The Other Side of Time: Essays by "The Catskill Geologist"
Meander with Titus along Route 9W in Ulster County, where the Esopus Creek descends two ledges of rock known as the Glenarie Limestone. "The world is 4 ½ billion years old, and this precise longitude and latitude has been here all of that time," he writes. "On the bank, just below Route 9W, is a fossil wonder... trace fossils of worms-zoophycos-that lived here a little less that 400 million years ago."       In stories of the Catskill Delta, read about "moving and colliding continents and once-towering mountain ranges which are no more." Take a hike up Overlook Mountain trail and gaze east. Find the Berkshires on the distant horizon... (Is that... Atlantis?) For 200 million years, Overlook lay in complete darkness, its sleep "dreamless and darker than anything humans can know." Or, as Titus did, sit on the 130-foot long piazza of the long-gone Catskill Mountain House and "gaze at mountains which eroded away 300 million years ago." Such are the moments in the life of a geologist. --The Independent (Columbia County) 11/27/07