We are driving through the Nevele Resort property in an off-road Polaris heading towards the waterfall when we see the pick-up truck. A woman sitting behind the wheel has backed up against one of the crumbling ruins. Behind her, a man gathers aluminum from the rubble pile that used to be a hotel room and loads it into the bed.

It was an invitation the Shawangunk Journal could not refuse, to take a ride around the old Nevele property with the developer and hear the plans for the future.

And so, the chain link fence is rolled back by Keith Rubenstein of Somerset Partners, the developer of the project and the current landowner, and we embark in a Polaris off-roader towards the ruins of the Nevele Resort.

Ahead is the iconic ten-story tower, perhaps the most interesting building in Ulster County in its day. Now, sadly, it’s a sea of smashed windows and graffiti, some of it as garish as a 1978 IRT train. An impressive series of yellow spray-paint panels climb almost one entire side of the façade, hovering over the words ‘STOP THE WAR’ sprayed vertically. Someone must have brought a rope to do all that.

Rubenstein stops on the north side of the tower, and we climb out and look through the broken glass and twisted steel to glimpse the huge concrete wall-relief that decorated the lobby of the tower. We’re can just see the massive concrete panel, but we’re too far out to study the details of vacationers in that angular cartoon style of the 1950s and early ‘60s. It used to be painted to make it more visible at a distance, but a half century has done its work and the only paint left on the concrete came out of a spray bottle.

Rubenstein has a dream of taking a section of that sculpture and putting it into the Borscht Belt Museum. The entire mural, one massive piece of art, is impossible to save – it’s simply too large.

Back in the vehicle, we peer through the dense complex of buildings that comprise the side of the property nearest the entrance. Some have been devastated by the fires of recent years, others are oddly intact, with the original curtains fluttering in shattered window frames.

It’s the back of that cluster of buildings, where the beautiful slope of land begins to reveal itself, that Rubenstein spots the truck and the couple rummaging in the wreckage. The moment is punctuated by awkward silence. Rubenstein identifies himself as the owner and the man holding the aluminum says he’s “been wanting to meet the owner.” He said he heard the place was “in limbo, whatever that means.”

Rubenstein asks how they got there. “Oh, we just came in the back way, off the trail,” the man explains. “We’re taking some aluminum, it’s all trashed.”

Rubensteins asks them to leave and the man looks back briefly at the rubble pile. He asks if he can have “one more time” until nightfall. Rubenstein says it would be best if they left now, and we drive off in the Polaris. It’s all polite, awkward, and somewhat sad.

Past the buildings, climbing a trail littered with rocks the size of footballs, we reach the falls. The last stretch must be taken on foot because a new deadfall blocked the path.

Our eyes take in the remarkable beauty of the spot. The water, tumbling off the Shawangunk Ridge shoots across a band of sandstone that dates back about 400 million years. The water has carved a channel in the hard rock creating a beautiful spray and flume. It gives the spot a magical, timeless quality.

Rubenstein observes that this is something you can’t build, these massive trees and this clear water. He points to the plaque set on a rock wall nearby that commemorates the 11 teachers who were responsible for the name “Nevele,” which is just “eleven” backwards. It’s set up high, behind a screen of trees, suggesting the layout of the land has been shifted a bit by storms and time.

From there we go back down the trail and then turn south and push through a complex path of trails, some paved, others with steep grades, until we break through the scrub to a multi-acre field of goldenrod with tremendous views to the west.

Rubenstein pulls over. This spot, once part of the old golf course, is where he intends to build his luxury hotel. It’s a magnificent spot. Further south from there, Rubenstein says, will be a culinary garden and some sports complexes. Part of the secret of the site is the undulating land can hide sections of the property from one another, giving you a sense of discovery. He wants a trail network that ambles all along, including a quiet spot above the waterfall that he tells us is “always green, even in the winter.”

Now the trail is tighter, and branches ping off the windshield as the Polaris bounces over hummocks and boulders and winds its way down to the edge of the lake. Here we find a fully intact bridge, crossing a narrow portion of the Sandburg Creek, which widens out to a beautiful vista. Behind the water, the sun catching windshields on Route 52 send sparks of light across the ridge.

Rubenstein gestures to a cluster of logs stretched across the water below the bridge. “Beavers!” he says.

He points to a tree rising over the water and explains that that’s where the nesting bald eagle that delayed the project lives. As we take in the beauty of this wilderness, we spy a large bird gliding in. We watch closely, looking for that white head. But it’s just a hawk. The overwhelming feeling of the tour and the property is a reminder of the beauty of the land.

“The land,” Rubenstein insists, “is the star.”

We pile back into the Polaris and roll north ourselves, back towards the cluster of buildings that mark the former resort. In some ways this part of the trip is depressing – so much has been lost.

Rubenstein says he’s just a couple of signatures away from being able to start taking these old buildings down – but hopefully not the water tower, which he wants to put a staircase around and offer up as a lookout for hikers, and certainly not a single fireplace that survived one of the burns, which he intends to move down to the water.

“To make all this work, and bring it to life, we have to have the money,” he says. That’s about $300 million worth. Once the final dots and dashes are filled in on the paperwork that Rubenstein and others have been creating for several years now, the project will really start.

By the time we’re back, the couple in the pick-up are gone. The land, as Keith promised, can hide areas from you. We neither saw nor heard them go.

Three hours after Rubenstein locked the gates back up, at the Wawarsing town hall, the application for the new resort, plus its 47 homes and more than 40 condos, came to the town planning board for a full review. For now, Wawarsing waits.