In the beginning, there were the mountains, and the wind flowed over them. Sediment cores drawn from the muddy depths of an ancient lake west of the Crazies are banded with thick layers of silt, blown there some fifteen thousand years ago by masses of cold air whipping off the receding glaciers.
The first people arrived at the end of the last Ice Age. We know that they traveled and hunted and gathered food in and around the Crazies for thousands of years. The mountains are networked with aboriginal trail systems, some marked with ancient stone cairns that have sunk into the earth like wisdom teeth. It was a fertile place, with abundant fresh water and game. Streams flowed downslope from the mountains in every direction, drawing herds of mastodons and woolly mammoths and ancient bison to its valleys.
Even then, the Crazies were a fantastic piece of real estate. For the first people, the best places were ones where you could hide from the creatures that would kill you while scoping out the creatures you could kill.
A mix of high and low places, wide-open places and enclosed hidden ones, an interplay of sunlight and shadow. Our most primitive instincts draw us toward landscapes that offer both safety and opportunity.
Tens of thousands of years ago, the hills and river valleys sheltered by these mountains telegraphed a message: Here, you will survive.
