Beyond the Kittatinny Ridge the valley rambles towards the Delaware River Rock tumbled and frequently littered with low ridges, this valley is adrift on stout legged hills the Lenape called Endless Mountain Like Highland Scots, all muscled and burly limbed, the terrain pushes and pulls as it rises upward in a hostility of quartz smoothed by glacial erosion the bedrock is often sparsely exposed due to thick lodgement till that inhospitably capes shale, siltstone, sandstone, quartzite, and conglomerate all which form the bedrock Outcroppings goaded southward from the Shawangunks head to the Water Gap and its female lines and trafficked corridor: trucks, buses, and westward travellers rushing by, rushing The climb from Gap to Culvers spartan of people; ablaze in deciduous, congressed in boulders: insolent, disagreeable obstructions but the substance, the essential core of these hills A wet campfire smolders as twilight hovers past the tents, past the last tired walker: boots off, blanket wrapped The stars edge past the darkness small punctures in the night and somewhere an animal crashes through the forested hills hemmed by bayberries and rhododendrons Obscure pines scratch the night, which veils and shrouds these ancient hills carpeting the somber slopes and aimless, shadowed ridges The highlands dream as everything dreams here, of time and light and day and rocks that argue depth, fracture, and push Darkness and silence now blanket the ridge and sleep gentles the night awaiting sunrise
Wanderings and Reflections