On the path.

It is springtime in New York State. The elemental scent of thawed earth laces the air. Freeze-dried moss greens in the pale, lemon-yellow sunlight. Sunbeams filter through the pine boughs and lay in bright slivers on the forest floor. Wild turkeys lope silently across rust-colored pine needles. In the distance is the sound of chopping. Another logging operation? No - happily it's the sound of a hiking trail being cleared upstate - the northernmost reach of the appropriately named, eagerly awaited, Long Path.

"Hiking the Long Path, it's possible to see New York in all its glory," says Anne Lutkenhouse, of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference, the non-profit hiking club that marks and maintains the trail. The Long Path begins on the New Jersey side of New York City's George Washington Bridge, and travels along the top of the Hudson River's towering Palisades, across the ridge of the massive Shawagunk Mountains and through the deep woodlands of the Catskill Mountains into the flat fertile farmland of the Skoharie Valley. But it may not stop there. If the Trail Conference has its way, the Long Path will one day stretch for 500 miles, to the top of Mount Marcy, the highest of the high peaks in New York's Adirondack State Park. "We're hoping that similar organizations in the Adirondacks will start working their way south along the trail, and meet us at the Mohawk River," says Lutkenhouse.

The Long Path was the brainchild of Vincent Schaefer, a Schenectady, New York scientist and inventor who died last summer. Back in 1931, Schaefer had a vision of an endless, lovely path meandering through the state. Schaefer's vision was inspired by Walt Whitman who wrote, "There lies before me a long, brown path leading wherever I choose."

Schaefer followed his dream. Armed with a compass, he scouted out a route from New York City to the Adirondacks. His progress was followed enthusiastically by The New York Post which, back in 1934, published a series of articles describing the trail.

Today Schaefer's chain of landmarks and scenic vistas is a cleared, well-marked, hiking trail over 240 miles long. The unmarked northern extension. runs an additional 260 miles.

The Long Path travels across the state through both private and public lands. Easement-type agreements struck between the Trail Conference and private landowners help link scattered state parks, reservations and reforested land. Along the way hikers have the privilege of witnessing firsthand the natural beauty of privately owned lands that would otherwise not be accessible to hikers.