Landgeist

Telephone Pioneers Shelter, NY
Mile 1430

New Jersey was as far south as the glaciers managed to come. The two thousand foot thick sheet of ice parked there, scraping out Sunfish Pond and God knows what else, while the freeze and thaw cycle turned Pennsylvania into rubble (which it remains to this day).

Here in New York, the ice sheet was more robust, and the differential torque between the area under the ice and the area over the ice sheared off the mountaintops over the two thousand foot contour. As the sheet retreated, the wandering tops and associated rubble ground their way to a halt on the remains of the mountains, like Noah on Mt. Ararat. These geological formations have an assortment of amusing names like "erratic" and "drumlin", but they are caused by the same underlying phenomenon, ice grinding, lifting.

It's worth noting that ice ages can come and go with incredible rapidity; from a geological point of view, climactic changes are practically instantaneous- ice cores in Greenland indicate that the planet once went from glacial to interglacial in five years. Seven meters of sea level in five years . . . thoughts to keep you warm at night. But then again, so does the thought of a greater trans-Caucasus war. Or, if you are a real cold sleeper, both.

Anyway, in terms of hiking, all this means that from north Jersey on through, you have a bunch of very smooth, easy hills topped with hundred foot boulder piles that apparently dropped from the sky. The AT, laid out by consummate sadists, wanders through this zone gleefully. One formation was known to us only as "The Lemon Squeezer". No more information was provided until we "walked" through it.

Moving north into New York the trail grows more mild, however, probably because we have entered an area where the trail maintainers are not quite so mischievous. Soon it won't matter how mischievous the trail maintainers are, because we will be above the timberline, and everything will be sere and wild.

The weather is quite cool, and I take my time to enjoy the rolling climbs and steady pace. Not many town stops (that anyone can afford) in this area, and I miss Monica a great deal, more than I can say in this limited and rather public space.

But if I rush too much, all I will remember is missing and torment and sweat and blood. Lifting my head and seeing the wild reminds me that hiking the AT is something that is only done once. Life outside.