On the train, passing that Hudson River envelop of deep-sea navy ship memories, the new light-colored concrete abutments of the Tappan Zee Bridge come into view, looking too frail to stand. They stretch across the river mimicking the shape taken by the trail of shad nets once strung here by river fishermen, big S-curves swung by the tidal currents, staked by poles in the river mud. An inappropriate thought enters my head, is it safe?

The train clatters on and the bleached skeletal bridge is replaced by our view of the stout, eternal, vertically streaked escarpment of the Palisades. A friend of mine was married up there on one of those parkway turnoffs. Few people know that if you get dropped off in Washington Heights, you can walk across the George Washington Bridge and as soon as you get to Jersey you are on the Long Path. The Long Path is a 386-mile-long hiking trail from NYC to Albany and it takes the hiker right over under and through these remarkable cliffs. Ever wonder about them, their formation? Ever wonder why they are so different from the bedrock you see in Manhattan? The geology of the land of New York Harbor is some of the most complicated in the world. A lot going on. Too complicated for this humble column.

But about 13,000 years ago there was a significant dam of gravel, a morainal dam, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island at the area today known as the Verrazzano-Narrows. This dam held back glacial melt in large lakes. The Hudson drained to the Atlantic further west. Now imagine a huge lake named Lake Iroquois superimposed over most of Lake Ontario and stretching down the Saint Lawrence Valley. The lake drained into the Mohawk River and then the Hudson. But when the Wisconsin ice sheet melted further north, a breach was opened to the lake above Lake Champlain and this break resulted in a flood of biblical proportions. The waters from Lake Iroquois rushed down the Champlain Valley and into the Hudson system, and the resulting rush broke the dam at Verrazzano and carved a new riverbed right down to bedrock a hundred feet below, and carved the Hudson Canyon which reaches nearly 400 miles through the continental shelf to the deep sea. Sea level at this time was about 390 feet lower than current levels. The tremendous power of this event created the Hudson Valley as we know it and exposed these Palisade Cliffs. Just think about all that the next time you take the train.

OK, entering the city now and the swinging across the East River and now underground for the last stop, our destination.

The train tubes and dark tunnels of the approach to the terminal are as forbidding and dreary as any nightmare on 13th Street. But you must think ahead! The train stops. Railroad people are among the friendliest. Need directions? Ask anyone. Stepping from these train tunnels into Grand Central Terminal is like awaking to a sunny day with clear skies and the promise of the constellations above. The whole city is now our oyster. And in fact, we can get some at the Oyster Bar.

Today I’m catching the subway from here and getting over to the Whitney Museum to view the Edward Hopper show. Meeting my daughter. Then we are going to get some dinner and catch a showing of The Whale.