My most difficult hike

In my chase for waterfalls in recent times, I somehow missed one that is relatively nearby, the waterfall at the end of the Lenape Ridge Trail straddling the towns of Port Jervis and Greenville in the western-most section of my county, Orange County, NY.

And judging by the looks of the waterfall when I got there, although the waterfall is tall and nice as waterfalls go, it is difficult to get to since it is down a deep crevasse obscured by tree branches that not many hikers consider it much of a highlight as to post on social media.

The waterfall is at the end of a 1.4-mile out-and-back trail (2.8 miles round-trip) with an 800-foot descent and so not many hikers descend down it knowing they will have to climb the same 800 feet back on the return hike. The waterfall is on one side of a railroad track and therefore is probably in an awkward spot for families to picnic, what with children running around in a fairly active commuter railway line and potentially inhaling a passing locomotive’s diesel fumes.

On the other side of the tracks is a neighborhood concealed by a wall of trees. I imagine there has to be a secret passage or footpath in the woods from the neighborhood to the railroad tracks (and therefore the waterfall), but I’m not so sure about the legality of crossing the railroad tracks to get to the waterfall. (It is illegal, for example, to cross the railroad tracks on Schunemunk Mountain, a continuation of the same rail line at Lenape Ridge.) Still, the absence of litter is suggestive of there being no such secret passage or footpath as neighborhood teens I imagine would otherwise frequent the waterfall and leave marks of their presence there.

So, in the end, I honestly do not know what to make of the waterfall. Should I invite others to go? It’s a rather steep climb for a waterfall that is barely visible…

I realize I cannot fault anybody but if the railroad tracks weren’t built right where the waterfall was at, I’m sure volunteers will turn up chopping trees and cutting branches for a more enjoyable look at a waterfall that families can swim in after an easy stroll from the flat grounds of where the neighborhood decided to crop up …

Is it still there?

I visited an old favorite photography subject of mine at Stewart State Forest, the lone dead tree standing in the middle of a vast and (at certain times of the year) empty cornfield. I’ve been there several times before to photograph it, including an attempt to photograph it at night with the Milky Way behind it, and this time I thought of filming the hike to give others an idea of what to expect should they decide go there. The lone dead tree was a truly stunning sight, in my opinion, even from a distance when driving along Route 208 in Montgomery, NY.

But, alas, the tree has fallen. It was lying on its side when I arrived. It has been uprooted I suspect all on its own. The lone dead tree is now truly dead and it’s sad for me to think that I now have one less reason to go there.

This reminds of another favorite photography subject of mine, a calm, narrow stream meandering on an open field separating a tree on one side and a patch of cornfield on the other with the rising sun behind a small hill in the distance and reflecting on the water’s surface along Slaughter Road in Middletown, NY. The land was developed and fenced by its owner soon after I took my photo. Gone was the idyllic scene that I was planning on visiting again and again.

I suppose change is inevitable, if not by humans then by Nature, and glad tidings not meant to last could at least be immortalized if we\’re quick to discern them if not in our minds then, yes, in our computers, too.

A view on three states

The name Elks-Brox for a memorial park to me when I first heard it was confounding. I didn’t know what to make of it. I’ve visited the park on more than one occasion years ago but only now upon making this video came to learn that it stood for the fraternal order that was once exclusively-male and all-white, Elks Lodge, who originally bought the property in 1914, and a man’s last name, Charles Brox, who as far as I know had nothing to do with the park but whose sister-in-law—yes, no blood-relation, either—made a “substantial” donation toward this park in 1932.

The park sits atop what was once known as the Twin Mountain Tract, or Point Peter and Mount William, an 800-foot mountain overlooking the town of Port Jervis. Clearly visible from the park across the Delaware River to the west is the state of Pennsylvania and to the south are New Jersey’s Kittatinny Mountains—a continuation of New York’s Shawangunk Mountains—with its 220-foot High Point obelisk piercing the sky, so to speak.

