water

i read about the little lake in one of those guidebooks. i look for an easy trip because the sweetie is willing to kayak class 5 rapids (class 6 rapids offer a constant threat of death and extreme danger) and i want to avoid this while offering him something fancy enough to be worth the bother. the book promises a little lake and a river flowing into it and then out of it down a mile and a half to a waterfall (class 5 rapids are full of waterfalls!). it promises an easy time with something to look at. so we put the kayaks on the car and squeeze ourselves into our fake-seal pants and we go.

we walk the kayaks down to the dock, which is a floating platform alongside a three foot wide channel in the weeds and muck. the water is too low for the dock to be useful, but the way it leans suggests maybe we wouldn't want to use it even in higher water. we put the kayaks at the edge of the water and move, one after the other, down the narrow channel with the funhouse dock looming over us.

it is a small lake, more pond, really, but if you want to know the truth it's just an open space in the wetlands. because that's what it is all around us. swamp. marsh. pine barrens without the pines. tall, stick-straight trunks of trees stretch upward with not a leaf or branch to them. desert. waste land. we paddle left toward the river outlet and pass an old camp's dock. it is bedraggled, with unrecognizable watercraft tied to it. pogo sticks on floats. there are broken shacks up the land a bit, then the camp itself, low and ugly and empty. ghost town. abandoned summer camp. yes. of course. i look across the lake the other way. to the razor wire. to a tall building that looks like something from an old strip mining venture in my own hometown. a concrete rectangle reaching up several stories past the other buildings, with two or three windows to break the flat surface. the blades of the wire glitter out there in the sun like sparkles on the water. it is a saturday around noon and nobody is outside.

so this is where things stand. we are floating on the surface of a small lake/large pond/space between cattails. to the one side is an abandoned summer camp, complete with broken down docks. to the other is an equally abandoned, though likely very full, prison for children ages 12 to 18. babies taken away from their own families with the idea that raising them here, all together, might work better than what is happening at home. i am waiting for the monster that most certainly lives in the bottom of this murky lake to leap up and swallow me, kayak and all. there has to be one, right? water so cloudy you can't see a bright yellow paddle once you dip it under the surface.

i want to be clear of the buildings on either side of us. the camp. the other camp. we paddle toward the river and a great blue heron flaps big, slow wings up and lifts itself out of the marshgrass where the book said there is a rookery. it flies down the river, away from the buildings, flap. flap. too slow to stay up in the air, if you ask me. it goes low along the water at first, then rises up over the spindle trees and cattails and beaver dams. it flies a long time with sticklegs hanging down below it and i watch until i can't see it.

there are beaver dams everywhere. tall mounds of sticks, five, six feet up and big enough around to let a substantial group of friends sit down to dinner inside. the sweetie rows over to one and sniffs. he has read somewhere that there is an oil the animals leave all around their homes to let others know who lives where. he says it is supposed to smell wonderful, that it is used as a flavoring in foods. i doubt this and say as much. i know that all mammals using scent glands keep those glands tucked neatly up as near as possible to where the tail lives. that is not a good place.  i paddle on by him.

we thread our way around sunken logs and shallows and the terrifying withered roots of dead water lilies, floating like mummies here and there. there are more broken down docks along the way, some nearly indistinguishable from the cattails and quiet tree stalks around them. they jut out into the water from nowhere, from more water. but i have spent enough time with a man who wears a gila monster on his arm to know the desert isn't as ugly as it looks first glance. i look up quick enough to see another of those herons floating overhead and figure maybe that's a start.

the water doesn't seem to be moving the way a river would. the wind pushes us upstream fast enough we have to put some effort into our paddling to get downstream. but we do. and pretty soon there are little jewels everywhere. we round a curve in the water and there are trees shaped like trees now, rather than sticks. the land grows a little more solid and rises up out of the water a little more real than it had in all that murk.

we don't talk much. there's not much to say and the wind grabs every word and strangles it anyway. we paddle on into the very real world. the sweetie finds the waterfall first. we are upstream of it and i have imagined more than once this trip that we will roll over it without warning and will plunge to our untimely deaths.   turns out it's not that sort of waterfall at all. it is a series of short, wide drops that finally let that lazy marshwater go wild. there are remnants of stone walls all along the falls and there's a big, flat rock ledge where we pull the kayaks up and step out.

 we walk carefully over the mossy rocks on downstream a bit. we stand a while and watch the water tear over the rocks with a small, quiet frog who does not seem entirely committed to his color choice. spring is confusingly early this year and he is not quite sure what to do with so much early april at his disposal. we walk on past and he keeps his eyes on the water. when we head back to the kayaks i keep my eyes on the shifting rocks under my feet. this turns out to be a very good idea because there are trilliums stretching themselves out from the rock crevices and into that same sun the frog has been using.

