We’d walked some distance along the Old Croton Aqueduct (OCA) trail and decided to turn around and head back, this time staying on the OCA rather than taking the River Trail as we had going out. Soon afterwards I noticed the above on one of the rocks.

We continued down towards one of the periodic ventilators that you come across on the OCA and I thought to myself I’ll find some more graffiti on it and, sure enough, there was a lot:

On one of the buildings on the top of the dam I came across this:

I wonder why people feel the need to do this. I can understand that you might might be driving through some piece of urban blight and decided to stop, get out the can of spray paint and make your mark. But the OCA is little bit out of the way. You’d have to take the paint can with you, thinking I suppose that you might come across somewhere to spray it. Or maybe these people just carry a can with them at all times “just in case”.

Maybe they do it to express themselves artistically and I must say that I’ve seen some very impressive graffiti, obviously done by people with artistic talent. But this…it has no artistic merit. If the people doing envision themselves as future artists then they have a long way to go.

There is so much natural beauty in the Hudson Valley that it’s a shame that these morons feel the need to deface it. Why don’t they just go to one of the many decaying towns, find a wall somewhere and express themselves there. It would probably make the place look a bit brighter and in any case would most likely disappear when the building is torn down.

Apparently graffiti in the natural environment has increasingly become a problem. See this April, 2015 article in the LA Times: Graffiti artists’ move to national parks shocks nature community