Once you’ve driven to the park—yes, there is no need for hiking to reach the mountaintop unless one is so inclined—and witnessed this grand, majestic vista, I suppose the park’s name would be shoved far back into the recesses of one’s mind and not matter anymore. But as appreciation sinks in as I’m sure will happen at some point and one becomes curious as I did, one can look back to who made this possible and perhaps be moved by the realization that as undercurrent to the Elks-Brox beginnings as the open and public land that families enjoy today was a story of erosion along the lines of gender, race, and blood.

(or, a romanticist\’s take on Reality…)

A waterfall and an abandoned house. What\’s one got to do with the other apart from being on the same road? Nothing, apparently. But it may not be too much of a stretch if we consider them rough approximations of birth and death strung on the same road-as-thread. And if I may stretch things a bit further, Quantum Mechanics would say, everything. Taken at its most extreme, Quantum Mechanics is saying all is one.

QM, however, is riddled with contradictions. Indeed, its self-contradictions give QM its voice of authority. A particle is both here and there. A cat unobserved is both alive and dead. And matter at opposite ends of the universe can converse as if the space between them didn’t exist. Not all can be known even by God led to Einstein’s consternation on God creating the universe so God can play dice. That is, assuming there is a flow of time in which God had nothing in the beginning then the Universe a moment (or a week according to the Bible) later. But what does that make God if God only operates within the bounds of Time? God cannot be God if not omnipotent. So, God must be Time himself.

But some thinkers say the passage of time is a construct our minds made up so we can make sense of experience. Time is an illusion. It does not exist outside of our minds. If Time does not exist, then so would God. Then, again, without Time there can be no music. Music is the progression of one note after another in a timed fashion. And music must play an important role in consciousness for how can it not when simply hearing certain tunes I get goosebumps? It is said that music is the language of the soul. So, for music to be real, Time must exist. Or, taking all these arguments we have so far, Time both exists and doesn\’t exist. We\’re back full circle to QM and its contradictions.

But fret not for I say we are not condemned to an eternal state of confusion. Rather, we should embrace contradiction and rejoice in a beautiful reality where a glass half empty is also a glass half full, bad things happen even to us good people, and creation and destruction—our waterfall and our abandoned house in our rough approximation—are part of a greater whole. All is one. Just look at your most cherished someone whoever that may be, and I am confident you will agree that if not for his or her imperfections, however subtle or not, he or she would not have been so perfect.

Is it haunted? Is it even still there?

Deep in the woods of the Vernooy Kill State Forest, just right outside the southern tip of the mountains collectively called the Catskills, is a richly beautiful area to hike, commune with nature in immersive isolation, and maybe even go for a swim in the summer in the crystal-clear waters of Vernooy Kill. Yet hardly anyone goes there—indeed, the neighboring townsfolk 6 miles away vigorously avoid it and the absence of human litter so common in all popular spots and detested by the avid nature lover could instead spook the intrepid hiker—save for the adventurous soul who has an insatiable taste for the macabre and the paranormal.

Such is the setting one finds in Pottersville, a town built on the same pioneering spirit as the early New World settlers’, that is, on a hunch and a willingness to endure hardship in the hopes of striking it rich.

Except that unlike other towns that found fame and fortune, for the small, fledgling, newly-emerging town of Pottersville, things went rather quickly awry.

Back in the early 1900s, a man named Francis Potter built a lumber mill in the Vernooy Kill State Forest. Families who worked there soon began building homes and the small settlement around the mill acquired the name, “Pottersville”, after the mill’s founder.

But the mill owner died, the mill closed, and having no other source of income, the families began moving out. A massive flood happened in 1927 followed by a fire which all but hastened the families’ departure. Not long after, Pottersville became a ghost town.

Before it did, however, two horrific incidents would happen there that would make “Pottersville” synonymous with ghoulish activity in the woods in the minds of many from the neighboring towns.