we paddle back upstream, away from the waterfall and the living trees and the high banks. we make our way back through the cattails and beaver dams and the great blue heron rookery. the sweetie startles a beaver surfacing near the shore and the animal warns his kin with a sharp slap of the tail that sends water spraying high into the air and sounds like lightning striking a tree. the sweetie, undeterred by the lack of desire animals in nature have to spend time with him, paddles over to get a closer look.

the bedraggled docks slide into view and then the low, ugly buildings. the cement tower. the glittering razor wire. there are more boats on the lake now, fishermen mostly sitting still near the shore, but also a group of five or six folks kayaking together, heading out to where we have already been. they cut across the middle of the lake like a flock of geese. we wish them a good trip. beautiful day, says one of them as their boats pass ours. we nod, both of us, back at him. it is a beautiful day. all of it.

brooklyn back yard, a children's story

for the small folks i know who make me laugh with their own
wild tales and, on occasion, their stories of traveling dogs.

if you are the sort of person who keeps a dog lying around the house, sooner or later that dog will roll right over on the couch beside where you are sitting and he will look up at you. if he is a low, long dog, there will be a great deal of stretching and yawning and paw waving. but eventually he will get around to saying, while he looks up at you, "let's go out in the yard and play".

now, if you live in just about most of the united states, what you will do is saunter over to what you've always known to be the back door of your house. it's that one usually pretty near the kitchen and when you open it you will gesture out magnanimously into the yard beyond. you will say to the dog, "help yourself, pal". and you will head back toward the couch and your book or the t.v. or some chips and guacamole, maybe with a little limeade. but the dog will insist that you get out there, too, and you'll drag a tennis ball or a frisbee out there and you'll toss whatever it is in lackluster arcs across the grass your dad makes you mow with the push mower even though he's the one who mowed over your mom's rose bushes or peonies or blue flags or whatever it was this year, reckless and inattentive himself on his fancy riding mower. maybe one of those fat bees over visiting the peach tree will hum by you.

but this is not what happens at all if you live in brooklyn. first of all, if you live in brooklyn you probably don't even have a back door. maybe you have a fire escape off your kitchen and you can sit there summer evenings slurping the cool out of the sky while the guy a few buildings down sits in his back window or maybe on his fire escape trying to sound, with a second-hand trumpet, like miles davis. you might even have a tray of tomatoes growing out there but you can't just open up the window and tell the dog to help himself to the fire escape. not in brooklyn.

in brooklyn you have to get ready. you get the harness and the leash and you get the little baggies for carrying poop (the dog's, not your own) and the toy for the dog. maybe you put on a nice hat for yourself or some sun glasses. then you go sixteen steps down, around the landing, another sixteen steps, then out onto the stoop. you are not yet there, but you can smell the green of your back yard from where you are and you can see it if you look just left, up the hopscotched sidewalk. you walk eight, nine, ten small buildings with their stoops lolling like dog tongues and then one big corner building down. you cross the street. there are old ladies selling helados from freezers on wheels. there are men in straw hats selling cold drinks and warm pretzels.

there are horses on the horse path. there are ducks in the duck pond. actually, the ducks are everywhere, waddling and paddling and quacking, sometimes in a big hurry but mostly not. your back yard is so big, if you live in brooklyn, that you can stand in the middle and see just your yard. your back yard is so big it may be raining over on one side while sun shines down on folks barbecuing on the other side.

if you live in brooklyn your back yard has at least two waterfalls, although they will stop falling temporarily if you have a citywide blackout. you can get a pedal boat and swanpaddle your way across glassy water with fat fish all under your waves. you can stare at turtles loaded onto logs, piled up on top of each other like acrobatic hamburgers toasting in the sun.

if you live in brooklyn you can walk your dog over bridges and then back under them again, through arched tunnels made of ancient brick and weathered wood and oxidized metal. if you're walking under there with someone who likes to howl, maybe that person will howl over at your dog and your dog will howl right back, echoing all watery and blue under the arched roof. maybe not. there's no way to know in advance.

your back yard will have a little cottage or two in it if you live in brooklyn. depending on the time of year there will be tall blue irises standing around outside. there will be sweet williams, violets, lilacs, purple insinuating itself into everything. there will be at least one mansion in your back yard, a decent sized brick one, probably. it will be slathered in tulips during springtime and will be decorated with icicles in winter like the kind you see on buildings on dinner plates.

