The Catskills in the Ice Age, Revised Edition

To someone who knows how to read the landscape, the Catskills generate fabulous images of ice, glacial lakes, and fossil rivers roaring through the valleys--the Catskill Mountains as we know them are the legacy of massive forces. Virtually all Catskill mountain villages are built where they are because glaciers made some of the land habitable; our best agricultural lands are the floors of glacial lakes; much of our recreational hiking and climbing leads to scenery carved by the passing ice. The glaciers that covered these mountains did not in themselves produce art, literature, or environmental ethics, but here they created a setting that inspired all three. That is the story of "The Catskills in the Ice Age."