After the other days’ exertions I almost stayed home today. The trouble is that Jackson now has expectations that we will go on long walks everyday. Around noon he started giving me these sad little looks so I decided we had to go out. After the Three Lakes/Appalachian Trail experience I didn’t want anywhere difficult, nor did I want anywhere too far away. I managed to find an easy walk called Granite Knolls in Shrub Oak.
I didn’t think there would be much to see – just a walk in the woods. Turned out to be rather interesting though. It is an easy walk initially alongside the Taconic, but then branching off into the woods. All told we walked for about two hours and fifteen minutes.
At one point the landscape is covered with large boulders. It looks like something out of the Lord of the Rings. I kept expecting wargs to come charging over the horizon or nazgul to fly in through the trees. The largest of the boulders is a glacial erratic. I had thought that when you’d seen one glacial erratic you’d seem them all – and I’d seen two, one in the Rockefeller Preserve and the North Salem “dolmen”. This one was a monster – much bigger than the others. And it must have been even bigger in the past as many of the other large boulders around it show marks as having been cut from the big one.
The only ruin on this walk – a ruined car. Why someone would take the trouble to drag this up into the woods is beyond me. I can’t imagine how they got it there.
Stone gateposts in the woods. Wherever I go I come across stone walls, gateposts, ruined houses and other buildings etc. It’s clear that there was once a lot of agriculture. Why did it disappear I wonder?
Fallen Tree
Giant boulder in the background. Offcuts in the foreground. To the top right of the offcuts you can see the drill marks. None of my pictures really do it justice. It’s huge – about the size of a house.
