I walked to the edge of gray ledge just off the Appalachian Trail and there, 36 miles away on a brilliantly clear November day, was the toothy profile of New York City glittering at the end of the Hudson River.
Bear Mountain is and always has been a kind of miracle to me and many others. Opened in 1913 just a shout up the Palisades from the clanging, smoking engine of New York City it is both living evidence of the culture of philanthropy of a different time, and of the awareness, spawned by the Industrial Revolution, that people had to get beyond the noisy environs of the city and into the "great outdoors." Fully launched with a huge gift of both money and land from Mary Averell Harriman, whose husband was the President of the Union Pacific Railroad, Bear Mountain is another of the many institutions which grace our lives thanks to the philanthropy of the great industrialists and robber barons.
I've hiked here, across the section of the AT and up the High Tor and through the Timp Pass and over Dunderhead Mountain, over the last 25 years with two of my own and several of my friends' dogs, the latest my friend Karen's 6-month old puppy, Bessie. The trails and my own past are alive for me with the golden happiness of Jessie; and the speedy alertness of Tosca (who was often just a black dot disappearing quickly over the oak leaf-strewn hills in pursuit of a deer) and her best friend Indy.
So up the familiar trail, which I've both hiked and cross country skied, to Doodletown we went, past the old reservoir and the town that the state claimed by eminent domain and existed there as recently as 1965 yet is now nothing but brush and historic markers. Out to Iona Island past the briny, reed-filled marshes. And finally down 9W back to the city, stopping for a black-and-tan at Sheeran's in Tomkins Cove before racing down the New York State Thruway and back into the city.
A perfect fall day for a former urbanite.
