This modest little trailer sits outside Windham, NY next to a restaurant called the Garden of Eden Cafe, a place where construction workers, hikers, locals, and people with second homes in the area go for good coffee, curry chicken wraps, homemade chili, and baked goods. As we were leaving the cafe this afternoon, I noticed this humble entrepreneurial venture selling ice cream and it struck me as quite noble.
Before lunch, we had hiked in the Huntersfield State Forest on Mount Pisgah in the Northern Catskills. The trail is part of the Long Path, which was conceived some 75 years ago with the intention of creating a foot trail from New York City to the Adirondacks (right now though it only goes between some place in New Jersey and Albany). The trail was so named in honor of a Walt Whitman line, "the long brown path that leads wherever I choose." It was about a 6 mile trek with over 1000 feet of incline taking about 3 hours total. It was a nice little jaunt for a Thursday morning.
We were completely alone on the trail, always a necessary condition for a good hike, in my mind. The trail is not often hiked, rendering the terrain a bit rugged - lots of overgrown vegetation which makes the footing a challenge. That's what I love about hiking though the most - the footing. Foot to earth, earth to foot. When you're really present with it, the mountain is hiking you, the energy and momentum is coming from someplace in the earth. It feels like you could never fall and hurt yourself, you know right where to step and your feet and the rocks are like magnets on metal.
No comments:
Post a Comment