Peanut Cascade on the Palisades, NY.
When I was nine or ten, living in Germany, my best friend and I laughed our little girls heads off. Maybe we had been at Girl Scout day trip (Troops on Foreign Soil), but our legs ached from some athletic exertion. Heck, maybe it was ballet class. My memory is fuzzy.
She said "My eggs lake."
As soon as she did, she realized her gaffe. And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed. We laughed until we cried. The silly giggles, the kind that self-generate, self-perpetuate, until we lay on our backs, gasping, exhausted.
My legs ache.
Every couple-three months, I take a friend or two up to hike the trail at the State Line Lookout on the Palisades Interstate Park, a mile south of the NY State border. It is the toughest hike within an hour's (maybe even two hours) drive of the City. It's a bear of a hike. The Park materials call it "the hikes of hikes."
I've been hiking the Peanut Cascade-Giant Stairs loop for fifteen years. I argue that it keeps my legs in shape for when I visit the mountains in Colorado, New Mexico, or California (Arizona and Utah too).
But it also busts my butt, quads, iliotibial bands, and lower back. Mostly the quads. For two days afterward, the front of my legs hurt, a lot like the two days after I ran the New York City Marathon. Only once. Once was enough.
Going down stairs kills.
It will get better, And in a couple-three months, I'll take a friend or two and do it all over again.
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