The builder is Bernard J. Brabazon, one of the most active developers in what has become a large resort center in the northern Catskills.

Hunter Mountain in New York's northern Catskills introduced the sport this season, permits boarding all over and has just hired an instructor.

Pocket Pagers On the Slopes Skiers who want to stay in touch with the office will have on-mountain beeper service at Ski Windham in New York's northern Catskills.

"Farm country looks different these days," said Bob Fix, a fourth-generation fruit farmer in Livingston whose high orchards present long views across the Hudson River to the northern Catskills.

Surely everybody in the area knows that the northern Catskills were deforested by 19th-century enterprise and that New York's purchases of land in recent decades have created a brand-new, man-made wilderness.

If you can't make it to France for the winter Olympics in Albertville this month, try the northern Catskills for skiing and ski-watching in a region dotted with French country inns.

Its location in the Esopus Valley between the northern and southern Catskills made it an ideal place for a fire lookout tower, which still stands on the mountain's summit.

In 1999, Mr. Halleck bought a 12-acre farm in Roxbury, N.Y., in the northern Catskills, and started planting.

Due to Hunter's dominance of the northern Catskills, many of the peaks in that region can be seen.

And on winding roads in the northern Catskills, it behaved like a St. Bernard puppy: oversized and occasionally awkward, but always playful and eager to please.