Shawangunk: Adventure, Exploration, History and Epiphany from a Mountain Wilderness [first edition]

This book by the Shawangunks' best-known and most prolific author, naturalist and historian combines the results of recent scientific and historical research with literary nature writing, introspection, humor and just a touch of fantasy, in describing the highest and most remote regions of Ulster County's Shawangunk range. There are chapters about cougar sightings and wild mountain fire. The author discusses results from a soil core analysis which dates the present Shawangunk dwarf pine barrens to the first millennium B.C. A chapter on the mountain's viewshed describes a day on the ridge top so exquisitely clear that Mt. Equinox, Vermont was visible at a distance of 119 miles. Fried also writes of his encounters with bobcats and rattlesnakes, and of experiencing the near-hurricane winds of the March '93 "Blizzard of the Century," alone at his isolated cabin over 2000 feet high in the pine barrens. Beautifully bound, with full-color cover photo.