(The following is an excerpt from Sketchbook Traveler: New England (volume three) from Schiffer Publishing. Scheduled for publication in the fall of 2022.

Looking north from the summit of Mount Equinox (43.1660414 x -73.1117056). Bastille Day, 2019

Rising five hundred feet higher than Mount Greylock fifty miles to the south, Equinox Mountain, at just under four thousand feet, is the highest peak in the Taconic range that marks the western boundary of New England. Gaining two thousand feet in elevation above the Batten Kill River just south of the upscale resort town and outlet mecca of Manchester, Vermont, the summit is a popular destination for motorists and hikers. The historic Equinox Golf Resort & Spa stands at its foot. The only Carthusian monastery in the country resides at its summit. Open to the public, the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration contains exhibits, chapels, restrooms, and open-air observation decks. Surrounding vistas reveal serried highlands stepping off to the west into the Hudson Valley.

Location: The summit of Mount Equinox. Skyline Drive. North side of Highway 7A, 4.3 miles south of Manchester, Vermont

Marching eastward, longitudinal mountain ridge divided by the Connecticut River arrive at Mount Monadnock ninety miles away before reaching northward into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Summit vistas disclose the topographical history of New England. Most of its mountain ranges are aligned on a north-south axis, like the deserts of northern Nevada and western Utah without the intervening basins.
The depth of, and distance between heights and valleys is a corrugation of such regularity that it puts me in mind of a plowed field, or a theater curtain laid flat. Added to massive tectonic forces that formed the Appalachians, collision with the micro-continent of Avalonia brought to bear further compression in the process of mountain building in New England. Fifty thousand years ago, advancing ice sheets two miles thick smoothed jagged peaks into the rounded forms we behold today.

Now available to own: Sketchbook Traveler: Hudson Valley

Explore my Quaranteam Dispatches, from April 1-June 8, 2020