In the spring of 2018, I got really serious about hiking all 584 miles of the Finger Lakes Trail (FLT). That year, I found the FLT Conference website and discovered the County Hike Series. I learned that the cycle begins in the Catskills at the eastern end of the trail. Group hikes are planned every third Saturday of the month from April through September. Each hike ranges from 9 to 14 miles

I missed the registration for Ulster County in 2017. But in 2018, I signed up to traverse Delaware County with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. Honestly, it was more the latter. I did not know anyone. I was not in the best physical shape and was not at all sure I could hike fourteen miles in one day. When the registration form asked me to choose the pace at which I would hike, I had no idea how to judge. I chose medium slow, which turned out to be too fast. I registered, paid my fee, and hoped for the best.

In the end, I hiked most of these eastern maps over two years of County hikes (Delaware in 2018 and Chenango in 2019) plus most of Ulster County during one week in October of 2022. Because the County hike series progresses from east to west, this book will start in Delaware County. I have chosen to present the story more or less in chronological rather than map order. The sculptures, photographs and anecdotes in these pages tell the story of that part of my journey.