a slab ‘‘first is cut from the log, and the bark goes. 
with it.’ Burroughs wanted to take a fresh cut of life (something all 
of us might do before it is too late); for those who want the whole 
loaf of life, Burroughs wisely warned that “‘in some things the half 
is more often satisfying than the whole.” 
At Slabsides—in his new, intimate small world—he wrote that 
the robins superintended the planting of his cherry trees. Warblers 
called in his open doorway. Phoebes nested in the rock crevice near his 
spring. Chickadees nested in a cavity in a sassafras four feet from the 
ground. One day in spring, a number of Vassar girls came to call, and 
Burroughs let them inspect the nest. Head after head—with their Gay 
90s nodding plumes, and millinery—looked in, and the chickadee 
never left her nest. 
Two pairs of swifts built nests in the big chimney of his cabin 
in summer, and he heard ‘‘the muffled thunder of their wings at all 
hours.’’ These birds never perch, he reported. ‘““They outride the 
storms ... unhurried, undisturbed, working their way slowly straight 
into the teeth of the thunderstorms, holding themselves there steadily 
as though anchored up high.” 
“In summer twilight ... as the shadows deepen and the stars 
begin to come out, the Whip-Poor Will suddenly strikes up ... a rude 
intrusion upon the serenity of the hour.” At 3 a.m. by his window 
