[Pine Meadow Lake, Harriman State Park, New York; September 17, 2013] I parked at the American Canoe Association (ACA) Camp off of Seven Lakes Drive in the early afternoon of a wonderfully clear day. The ACA Camp is on Lake Sebago, one of the park’s larger lakes. I walked down to the lakeshore and gazed across the lake. Most trees are still green, but the blueberry bushes along the shoreline have already gone to their fall red. The lake has quite a lot of beaver activity. I passed several beaver-felled trees and a lodge along the shore.

I crossed Seven Lakes Drive and first viewed a small wetland immediately adjacent to the road. The bushes in it are red as well. I then descended into the valley of Stony Brook, beneath Sebago Dam. The dam is a concrete structure, perhaps twenty feet high, and has been retrofitted with concrete pillars that support the roadway. I followed the brook, which begins at the dam and connects with several other brooks – Pine Meadow, Quartz and Reeves – before flowing into the Ramapo River in the town of Sloatsburg NY, three miles away. The brook is shallow and about twenty feet wide. The water level is fairly high today and the cataracts are sparkling in the sun. I cross a tributary, Diamond Creek, just before leaving the valley and climbing up into the hills.

I take the Hilburn-Torne_Sebago Trail (HTS, blazed in orange) up onto Diamond Mountain. It ascends steeply; the last stretch before the summit is through a fissure in a rocky crag, like a steep staircase. The summit area is lightly wooded, with many open rock ledges covered with blueberry. Several provide nice views looking back to Lake Sebago. I connect with the Seven Hills Trail (blazed in blue) and take it southward along the ridge crest for a half mile, before connecting with the Diamont-Mounatin Tower Trail (DMT, blazed in yellow). The trail crosses many wide rock ledges, many decorated with now-red blueberry bushes. I try to find a vantage to view of Pine Meadow Lake, but while I can see the lake, and Lake Wanasink, too, the views are fairly limited. I see that many of the trees show the groups of dead leaves characteristic of cicada damage. Evidentially, Brood II of the Seventeen Year Cicadas, which swarmed this year here. The trail descends the south side of the mountain.

I leave the DMT trail as it passes close to a small stream, the outflow of Lake Wanasink. I know from past hikes that this stream flows through a broad wetland, in a secluded valley a little to the north. I scramble over an old, half finished concrete dam. Had it been completed, it would have, I suppose, created another lake between Pine Meadow and Wanasink. I walk along the southern bank of the stream, past a beaver dam. I visited the dam in the winter; it was clearly active then, but seems abandoned now. I viewed the wetland from the broad rock ledge that overlooks it. I sighted a Great Blue Heron and a hawk, flying across the marsh grasses. The grass is now all amber-yellow and the bushes around the marsh’s edge are dull red.

I took a narrow woods road over to Pine Meadow Road West, a much wide woods road that connects Pine Meadow Lake, Lake Wanasink and Breakneck Pond, and took it south to Pine Meadow Lake. The road leads to a small bridge over the spillway of Pine Meadow Dam, a long earth-fill dam on the lake’s western margin. Pine Meadow Lake is, in my opinion, the most beautiful of the many lakes in Harriman State Park, owing to the striking rock formations on it northwestern edge. A jumble of giant blocks, tan in color and some twenty feet tall, line this part of the lakeshore. The rest of the lake is very beautiful as well, with broad bushy lowlands, now all fall red. A wide ledge near the bridge is a favorite sunning spot for visitors; several people are relaxing there today. One couple is accompanied by a black Labrador Retriever named Liberty. It recruits me to throw its ball into the lake so that it can swim out and retrieve it. I oblige several times, and then walk first over to the large blocks, which form something of a peninsula and then the length of the dam, so that I can view the lake from a number of vantages. Wildflowers are growing on the dam – the ubiquitous Goldenrod and some white flowers, too.

I head back after about a half hour of explorations along the lake shore. I mostly return by the same trails, except that I substitute the Tuxedo Mount Ivy Trail (TMI, blazed in red) for HTS. It also connects with the Seven Hills Trail and leads to Lake Sebago, and though it is longer than HTS, it avoids the very steep rock part of Diamond Mountain. It also crosses picturesque Diamond Creek in an interesting rocky valley.

About two and a half hours.