There is no real nickname for the swath of New York state that runs along the Thruway for about 260 miles from the Pennsylvania state line at Ripley to, say, Oneida County. That’s essentially Western and Central New York, and the easy thing is to drop all that territory within the sprawling definition of “Upstate,” but those of us who’ve spent most of our lives within those borders have a different thought:
That isn’t precise enough. Not even close. This is a strip whose emotional capitals are the “Golden Snowball” cities of Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, Erie Canal siblings affected climatically by the Great Lakes and joined economically and emotionally by the same historic forces of industry, economy …
As well as a stunning bond of natural beauty.
To cheer for the Buffalo Bills within this region, for instance, isn’t simply about geography. It involves a shared lifetime understanding of loss and struggle and — in a quieter way — that memorable all-four-seasons natural theater of storms and snow and blossoms, of farmland and eagles and ravines and maybe beyond all else dozens of signature waterfalls, a defining characteristic of a hilly landscape intertwined with so many rivers and streams.
That truth has few champions like John Kucko, whose annual calendar — as it does with so many in this region — hangs in our kitchen. More than a decade ago, inspired by what he felt and saw on a pivotal and life-changing visit to Letchworth State Park, he walked away from a successful, established and high-profile career as a Rochester sportscaster to take on what seemed like an utter gamble:
He began posting photographs and quick reflections about points of wonder within a region with boundaries roughly as I describe, above — maybe he’d feature the gorge and railroad bridge at Letchworth, or the honeycomb waterfalls of Watkins Glen, or a lonely lighthouse that withstands terrifying Lake Ontario breakers in Oswego.
The reader response was staggering, beyond Kucko’s best hopes. His video invitations to “walk with me” did exactly that, on a sweeping and emotional level. The “John Kucko Digital” Facebook page now has almost 740,000 followers, not only from New York but from around the world.
As Kucko explained to me last year in an interview at Taughannock Falls, another of his favorite spots, the passionate reaction led to many new initiatives — including the calendars — and ignited a lifestyle that he finds happier and of more meaning … not to mention more prosperous … than even what he did for all those decades, with television sports.
Sharon Upper, 81, a reader from Angola in Erie County, described it beautifully while responding to one of Kucko’s posts:
“I love what you do and it brings me joy every day. Thank you. As a senior person I am not able to visit many of these locations, so vicariously I go along with you.”
Now, Kucko — in the most difficult of ways — is taking his followers with him on a searing and challenging journey:
At around 8:45 a.m. Tuesday, from a location he has yet to officially announce (though he guarantees it will be beautiful), he will do a Facebook Live stream from his Facebook page. He sees it as a chance both to relay his gratitude about everyone who’s supported his work — and to speak directly to worried readers who’ve responded by the thousands to a Kucko reflection last Thursday, one he described “as the hardest post I’ve ever written.“
He wrote of how he was driving toward his home in greater Rochester, along Interstate 390 — just after “I had captured one of the most beautiful rainbows I’ve ever seen at Letchworth State Park … and in the blink of an eye, my life changed.”
Kucko suffered a seizure behind the wheel. He recounted how he then survived a “bad accident” on the interstate in which “thank God, nobody was injured,” before an emergency crew transported him to the hospital.
“Long story short,” he wrote, “I’ve got a brain tumor of some sort.” He told his readers that it will soon require surgery. He posted an image of the Letchworth rainbow – a double rainbow! – in an arc, behind his shoulders. Over the weekend, we exchanged a few texts — shortly after he walked his daughter Caroline down the aisle for her marriage to her fiancé, Max — and he explained how he’ll use Tuesday’s message for a couple of purposes.
Kucko wants to express gratitude for the “wonderful strength” provided by the countless readers who have sent their love, and he also intends to address “some of the path ahead.”
A guy who typically wakes up every day at 4:30 a.m. to travel by car throughout the region won’t be able to drive, he wrote in a post, for at least a year. Still, over the last two days — though he missed his daily “60 seconds of serenity” offering for the first time since the pandemic — he’s continued to post, sharing beautiful images and offering thanks to all his followers.
Kucko’s great work, as it always does, brought me to this memory. Sixty years ago, when I was a child, I remember my mother sitting at the kitchen table at our house, in a neighborhood a block away from the steel plant in Dunkirk, and sharing this reflection.
Born in Buffalo, she was the youngest child in a family of Scottish immigrants. Her parents, her aunts and uncles, many of her older siblings … they all had traveled here from Scotland.
To her, this region remained a place of mystery and wonder. Her goals involved visiting sites of beauty and natural spectacle within a few hours of our home, places she felt were too often underappreciated and overlooked — whether that was Letchworth or Watkins Glen or the Finger Lakes or even the magnificence of Niagara.
It all came back to a truth she innately understood:
Along the western Thruway, in so many communities hammered by shared economic struggle, it’s all too easy to forget or take for granted the staggering beauty of the nearby valleys, woodlands — and especially the waterfalls.
John Kucko, for a decade, has dedicated himself to rekindling communal awe about that panorama. In doing so — in the response he’s touched off — he’s helped define and galvanize a geographic community, from Chautauqua to Utica, that exists emotionally and practically and yet doesn’t even have a formal name.
It’s an area joined together by some of the fiercest snowstorms in the nation, by shared appreciation for the arrival of the brilliant greens of brand-new maple leaves in the spring, by the magnificent flaming treetops of our autumns and by summers that are blue sky gifts within the overpowering moods and whims of the Great Lakes.
As Upper said, Kucko always asks us to walk with him as he goes to those places — just as we will do our best to walk with him on the path that he is traveling, right now.
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