For security reasons, the dates of my trip to Spain cannot be revealed, but I know once I get there, my daughter, living in Valencia, is going to walk my legs off. With this consideration in mind, I have been reserving my mid-winter Sundays as a sort of spring training. I have to be able to walk gobs of distances and she walks fast. I don’t know where she got that, I’m such a saunterer. And she’s not tall, so my legs are longer, but I just can’t keep up with her urban, sidewalk pace. And she’s going to have a lot to show me -- her historical awareness of the places she gets to is keen, fulsome, and integrated.

With a light snowfall, I headed to Sam’s Point, planning a stiff climb and a good stretch of my legs and back. It was not clear in my head where I was going, but then I started thinking of my daughter and I knew I’d have to take the trail to Indian Rock. It wouldn’t give me quite the workout I wanted, but by the time I was done it would give me a nice five miles.

The trail to Indian Rock is truly a special piece of territory. On top of Shawangunk Mountain, the trail is off High Point Carriage Road. Once you get to the turn-off, a little wooden sign says Indian Rock 0.6 miles. Ok, 1.2 miles roundtrip.

I entered the trail, for it truly has an entrance, with scrub pine trees forming a tunnel around me, and underneath, my boots walked oak planks attached to logs, creating pontoons over wet areas. The tracks in the fresh snow revealed a man had entered the trail before me, and returned. There was no-one out there. The air was crisp, well below freezing, and while a light snow was falling, yet visibility was good. Stepping on the fresh snow, the planks were not slippery, and I avoided the packed footprints of my predecessor. The trail winds up and down and has beautiful contours to it and almost a resonance, a tone. I wore my Stanley radio headphones and listened to music and whenever a commercial came on I hit the channel button and listened to whatever came next, not caring the station as long as the music was good.

The trail escapes westward toward the Rondout Valley and, to the south, at times, you can look back along the mountain-top to vanquished Cragsmoor, the once and former artist colony, far enough away that any building showing appears smaller than a toy house in the game of Monopoly. The trail opens up when the valley comes into view and until now I had the footprints of the other hiker as company, but here, at the first steep decline, I could see in the snow he had fallen, and with his fall, he had stopped and went no further. He fell on an ice sheet which covered the trail and dripped over a natural formation of large stone steps. They were covered in snow, of course, and he hadn’t known there was ice below. I skirted the ice covered steps and continued my trip, but not before I found his water bottle. When he fell his water bottle must have dislodged from the side of his backpack. His canteen was under the small pine tree I used as a support as I negotiated the ice, and it was a good one made of stainless steel by Stihl, and I thought maybe if I was lucky, it might hold an adult beverage, but no -- just water. I travel light, mostly, no water, no backpack, all that, just phone and headphones, but I decided to pick up the canteen on my return. From here, the trail was open now and no footprints and I had the trail to myself -- pristine and clean.

The scrub pines were burned now from previous mountain top fires and the trees were charcoal and white with the snow. There is no adequate word for it in English but, walking, I was overtaken with a sweet sadness, like happy and sad at the same time, but not melancholia, not depression, and I know we all feel this from time to time, and now was that time, and while there is no word for it in English, the Portuguese say, saudadies, and as I walked, I remembered my daughter.

She was five years old when we took this trail, five years old and we hiked five miles that day, and it is part of the reason I can’t keep up with her today. It was early summer when we hiked here and the huckleberries were not yet ripe and the chickadees were nesting and we listened for rattlesnakes on the trail ahead of us, but nothing. And we vowed to return when the berries were ripe, and that summer we did, and we picked the huckleberries and got home and baked a pie and what a huckleberry pie it was too.

The more I walked, the greater my trance, until back at the planks that started the trail, here came a group occupying the planks as their own. In their immense happiness, they took selfies in the pines and with selfie sticks, as they walked on the planks, single-file with the white snow. They were so happy, dressed in city winter clothes as if running from a convention, and as they passed me they wanted a picture of me for I was the foreigner to them. They put their arms around me and took pictures for another world. They spoke enough English to tell me they were from Belarus, Minsk, and Kazakhstan and the one who held me tightest was an Asian from Siberia. I said “Minsk! It is so cold there.” And they said “No. no, it is colder in New York,” and they laughed again, mostly women and one man, and they continued on down the trail towards Indian Rock. I tried to tell them about the ice. I knew they would not make it.

My trance broken, all I could do was smile. I left the trail and, regaining the carriage road, headed towards the frozen lake of Maratanza.