Trunks of the Gunks: A Visual Odyssey Through The Shawangunk Mountains In Search Of The Unexpected

Award-winning New York City studio photographer Nora Scarlett hiked for over ten years throughout the "Gunks"—the Shawangunk Mountains of New York State—looking for, in her own words, "wacky formations, humorous characteristics, improbable locations, surprising shapes, and other wondrous growths. Such specimens occur frequently at the intersection of rock and root in this geologically unique area, the Shawangunk Mountains, a ridge extending from New Jersey to the Catskills. I became awed at scene after scene displaying how life adapts to adversity and how it succeeds in astonishing ways. Tiny seedlings emerge from small cracks in rock, sprouting a handful of needles or tender leaves, knowing only to keep trying to grow. Enormous hemlocks hang off ledges, improbably rooted to something, looking as if they shouldn't be upright, and yet ... there they are."

The result is Trunks of the Gunks, 100 amazing full-color photographs showing nature at its most tenacious and its most whimsical.