Nathan Schiller

Harriman State Park, Region 3 of the Lower Hudson Valley, is thirty-five miles north of New York City, close enough that you can see the Manhattan skyline . . .

. . . if you know where to look.

But Harriman’s proximity to the densest metropolitan area in the United States of America is only part of what makes this geologic gem a trail runner’s paradise.

Spanning Rockland and Orange Counties, and blending into Bear Mountain State Park, Harriman has two hundred miles of footpaths (plus thirty-one lakes, two beaches, and all sorts of cabins and camping areas and smooth two-lane roads, a cyclist’s haven as well).

The trails are blazed and connected; the terrain is rugged and overgrown; absorb the scenery and you’re turning an ankle. 

When you patiently wind your way around the boulders . . .

. . . up to the undulating rock sheets from the times of the dinosaurs . . . 

. . . or when you’re lucky enough to stumble upon Harriman’s one true extended scramble, that’s the time for a view.

Compared to anything out west—even compared with the Catskills (an hour’s drive north) and the Adirondacks (another two hours after that)—these are modest peaks, twelve-hundred-footers that an experienced and conditioned runner rarely hikes, by choice, for longer than a few minutes.

But Harriman isn’t about dramatic ascents. 

It’s an escape—not that Manhattan doesn’t have its own cliffside recluse (Fort Tryon Park) and slice of forest (Inwood Hill Park).

It’s all but empty on weekdays . . .

. . . and arrive by sunrise to beat the fair-weather weekenders.

Either way, you can always spend a couple hours breaking cobwebs on forgotten trails and chilling with Eastern newts.

I’ve been running in Harriman for fifteen years, long enough to have established personal routes: the four-mile up-and-down, the ten-mile lollipop, the twenty-mile loop.

But it can still get confusing out there: one wrong turn and you’re back in Times Square.