Oswego River / Finger Lakes
This photograph captures a lot of what’s distinctive about the Finger Lakes region of New York. We’re on the western side of Keuka Lake, looking northeast along a portion of its 20-mile length. As with all of the seven Finger Lakes—or eleven, depending upon how you count—they originally were rivers, then carved much more deeply by Laurentide ice sheets over millions of years. It accounts for their north / south orientation and unusual depth in relation to their width: Keuka has a maximum depth of 186 feet, but Seneca and Cayuga reach 630 and 435 feet, respectively. That’s really deep!
This brings us to a second aspect of the photograph: all that water constitutes a thermal mass which stays relatively cooler throughout summers and warmer during winter months. In other words, the lakes create microclimates nearby that regulate temperatures throughout the year, which is an important reason why we see grapevines growing on the hillside here. Grapes taste best when there aren’t extremes of temperature during the growing season, and the watershed supports dozens of wineries including that of Dr. Konstantin Frank nearby.
Let’s mention one last thing about the photograph, namely that it’s a pretty spectacular view. Between the Finger Lakes are hills overlooking them, and due to their relatively remote location have remained affordable for agriculture and viticulture. The area now is struggling to retain its identity amidst growing tourism and proposals by fossil fuel companies to store liquid natural gas in salt domes underlying the lakes—what possibly could go wrong? Water truly is something precious to this region, both ecologically and in terms of a sustainable economy.
From the Gazetteer: “The basin of the Oswego includes most of the inland lakes which form a peculiar feature of the landscape in the interior of the State. The principal of these lakes are Cayuga, Seneca, Canandaigua, Skaneateles, Crooked, and Owasco, all occupying long, narrow valleys, and extending from the level land in the center far into the highland region of the s. The valleys which they occupy appear like immense ravines formed by some tremendous force, which has torn the solid rocks from their original beds, from the general level of the surrounding summits, down to the present bottoms of the lakes....The Oneida Lake is said to have a greater variety and abundance of fish than any other in the Western region of this State. Among the most admired fish are salmon, pike, Oswego and white bass, trout, cat-fish, with a great variety of others, and eels of a superior quality, and in vast abundance” (French 20; Spafford 266). Major Tributaries: Oneida River, Clyde River. Major Lakes: Oneida Lake, Cayuga Lake, Seneca Lake, Keuka Lake, Canandaigua Lake. Highest Point: Frost Hill (2,280 ft). Area: 5,070 square miles in New York state.
Hilda Rosevelt (Hattie L. Dolson), from “A Visit to Watkins’ Glen” (1871)
After the Civil War travel in America became more accessible due to railroads and their economies of scale; now sightseeing wasn’t limited only to the wealthy. Alongside this development came an expansion of travel writing to describe picturesque destinations—not simply the logistics, but the aesthetic and emotional dimensions of a place (this excerpt was published in a journal called The Art Review). Writing under a pen name, Dolson here describes entering a trail up Glen Creek.
We climbed a flight of steps and turned a corner of projecting rocks, catching the broken echoes of a concealed waterfall, and watching the foaming waters rushing over the rocks beneath us. At the top of the staircase a narrow bridge spans the chasm, and we stood almost within the spray of the entrance cascade. Looking back from this bridge, we still saw the world without—we still saw the sunshine and the free expanse of sky. Even the echoes were faint, as if half the sound had been caught by the rocks, and half had escaped into the valley beyond. Before us was the Glen, with its dark, damp shadows, its sparkling cascades, its dizzy precipices, and wonderful pools. It was a strange sensation to stand on this narrow bridge, and look at the two pictures, and through the whole two miles of the Glen, which is now opened, there is hardly a more wonderful or beautiful scene. But the weird fascination of the echoing waters soon lured us on, and a projecting rock shuts out the valley. The Glen is now the only reality, the world without a dream, which fades before it.
Far below us the silver stream flashed in and out among the rocks; far above us shone a narrow line of blue sky; between these boundary lines were only masses of grey rocks, broken, irregular, and so near to each other, that it sometimes seemed that we might stretch out our hands and touch them on either side. The stream had been swollen by the recent rains, and we advanced over our difficult way with cautious footsteps. The rocks were dripping with moisture, and the paths were muddy; but we looked upon these accidental accessories cheerfully, for we were pleasure seekers, and this was an entirely tangible part of our enjoyment. We passed through Glen Alpha in a state of great elation; there were cascades to demand our admiration, and grotesquely shaped rocks to puzzle over. At the end of this Glen is a weird, strange cavern, aptly called the Gnomes’ Grotto. The cavern cascade, which leaps, from a precipice, forty feet, into a deep pool below, echoed, unceasingly, among the overhanging rocks. The subdued light of the Glen here deepens with absolute gloom.
The place seemed so utterly out of the world, not only cut off by the formidable barrier of rocks, but by the still more formidable barrier of sound, that I could fancy we had, by some uncanny enchantment, been transformed into the ancient spirits which haunted the place, and could even comprehend something of the terror of the strange stories which lingered among the rocks...
Arthur Dove, Seneca Lake (1935). This small, 5 x 7 inch painting is deceptively simple. A pen has been used to outline a few elements of a landscape, then they have been filled in with watercolor and gouache paint. Or did paint precede the ink drawing? Compared to highly refined oil paintings of the 19th century Dove’s rendering looks like casual scribbling, but notice how a just a few lines and brushstrokes can evoke a complex, three-dimensional view.
Dove was born in Canandaigua, NY to a wealthy family, graduating from Cornell University and expected to follow a career appropriate to his education. But he also had grown up on a farm and been encouraged in his drawings of nature by a supportive neighbor. So instead, Dove worked as a commercial illustrator in New York before traveling to Europe. Upon returning to America he became friends with photographer and gallery owner Arthur Stieglitz, who championed his experiments with abstraction—one of the earliest artists in this country to do so.
Seneca Lake uses a technique Dove called “extraction”: abstracting from some landscape only those elements necessary to render it. A viewer’s attention was concentrated, invited to notice things otherwise invisible due to our habits of seeing. Is there anything unexpected in Dove’s painting, do you think? What do the series of stripes toward the bottom half represent? Comparing this work to the photograph of Keuka Lake above, are there certain patterns or extractions you could articulate about the Finger Lakes?
Works Consulted
—Dove, Arthur. Seneca Lake. Metropolitan Musuem of Art. 1934.
—French, J. H. Gazeteer of the State of New York. Ira J. Friedman, 1860.
—See 1, Do 1, Teach 1 [screen name]. Keuka Lake. 2017. Photograph available at flickr.
—Spafford, Horatio Gates. A Gazetteer of the State of New York. H.C. Southwick, 1813.