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The Hard Way to Peekamoose Mountain: Further Into the Wild Appalachia, December 2002 At dawn, somewhere off in the trees, a great horned owl sounds its melancholic dirge. I open my eyes to see the eastern sky glowing purplish red as the last stars dim. The forest and I stir awake with bird song beginning to fall from the canopy. In the dawn's half-light I lounge in my bed for a delicious moment and tell myself: This is good. Right now, indeed for each moment of this endeavor, I am a rich man. A half-frozen energy bar stills my hunger as I hurry to pack the sleeping gear and move out, careful to leave no sign of my visit. Working my way past the problem ledges, I kick steps up the north-facing snow slope. The grade eases into sunlight; the snowpack thins, then fades away. Minutes later I'm standing on the summit of Cross Mountain. Ahead of me, the Wittenberg's east face rears skyward as her conjoining twin, Cornell, peeks out from behind. To the south, Friday and Balsam Cap, the northern outliers of the trailless "Bushwhack Range," that punisher of peak-baggers, stand striking and bold in the morning light. I follow the rim of a rock ledge downhill, through hardwoods stunted by exposure and shallow soil, to a crossing beneath the Wittenberg's soaring mass. Here, finally, I enter the realm of big timber. The stately trees are growing robustly in the shelter of the high mountain, and I'm cheered to recognize the woodland community that can only be virgin forest: red and sugar maple, black cherry, yellow birch, and ash gray American beech — the signature trees that, when unmixed with other species, certify deciduous first-growth in the Catskills. Aged, toppled carcasses lying amid the mounds and stump craters of earlier fallen and long-since-rotted timber are further signs that humans have never disturbed these ancient woods.
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