The Long Path – Week Two
By William Tucker
Who would have thought we would pick the hottest week of the year to hike from New York to Albany?
As I began chronicling last week, my golden retriever and I are on The Long Path, a 350-mile walk through the woods which (according to the guidebook, published by the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference) has only been hiked end-to-end by 75 people. It’s a pleasant way to leave the world behind – no newspaper headlines, no hunting for parking spaces, just putting one foot in front of the other and wondering where you might be camping for the night.
Still, I didn’t count on 100-degree weather.
On Monday morning we left Nyack, 30 miles north of New York at the western end of the Tappan Zee Bridge, and headed up the Palisades, a long chain of ridges that crests at High Tor, a comforting, domesticated peak that was the subject of a 1937 Maxwell Anderson play. The day soon became a series of mishaps. We did an hour’s detour to view Buttermilk Falls in West Nyack, only to find it was completely dry. Then I realized I had forgotten my walking stick and had to go back to our campgrounds. By noon we had advanced about 200 yards.
Hiking to Buttermilk, we did get a broad western view of Rockland County, which offers a strange paradox. Although widely perceived as a highly developed suburban region, the expanse across 25 miles to the Ramapo Mountains is nothing but trees and woodlands. It is a strange perception you often get in an airplane. Although we are supposedly “running out of room” and there are “too many people in the world,” in the Northeast we essentially live in the midst of a huge forest.
Hiking for three days, I’ve been out of touch with the news and I haven’t heard there is a huge heat wave moving in. In our isolation, my only impression is “What’s wrong with me?” After 15 minutes I am exhausted, my mouth keeps going dry, my stomach feels like a shriveled knot. At one point I try to put down a Snickers bar. It takes about 15 minutes. Maybe I am getting too old for this.
Then I realize Augie is having more trouble than I am. A couple of times he lies down and refuses to move altogether. At one point he gets in the shade of a huge tree and won’t come out. He has also learned the trick of slipping his pack over his head. Twice I have to go back almost a quarter-mile to retrieve it.
By mid-afternoon we are atop Hook Mountain, with views up and down the Hudson, yet only a mile north of Nyack. We meet an ambitious day-hiker who has lots of water and a digital camera. He takes some pictures and says they’ll be in my email in less than an hour. The wonders of civilization. As I strap on Augie’s pack I realize he has developed a large welt on his chest. “You’re going to have to carry that pack,” the photographer says. I want to show him the raw marks on my own shoulders but decide against being indicted for cruelty to animals. I lighten his pack almost to nothing and we are on our way.
By evening, we have barely struggled to Rockland Lake, three miles north. We take a refreshing – if illegal – swim. Augie is renewed, but I pick up an ear infection, apparently from the flocks of geese that sit on the lake. Maybe those health authorities know what they’re doing after all.
The next day we follow the law of the tropics – lots of activity early and late with a long noonday siesta. We make High Tor by 8 a.m. and it is delightful – a 360-degree view with New York City to the south and Indian Point to the north. Bernoulli’s principle guarantees there will be a breeze on a mountaintop (fluids must accelerate to get through a narrower passage) and on High Tor it is a high wind – the only one we have encountered all week. It feels like a wonderful day.
By 11 a.m. we are in the saddles of the mountains and the heat is overwhelming. I pitch the tent and for six hours we lie by the trailside hoping for a breath of fresh air. We are besieged by a particular type of biting fly that is either native to the area or driven mad by the sun. It is strange to see a housefly land on your arm, slap it after a moment and leave a trail of blood. They torment Augie as they buzz around his nose and he snaps at them endlessly. The tent netting relieves us, but I have to venture outside every half-hour to move us out of the sun.
By 5 o’clock a whisper of air has begun to stir the leaves. The flies have abated. We pack up and move on. The trail, which ran up and down every peak before High Tor, now picks up an old logging road and wends smoothly between hillocks in the forest. God bless those four-wheeled vehicles.
After two hours we arrive at Mt. Ivy, a four-corners at an entrance to the Palisades Parkway with a handful of stores. The first person I encounter is a gas-station attendant sitting in the shade with a fan blowing on his head full-blast. “It got up to 104 in New York City this afternoon,” he says.
“You hiking?” he then asks.
“We’re following The Long Path from New York City to Albany.”
“Oh, man, I’ve always dreamed of doing something like that,” he enthuses. “Live out in the woods, find your own food and water, get away from all this hassle. If I ever get the chance I’m going to do the same thing myself.”
One night later we are sitting in a pine grove beside a lake in Harriman Park, where the Appalachians meet the Hudson ten miles north. The stars are pale in the moonlight, the air is sweet as a caress, the crickets carry on their endless, mysterious conversation.
It is nice to be living other people’s dreams.
This is William Tucker’s last Right Idea column for The American Enterprise Online. Readers can pick up his column next week at www.spectator.org.
