(click on the photo here, then see the slide show)

We were out with friends early in November for a hike over Cold Spring, NY to Bull Hill.  Here is a photo from about fifty miles north of New York City.  You can see the towers of Manhattan and also Jersey City off to the west.  This was a great day to get out of the big city and to get a sense that there are mountains, and forests, and the mighty Hudson all still there beyond the concrete and steel, the millions churning and the power plants burning.  Sometimes you forget how magnificent our old planet really is.  John Muir’s message was to get out and see the magnificence and then get back home and work like the devil to protect it.  “Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”

We had a great day, looking south over Cold Spring and to West Point, looking east to Connecticut, looking north to the Catskills, and west toward Storm King Mountain.

Storm King, not incidentally, was the proposed site for a major power facility in the early 60s and the ensuing battle to stop the project eventually established the primacy of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).  (Of course, no surprise:  The Trump Administration is out to gut NEPA.  Very heavy sigh.)

Hop in your car, or a train, or a plane and get yourself out to the mountains and get their good tidings.