A mentor in Vermont researches sasquatch legends in the ravines of the Green Mountains.  Sasquatch did not come to mind last week when I espied this figure atop a Hudson cliff; rather I thought of ghosts or at least a Washington Irving mountainman of the sort that bedeviled my ancestor Rip van Winkle‘s head with fuddling rum.

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Upriver a bend, I identified the figure:  a painter, one of a long tradition along the Hudson.  What could he possible wish to capture on his canvas?

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Chesapeake and a light barge passing Storm King, and

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Champion Polar of Bergen, which must surely be southbound from Henry’s Northwest Passage, and

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Choptank, here cranking through Hudson Highlands and World’s End.

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Maybe the artist was doing a series of peaks starting with Anthony’s Nose at Bear Mountain Bridge.

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What if the proverbial “bear” for which the bridge is named was larger than a human, very hairy, and primitive?   And who was Anthony?  I’ll answer that last question later.

Photos, WVD.