I dug out my low cut Bean boots. I shuffled through my socks for two pair -- one cotton and one wool. I had my coffee, skipped lunch. I bottled honey from the gated pail of honey spun from the extractor in the cellar. Waiting for the first snowflakes, I washed the full jars of honey and rubbed them down with a towel and lined them up on the kitchen table. Ok. There it is – the first flakes, the storm is here.

A couple times a year it is a necessary thing to hike through falling, wind driven snow. It’s just a thing. A memory reset of childhood snow days on the farm, spent on the slopes below the barn, the pastureland above the river. Hour by hour, sledding down, dragging back up, sledding down, bundled like a package. Every approaching storm brings excitement -- electrical, psychological, anticipatory conspiratorial energies. I grabbed my heaviest jacket, a scarf, the fleece hat recently inherited from my deceased brother-in-law, and hurried to the truck.

A friend turned me on to a new trail, new for me, and I wanted to see it, to hike it in the snow. I drove towards the mountain, through Pine Bush and Walker Valley, up the mountainside towards Cragsmoor, and turned off, left, onto Cox Road. It was all new and I didn’t know where I was going but the trailhead parking lot was just as I had visualized it and I parked the truck and walked to the kiosk, pulling on my doeskin mittens. I studied the topographical map behind the glass of the bulletin board, and following the contour lines, I decided to take the left loop path first, as it looked like the steepest climb and I like to get my work done early so I can coast the rest of the way.

The trail markers were red and the climb was as steep as I had imagined, but the trail leg longer than it looked. I knew at least one reason, now, why my friend liked this trail -- the steep climb keeps her gluts tight. The snow was coming down good now and covering patches of ice and the trail was slippery in parts and I had to go slow and watch my footing. My friend had warned me that, on top, many of the trail markers were painted on the rocks of the cliff tops and the snow would be covering them and I might get lost on an unfamiliar trail. I was confident in my trail-reading skills, and after passing the conglomerate cliffs, reached the top where the Red Trail meets the Blue Trail. The Blue Trail is the Long Path which traverses from the George Washington Bridge 357 miles to Albany, and so now I was on the Long Path and I turned north.

Here the snow was blowing horizontal across the mountain top, through the burned pitch pine from a fire, and drifting onto the rock ledges. The trail was easier now, and flatter, and in some places covered with grasses which made the hiking especially comfortable and fun and I thought this would be great in summer too when I can see my footing better and the view to the west would show me the green of all New York.

But now the visibility was just the snow and my immediate stepping points and the nearest trees and I suddenly realized it was going on 4 o’clock and this is winter and hey it’s going to get dark soon and I don’t know where the hell I am. I kept looking for a junction with the return leg of the Red Trail, the leg which would take me down the mountain and under the cliffs and back to the parking lot, but there was nothing, just more Long Path with blue markers, and even though, as my friend had warned, no markings were visible on the stones themselves, yet the tree markers were adequately installed to compensate, and previous hikers had built cairns to mark difficult turns or trail switches. But no red markers.

Either this section of trail was much longer than it looked on the map, or, the weather conditions were slowing me up enough to make it seem much longer than it actually was, or, I had somehow missed the turn-off and now I was on my way to Albany! I had two choices and both of them meant going forward. If my timing was wrong and the Red Trail marker was still ahead of me, then everything would be fine and I would have just enough time to get back to the truck before darkness. If I had missed the trail I figured I could keep going on the Long Path as it was forced to cross State Route 52 at some point and, if I moved fast, I might make that by dark too. So not to worry.

The trail took me along the edge of the cliffs and at some points I had to sit down to make it down steps of stone with the cliffs within inches of my boots and I was glad to have picked up a large staff of dead wood as a walking stick as it helped with balance on the slippery parts, and it punched through snow to let me know if what I was stepping on had a bottom. Still no Red Trail marker.

Now, from with the imperfect photographic memory of my slippery mind, the topographical map I carried there indicated the distance to the state highway, Route 52, was not quite reachable, any longer, within my window of daylight. But I said to myself, one last time, if the Red Trail is anywhere it is just ahead where I see the trail dips down and joins a shallow ravine running east. Finally, yep! This was the one, a Red Marker on a tree. I took the trail with relief, knowing if I didn’t get lost I should have just enough time to get back to the truck before losing the trail in pitch darkness and the driving snow of Doctor Zhivago.

The Red Trail now took me along the base of the cliffs, where earlier on the top of them, I had thought the Red Trail might be, sweeping back in the opposite direction from the Long Path, back to the trail head. And here in the crevasses I thought what a great place for a black bear to hibernate, and as tricks will play the mind, I was sure I saw one huddled with his back to me under a 20-ton stone but I did not turn around to confirm!