Audio
Gorilla Rock
Transcript
YOUTH NARRATION: Boy #1: I’m telling you, I’ve seen it. It’s right over there. Boy #2: I don’t believe you. Boy #1: Well, you’re gonna believe. Because there it is. Girl #1: It’s…a gorilla head! Girl #2: It’s huge. And it’s scary. Boy #2: Not as scary as…where’s the rest of its body?
ADULT NARRATOR/JOE: OK, it’s not quite Bigfoot or even Sasquatch. But Hackett Hill has its own claim to creature fame: a big, bulging boulder aptly named Gorilla Rock. Walk around the rock and look for the shape of a gorilla’s head in the formation. Imagine what the Hackett children thought when they first discovered it while playing here in their woodland backyard!
There’s a reason why this rock is here. Did something bigger set it down? Let geologist Russell Urban-Meade explain…
RUSSELL URBAN-MEADE: Well, Gorilla Rock to a geologist is just a big boulder. But the question is, how did get there, and why does it look the way it does.
If you go just a little further away from the parking lot along the trail, you’ll see that there’s a whole series of rock outcrops where sediment flowed from deep basins and turned into rock.
The sediments were probably 450 million years old. It took many many millions of years getting buried more deeply and deeply and deeply…
And then later forces turned them up on an angle where they look like they’re going straight up to the sky. And then glaciers kind of sanded them off.
But Gorilla Rock isn’t really different from those except that Gorilla Rock is separate from those: Gorilla Rock is a big chunk of that that either tumbled by gravity to its position or was transported a short distance in the post glacial period but it’s one or the other.
When it first tumbled it may not have even looked like a gorilla head. Those are some of the mysteries of geology.
ADULT NARRATOR: Since the 1980s, Boy Scouts from throughout Dutchess County have volunteered hundreds of hours to improve the woodland trails and the area surrounding Gorilla Rock, building an outdoor teaching theater, where kids can reconnect with nature and make their own discoveries. Thanks to their work, this formidable rock became a friendly focal point for hikers and day-campers.
Description
Hackett Hill has its own claim to creature fame: a big, bulging boulder aptly named Gorilla Rock.
Duration
2 minutes, 18 seconds
Credit
National Park Service
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