So much wild beauty at Rockwood

This past August, when I was driving around in Tarrytown and Sleepy Hollow, I revisited Rockwood Hall State Park, which was simply Rockwood to us when we hung out there as teenagers. The park, which is located in the town of Sleepy Hollow, faces out onto the Hudson River; you can read more about its history here: http://www.nynjtc.org/hike/rockwood-hall-sleepy-hollow. I've written about Rockwood before in this blog, about how beautiful it was many years ago, and how if we just wanted to get away from it all for a few hours, that was the place we drove to so that we could walk and talk, especially during the summers. One of my last hikes through the park before I moved away from Tarrytown was during the early spring, when the grounds and trees were just starting to recover from a cold winter. The park hasn't changed much in all these years; in fact, if anything, it's more overgrown and wilder than it was before. One thing that was new was that there were wooden benches placed here and there for those who want to just sit and rest or read, as I saw one young man doing. But it's the wildness about it that I love--the overgrown bushes and trailing vines, the many trees, the open meadows, the lush greenery, and the gorgeous views of the Hudson River. I met one or two other visitors on my walk, but otherwise I had the park mostly to myself on this sunny August afternoon. I enjoyed being alone on a warm summer day, happy to be outdoors and to be back in a place that meant a lot to me as a teenager. I'm including some photos of Rockwood as it looked in August, as well as a photo collage of Rockwood from over thirty years ago, taken during the month of March.

Hudson River and view of the lovely Palisades

Tappan Zee Bridge in the distance