We returned to our site and built up a cookfire for hot dogs and s'mores (the best I ever had) and joked into the night, and fell asleep when we were tired, without looking at our watches, the way you do in the wilderness where the hour is subsumed by the rhythms of light and darkness.

I woke up early the next morning (so refreshed -- hammock camping is the best) and walked down to the falls with my binoculars. The sun rose behind me, and I watched the shadow of my mountain across the gorge again, this time being eaten by the bright yellow light of day. The birds rose with the dawn, too, so I walked into the forest for a spot of birding and was overwhelmed by the exuberance and variety of the dawn chorus of birds.

I returned to our campsite a few hours later to find my friends just waking up. We struggled with a brand new cracked cookstove for a while, leaking pink kerosene over our hands until we gave up around lunchtime and ate tuna sandwiches.

We then hiked down to the bottom of the falls (260 feet total, the upper falls drop 180 ft and the lower, eighty). After a challenging descent down loose scree, soaking our feet in the icy water was heavenly. We then ascended to the base of the upper falls, where a big deep pool invited us to take off our clothes and jump in. Standing under the falls was magical; water so cold and so heavy that all we could do was whoop and growl, then jump into the icy pool for relief. A piece of heaven.

Of course, before I got my boots back on I managed to slice the bottom of my right foot on a sharp pice of shale, but we fashioned a bandage out od cigarette filters and duct tape, so it wasn't such a bother climbing back up.

When we got back to the campsite, it started to cloud over, so we set up a tarp between two trees, mustered our supplies and wood into the dry spots, and started a card game just in time for a serious, hour-long downpour.

After the rain, we were just staring up a cookfire for the evening meal, sitting around shooting the shit, when one of my friends looked over my shoulder and said quietly, "Bear." That was all. Just, "Bear."

It was actually two bears, black bears, a mother and a half-grown cub, and it was about eight feet away from me when my friends saw it. We stood up and went cautiously to the other side of the fire, raised our jackets high above our heads (bears' lack of depth perception makes them think you're nine feet tall if you do) and rattled our cups and pots. The bears were naturally pretty frightened by this and ran off.

We sat back down to our meal (tempeh burgers and hummus) and discussed our course of action, whether the bears would come back, how hard it would be to hump our gear out of there at night, and how much of a threat the bears would be; all our questions were too inconclusive for comfort. Particularly for me in my hammock. I had a mental image of waking up to a bear snout pressed against my side. While we knew there wasn't a great chance of the bears coming back while we slept (they didn't actually get any food), a slim chance is bad odds when you're talking about bears.

So we broke camp and trekked out in the dark, drove to a Super 8 Motel, and watched Rutger Hauer in Salute to the Jugger and John Carpenter's The Thing, and slept in beds. The next day we stopped and walked around Storm King, a huge outdoor sculpture park, and got ice cream (I got sherbet) at a phenomenal nearby vintage ice-cream shop called Weir's.

On the way back, we followed our noses and the traffic reports to miss two major traffic jams and sailed trough the Holland Tunnel and home.

My typos are obvious and embarrass me beyond specific mention.

Hugh baby,
Someday I am going to publish a book by you, that is a threat and a promise.

Make sure you got the foot clean and totally dry, right? I know you know that but we're all here to check each other and so on.

Sounds like a great trip, HJ. Reminds me of a trip I took years ago up Cascade Falls and Bear Mountain, along the Appalachian. I keep a Sierra cup on hand as a remembrance. There was nothing better than setting the pack down on a hot July day and dipping that cup into ice cold, fast-running water.

Glad the baar didn't eatcha. : )

My friends and I used to go on day trips down to Kaaterskill Falls in high school. Good times.