A man would murder his entire family then kill himself. A murderer would be caught there and hanged there. With such heavy concentration of murders, suicide, and a killing in such a small locale within a short period of time, word spread even to this day that ghosts roam Pottersville long after it was abandoned.

So, who’s up for a haunted hike? A trip with Mother Nature that has a metaphysical component could be an experience like no other. Because for all you know, your professed love for the “natural” may just be a clever guise and a hair’s breadth away from devolving into the realm called the “supernatural”…

360 degrees of Fall foliage splendor.

So, you say you want to see fall foliage before they’re gone. I say there’s no better way to do it than from inside a fire tower. A tall structure on top of a tall mountain, a fire tower offers grand vistas of the surrounding mountainous landscape for little to no hike at all. That’s 360 degrees of fall foliage splendor unobstructed for your eyes to feast on.

Built from the early 1900s to aid rangers in spotting the telltale signs of forest fires, fire towers are today defunct and are either dismantled for safety reasons or repurposed for propping up radio antennas, solar panels, and other equipment what with the rising popularity of drones that are simply better suited at the job. Unless volunteer initiatives form to save the fire towers, they will likely disappear.

And because they were originally built for forest rangers, fire towers can be easily reached simply by driving up to them. Think about it, getting to the top of most mountains requires a grueling, all-day hike. But if there is a fire tower, not only is the road paved for your driving pleasure all the way to the top but you are also offered additional elevation on a manmade structure when you get there on which to appreciate the beauty of Nature all around.

So, just as you are rushing to witness nature’s spectacular display of fall colors before they disappear, so, too, must you rush to find yourself a fire tower before they, too, disappear–this one for good.

Medieval vibe that is all fun and games.

You do get the medieval vibe at Renaissance Faire, an outdoor theme park in Tuxedo Park, New York that lets you travel back in time when knights and princesses held the public’s awe. That is, if, like me, your one and only point of reference is Hollywood’s “A Knight’s Tale”. As one author puts it (Marc Harzman, “Chasing Ghosts”, 2021), the medieval times was when “for centuries, the Grim Reaper ran rampant across Europe, reveling in plagues that wiped out whole towns, amassing bodies in hundreds of bloody wars, and possibly wincing at disturbingly creative methods of torture that sent victims into his arms.” Death was everywhere and a short lifespan whether by disease or the gallows was in the offing for everyday people like you and me. That is hardly the vibe you’d get at Renaissance Faire.

Then again, maybe the carnival-like atmosphere, whether or not but very surely driven by booze, was the medieval person’s way of rejoicing at just being alive, shelving the dark ages that came before and slowly easing the way for the coming of the Renaissance.

Accurate or not, however, the visitor is more than welcome to forget history and partake in the festivity instead, reveling in the notion that it is and always has been all about now. It’s fun, sport, and games. You just may not find a livelier place to celebrate life just by being alive than at Renaissance Faire.

Nature tour on the wild side.

I guess the only thing going against Ausable Chasm–a rock formation with plenty of adventure opportunities for the thrill-seeker including tubing, rafting, climbing cliffs, and crossing the chasm either on a hanging bridge or a stretch of cable no wider than your index finger above a raging river in what is heralded as the Grand Canyon of the Adirondacks–from becoming a highly popular New York destination is its proximity to a whole other country. Having driven 5 long hours upstate from New York City, the tourist may well drive the extra 30 minutes, exit the country altogether, and venture into Canada leaving Ausable Chasm in a cloud of dust behind.

Indeed, the few times we\’ve been to Montreal we hardly paid Ausable Chasm notice as we passed signs and read brochures for it along the highway.

