The Catskills in the Ice Age

This book is about perception, about seeing our familiar world in a new light. We can spend a lifetime enjoying the natural beauty of the Catskill Mountains and still be blind to much that is there. But now, guided by two resident science professors, we can embark on a journey through the past for a clearer understanding of the present as well as the future, for as the authors conclude, “Nothing, absolutely nothing, lasts forever.” Stand anywhere in the Catskill Mountains and look up into the sky. Let your mind wander back 20,000 years into the past. Try to imagine a half mile of glacier rising above part of a vast sheet of ice reaching south from Labrador, crushing and grinding mountains and forests in its path as it slowly advances. The enormous weight of the ice pushes down on the surface, scraping and sculpting the mountains we know today. Next, fast-forward your vision thousands of years and witness in your mind’s eye the melting of that ice: raging, foaming, pounding, thundering torrents of water flowing out from the melting ice to form the picturesque cloves and waterfalls of today’s Catskills, creating the landscape that inspired the Hudson River School painters . . . gifts of the Ice Age.

Robert and Johanna Titus’s survey of the region’s geological history during that distant period includes descriptions of the visible evidence left by glacial movement on dozens of specific locations including North Lake and the Kaaterskill Clove, Overlook Mountain, Grand Gorge, the Schoharie Valley, Windham and more.

Co-published with Black Dome Press