The Helderbergs

The trails runs the edge for several miles, a clifftop walk, it is no great trial, atop a long precipice of limestone, where big, black vultures soar, and make their home, a rugged wall, by ancient peoples known, so it looms, this stubborn piece of wild. Atop it a state park has sat for years, small fences up to calm a parent’s fears, but you know kids, they’ll always go ahead and fearlessly peer over that great ledge, the beauty awes even in their young heads, like all souls, they’re stirred by the wonder here. Some metal stairs descend down to the base, so folks can walk along the smallish caves, ‘hold up the earth’ in a picture they snap, see Minekill Falls, and walk around its back, find passageways where Iroquois made tracks, and Tory soldiers hid in olden days. It seems so close, you can see Albany, but when the winds blow you almost believe that this place is at the edge of the earth, like some lost land you found after long search, quite thankful that people have seen the worth of these tree-clad cliffs in their majesty.