Forest chronicler of the Catskills

For Michael Kudish, much more to learn

By Mio Moser | Manor Ink

Have you ever wondered about why the Catskill forest is the way it is? Why each individual peak is unique and seems to have its own character? Dr. Michael Kudish has, and he’s been doing it his whole life long.

Kudish, who is a forest historian, railroad and industrial historian, botanist and retired college professor, works at his quaint home in Arkville, NY. He regularly makes trips with close friends out into the Catskill wilderness to collect peat samples from bogs, as well as mosses and other plants in his decades-long botanical project of understanding the history of the mountains, going as far back as possible – to the last ice age 15,000 years ago. And he’s always looking for more folks to come along and help.

Finding mountain-top differences

Kudish’s Catskill adventures began similarly to those of many other nature lovers. “I’d hike just to climb the mountains and see what was on them,” Kudish said. However, one particular thing about the Catskills that he hadn’t seen in any other mountain range caught his eye. Each mountain peak seemed to be unique, different, in a sense individual. “I could not predict what the forest was going to be like on the top of any particular mountain until I got up on the peak,” Kudish said. Some mountains might have spruce-fir trees, others may have northern hardwoods and still others might have red oak – even if no great distance separates those peaks. “The forest on the top does not look like the forest on the top of the next mountain over. That’s what got me going.”

Kudish found many neighboring mountain ranges in New England and Pennsylvania did not have this characteristic. Even the nearby Adirondacks were predictable. “You could guess what would be there based on the environmental conditions and go there and it would be there.” This was the beginning of a lifelong passion and devotion to the Catskills forest for Kudish.

Anyone who wishes to study the Catskills needs to have a well-versed understanding of forests and forest history, as well as a lot of time, due to their sheer diversity and unpredictability. Michael Kudish is a proud possessor of the former, and has committed as much as he possibly can of the latter. “It takes me decades to work on them. And I still don’t have answers,” he said. “There’s no one reason that explains all the trees and all the plants. It’s multiple reasons.”

Many reasons for the differences

Originally believing simpler theories, such as trees simply dying out on select peaks, Kudish eventually discovered that the actual reasons are far more complicated and numerous. He gives a few of many examples, “Spruce and fir, when they migrate, they leave little pockets of populations behind. Oaks are there because of Native Americans and their forest management fires, and to a limited extent, abandoned fields by European farmers. Sugar maple distribution has to do with how much water there is in the soil. It goes on. There’s no one reason that explains all the trees and all the plants and tells their history, it’s different reasons that can only be learned through study.”

Michael Kudish, who earned a PhD in botany from the New York State College of Forestry in Syracuse in 1971, has written numerous books on the Catskills forest, Adirondacks flora, and the railroad and industrial history of both mountain ranges. Kudish is still very passionate about the Catskills, even after a lifetime. Whether collecting peat from bogs or studying forests, Kudish feels at home in the Catskills and wants to spend the rest of his life studying the forest’s complex history.