I'd like to share with you another image from a recent photo outing, taken just below the Skytop monument, our area's most iconic feature and, for me, a psychic pivot point around which I seem to be drawn, not unlike a moth to a flame.
There is a school of painting in Japan that includes their Mt. Fuji in any painting – that seems to be the way I feel about Skytop, even though it is a manmade feature of the landscape (a stone tower constructed to memorialize the passing of one of the Smiley twin brothers, founders of the spectacular Mohonk Mountain House) and even though it is not actually in every photograph I make of the area.
I was hiking with a friend when we came across this scene of trees in peak autumn foliage growing among the talus boulders that one finds at the base of the cliffs. I was struck, as always, by the way that life seems to find purchase, and even thrive, in what would appear an inhospitable spot. To my mind, part of the beauty in this image is the juxtaposition of the geometric and unyielding blocks of Shawangunk conglomerate populated by the graceful forms of the trees.
At the end of our trek, we arrived at the base of Skytop where my hiking companion made this photo of me in the waning light of the day.
