Geologist Becky Nesel led a walk through the unique geological features of the Roger Perry Memorial Preserve.
On a humid summer morning, guests gathered at the Roger Perry Memorial Preserve in Dover Plains to learn about the rocks and landforms found here and how they came to be. They paid rapt attention as local geologist Becky Nesel first related the hundred of millions of years of plate tectonics that had initally formed this land from seafloor sands and the more recent carving and shaping of the terrain by glaciers. Attendees then journeyed through the preserve, marveling at the white sands - product of the eroding Stockbridge Marble so prominent in the Harlem Valley but rarely exposed at the surface. The sand had the consistency of a Florida beach due to the carbonate content of the rocks and participants were awed by its texture as it flowed through their fingers. DLC ecologist Julie Hart explained how the rare sand led in turn to soils that support plant life that is scarcely seen in other parts of Dutchess County. It was a short but extraordinary journey through a one-of-a-kind landscape that left all who attended filled with a new-found respect for the landscape and the geological process that created it.