Which is unfortunate. Because what I initially thought could be a tourist trap–some billionaire snatching land away from the State and turning it into a moneymaking business when Nature, for all I care, should be enjoyed by all for free–Ausable Chasm was reasonably-priced and actually has its merits at being privately-run. Whereas government-run state parks tend to be peaceful and serene, Ausable Chasm is the complete opposite. For the young and old–indeed, the brave couple in front of us on the raft, as you will see in the video, were much older than us, and a young woman possibly in her 20s turned back tugging her boyfriend along not daring to cross the hanging bridge–I guarantee a surge of adrenaline awaits not just once but maybe twice or more on the tour.

So, I say plan for visiting Ausable Chasm at some point in your life. Because when you do, you just might wonder why it never made it into your bucket list and also wonder why you can never stop talking about it. At least we do.

A waterfall forgotten?

There’s hardly any parking at all—I just parked by the side of the narrow road and hoped no truck came by and grazed my car—but judging from the amount of litter, the waterfall on Birchall Road in Ellenville seems to be a favorite hangout.

Yes, sadly, there’s litter everywhere. Plastic bags, soda bottles, graffiti, you-name-it, and there was even a small, inflated beach ball floating on the pool at the foot of the falls when I came. It made the place less idyllic and more like a forgotten part of town.

Indeed, while reviewing my footages on my computer, I noticed a man standing in the bushes watching me while I flew my drone. (You can see it on the video at the start of the second song at 2:30.) But on closer inspection it looked more like plastic bags caught in a tree and shaped like a man wearing a hoodie and jeans.

Then, again, examining the shape even closer, it looked like it has a face. A “creepy monkey” according to my daughter when I showed it to her. A cryptid!

I can only wish. As you never know after spending so much time in the Shawangunks and the nearby Catskills when Bigfoot might show up…

Seriously, I can only wish that visitors remembered to always take with them what they bring in…

Mining tunnel behind a waterfall

I first learned about Horseshoe Mine Falls with a mining tunnel behind it late last year. But also learning that I will have to wade in the pool if I wanted to photograph the waterfall from inside the tunnel, I decided to wait until the following spring when the temperatures warmed up.

So it’s late spring the following year and the waders I ordered finally arrived. I went to visit Horseshoe Mine Falls. I was not disappointed.

When I started hiking the Catskills and surrounding regions to photograph and film waterfalls more than a year ago, I thought of the activity more as “work” than “pleasure”. I got up early before sunrise and drove to a remote location over an hour away sometimes hiking for a mile or two and the night before I ran through a series of checklists making sure my cameras were in working order, the memory cards formatted, the batteries charged, and the drone’s firmware up-to-date, not to mention the research I did to know something of the place that I may say something worthwhile on video for the viewers to hear. I did not at all buy into a favorite quote among outdoor lovers attributed to naturalist John Muir saying, “the mountains are calling and I must go”. I did not consider myself to be among the flock. It was, for me, pure work.

And when I arrived at the waterfall, I had to decide where to position the cameras, where to launch the drone from, what to say about what I was seeing, and ultimately decide whether I have captured enough on video before I left. My mind was constantly on a future outcome instead of the present moment that my nature-tripping became obsessively “work” far removed from the “play” that it should have been.

But recently having found a new job, I became immersed in corporate work encased in steel, glass, and concrete looking after the company’s bottom-line. My mind was constantly dialed to a future outcome. I was left with little time and energy if at all for spontaneous activities like the nature-tripping I used to do.

Yet two months in to my work, I began to feel a longing for the outdoors. I will drive past the woods and see the mountains in the distance and from somewhere within me a pang of desire would surge wanting to be there instead of here on the asphalt road on my way to work. Spring, a waterfall recently made public, a mining tunnel, and the arrival of my waders could not have come at a better time. It’s off to Horseshoe Mine Falls I go.

The trip had a sort of coming-home feel to it when I arrived. Standing at the trailhead for the waterfall I was about to commune with, I could not help but think to myself, spend time in nature long enough in whatever capacity, condition, or demeanor you happen to be in, then stay away from her long enough, and, like a mountain from afar, she will come calling for her flock to shepherd you back.