Journey on the Long Path
By William Tucker
Nyack, N.Y. – I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. No, that’s not really true. I went to the woods because I needed a vacation, because I was tired of spending every afternoon looking for parking spaces in the city, and because I had a month to myself without any seriously pressing obligations.
The Long Path is an inviting opportunity, a much more manageable version of the Appalachian Trail, which takes seven months to complete. It starts at the George Washington Bridge, winds its way along the Palisades, passes through Piermont and Nyack, over High Tor, and up into beautiful Harriman Park, which is where the Appalachians meet the Hudson. From there it crosses suburbanized Orange County (that’s the discouraging part), then curves eastward along the Shawangunks Ridge, the best rock-climbing spot in the eastern United States, up into the Catskills, and ends about 15 miles from Albany. There is talk of extending it into the Adirondacks but there is much private property in between.
Hiking at a good healthy pace, it should take a month. I have the month of August to spare. And so last Thursday, I found myself in the passenger seat of my son’s car, loaded up with hiking gear, feeling like a parachutist about to fly out the open door, headed for the George Washington Bridge. In the back seat is our former dog Augie, an incredibly friendly and intelligent golden retriever. He was our fourth child a few years ago until I developed an asthmatic reaction to him and we had to give him up. This is a reunion. I figure we can survive together in all this fresh air.
Kevan (my son) double-parks and takes our picture at the bridge. “Going to Vermont?” calls a bridge worker, who is used to this sort of thing. “Just to Albany,” I holler over the traffic. And Augie and I are on our way.
From the bridge we see the beautiful escarpment of the Palisades wending north. This is our route. At the Jersey end we weave through a network of fenced-in walkways but suddenly at the end of one we are in the woods. Traffic on the Palisades Parkway rushes like a river beside us for the first five miles but after that, civilization is suddenly very far away. Albany, here we come.
Lessons learned from the first few days in the woods:
- Blackberries are a godsend. In the first mile we meet a bush that is loaded. They are so full of nourishment you feel them carry you for the next mile. But as we move north I realize that they are just coming into season. The next bush holds only one or two ripe ones and from there it is all triangular yellow flowers. I am hoping the season catches up with us.
- There is no candy like a Snickers bar. I have heard about people who hike the whole Appalachian Trail eating nothing but Snickers. It has just the right balance of protein and sugars. The last store we stopped at didn’t have Snickers so I settled for Reese’s cups and Butterfingers instead. Now that I am hiking they have lost all appeal. Somehow your body becomes acutely economical in taking in nourishment. There is no energy to waste.
- There is nothing like a cool mountain stream or a soft breeze. At the end of the first day we are at the point of exhaustion when we come across a small cistern formed for a culvert running beneath the Palisades Parkway. The water is tinged with silt but we jump in anyway. It is heavenly. The temperature is supposed to be around 95 degrees but we are completely refreshed.
- You can’t gulp water—it only makes you thirstier and your canteen quickly empties. The best way to drink is to inhale it out of the bottle. It soaks into the linings of your mouth and you use very little.
- A dog can get tired more quickly than a human. Augie is only four years old and jogs five miles a day with his new owner but he is having a tough time with the heat. On one steep incline he refused to move altogether; I had to climb down, leave my pack, then go back up and carry his pack for him. At other times—when we spot a deer, for example—he is filled with boundless energy. It’s largely psychological.
My first newspaper job 30 years ago was in Rockland County, on the western shore of the Hudson, and it is a bit of a homecoming. In Piermont, I find that a restaurant and cabaret started by an old girlfriend has become a huge success. Acts such as Richie Havens and Johnny Mayal pack in the aging yuppies on weekends. She has long since married and left for Texas but her brother still runs it.
In Nyack, I find the owner of a bookstore where I once worked briefly is still plying his trade. He has become the image of that graying old scholar perched atop the ladder in the painting, “The Bookworm” that you always see in libraries. His store is more disorganized than ever but he has survived and put two kids through college.
What I like most about being in the woods is leaving the world behind. I haven’t glanced at a newspaper headline since I left. Who knows? By the time I return, eternal peace could have broken out the Middle East or the world could be consumed by war. I’ll deal with it all after Labor Day.
For now I am happy to be putting one foot in front of the other, trudging down the long, brown path with my dog behind me, wondering if we can get to the next mountain before making camp. Sometimes I feel like Rip Van Winkle. Sometimes I feel like an 18-year-old, filled with zest and vigor for life. It’s a lot better than sitting at the word processor trying to make sense of the world.
William Tucker is a regular columnist for The American Enterprise Online.
