We remain suspended in air, gazing at the Ice Age below as twilight approaches. Then we fall into the darkness of a full-moon lit night. All below, those areas covered with ice shimmer with a bright silvery moonlight. Non-glaciated areas are as black as can be.
We disappear into time: It is 500 years later, March 21, 14,281 BC, and we, the mind’s eye, begin a repeat of our earlier journey. We quickly see that the warming, that we saw earlier, has accelerated. This is a warmer spring. We are viewing the results of global warming at an extraordinary level. We are, once again, just east of the future Woodstock site. We look down and see that there is still a Hudson Valley glacier, but its surface is festooned with many pools of water. We had not seen such things the last time. We look west and see that the Bearsville glacier has been retreating. Now the ice has melted back and the Comeau Hill is just beginning to emerge through its surface. Only the hill’s top is yet exposed but it already shows the symmetry of something geologists call a drumlin. This hill was recently formed; like all drumlins, it was sculpted by the recent advance of the Bearsville ice and it has never before been visible.
We look up toward Overlook and now we see its glacier is in full rapid retreat. Cascades of powerful whitewater are pouring downhill and then veering sharply to the south to rain down into Bearsville. A huge heap of sediment has been carried along and it’s piling up at the far northwestern corner of the future village. Another meltwater cascade is pouring from the far western edge of the valley where Wittenberg Road will be. Just beyond this flow, and stretching east to the remaining glacial ice, is the expanse of a meltwater lake, a very much deeper Glacial Lake Bearsville. The remaining ice covers all of what will be Woodstock, but today it is melting rapidly.
The lake waters are as high as they ever will be and they need to drain. They have cut a channel through the melting ice, just south of the Comeau Hill. A heavy flow of water is passing east, down that channel. It has eroded down through the ice, all the way to the bedrock. The currents are carving pot holes into that rock. These will be fondly regarded features by the people who will come here to cool off in the much warmer summers to come. They, too, will be well regarded by the geologists who will visit here too. They will look at those potholes and see back to this moment in the past. In that distant past, geology is still a science to be discovered but, at that time, geology itself was, in part, being created.
Come and see all of this yourself. Join the author on the afternoon of July 8 when he will be leading a walk to the Comeau Hill as part of a Woodstock celebration of that location. Learn more at https://willnixon.com/pocket-guide-comeau. ++
Contact the author at [email protected]