there is a carousel in your back yard, a famous one from 1912 that lived in coney island a while. there's a zoo with real live sea lions and kangaroos, but only if you live in brooklyn. how many other people do you know with sea lions and kangaroos in their own back yards? because i will tell you now most folks' back yards are nowhere near zoned for that. did i mention the peacocks and peahens? well, they're there, too, howling like mad cats, shimmering like mirages at noon.

if you live in brooklyn walking through your back yard means walking across a revolutionary war battlefield. there were hessians in your back yard once and george washington was there, but that was a long time ago. yes, i do mean that george washington. your back yard will be full of architecture that somebody was thinking about during the civil war. that far back. back when streetlamps had feet with claws at the bottom.

if you live in brooklyn there is no way to explain how lucky you are to have the kind of back yard you have, and if you have a certain kind of parents they will tell you it is unkind to gloat about your good fortune when there are so many out there who do not have what you have. but you probably already know you can't help it.

the best you can do is try to remember where you keep half the stuff you have in your yard so when the folks you love stop by, you can share a little of that good fortune with them.

manhattan bridge

today i walked to manhattan. that's right. on my feet. this is not what i had planned for the day but nothing ever goes as planned. i ended up covering about eight miles. i've mentioned before that my brain is sometimes less than reasonable and today when i need to get from brooklyn to manhattan for an appointment and must cross a very large river to do that my sweet brain assesses the two options:

1. be trapped in an airless tunnel underground with no escape and an abundance of murderous monsters (there is very little actual evidence of murderous monsters on the subway system, although last week's two fatal stabbings may be giving my brain more leverage than i'd like.), rats and toxic filth.

2. crawl across a metal slab millions of feet in the air while the wind slices across everything and spins the world around mercilessly.

and my brain says,"hey, wouldn't it be swell if we pranced across the manhattan bridge?" now, my brain is sly and i do not think about all the times in the past when it has, like lucy promising charlie brown she'll hold that football, lured me into places i've been unable to extricate myself from, leaving me feeling like poor old charlie brown flat on my back, miserable. i do not think about the treacherousness of my brain and i march right past the dekalb avenue subway station, right past junior's, on up flatbush avenue and to the sidewalk leading onto the manhattan bridge.

i stroll onto the walkway, surprised to see nobody behind me and nobody ahead of me. this is the sort of hint i don't notice until way too late. i walk high up above the edge of brooklyn, stories and stories up, staring straight ahead, keeping my mind focused on the first suspension tower. so far, so good. you know how you feel when you're managing to do something you thought you couldn't? that's right. my heart isn't pounding. my stomach isn't swirling. my head isn't spinning. the walkway is still clearly made of cement, immovable, sturdy, safe. and then everything changes.

a brooklyn bound train screams by me to the right, all howling and screeching and ugliness. and the cement begins to soften. the bridge begins to move. because this is a suspension bridge built to sway a bit. but not built to swirl like a hysterical tornado. no, that's my brain's doing. i feel myself sliding off the cement, jostled like popcorn in a popper. the bridge and my brain begin to chuckle together. jerks. my entire body draws into itself. i am tiny. alice after a cookie. the sky over the bridge is lead and the water below, roiling, hurtling under my feet, is leaden sewage. the wind whipping across the 1500 foot wide nothingness at 150 feet up is relentless.

this is a movie. this sort of thing always happens in movies. i want to look around for spiderman but any movement that is not forward threatens to spill me into the churning water below. i want to ask my brain if it thinks this is funny and i realize this is what all the crazy people are doing. the ones muttering on the train. the ones jabbering in the park and shrieking on the sidewalk. they are arguing with their stupid, horrible, treacherous brains. i tell my brain to shut up and there i am in silence a hundred and fifty feet up, above nothing. with nobody to talk to. midway across the span i see a man with a tripod and camera. he is the only person i have seen so far. he looks out over the water and i am envious. this is what i want to do, saunter casually over to the railing and look out into all that world. he watches with mild curiosity as i cringe my way down the walkway and past him not even glancing at his breathtaking view.

i tell myself that when i get to the other side i will feel so good, i will know i have conquered something big, something literally big. i am here, all by myself, stomping across this bridge on what i did not realize is a very ugly day, spitting rain, hissing wind, cold, flat. on a walkway i did not at all realize was on the outside edge of the bridge. the pavement has set up again, has firmed. i walk with the wind whipping into my left side, furling my new avocado raincoat all around me.

i pass the second suspension tower and just beyond it is a gnarled old man walking toward me wrapped in piles and piles of coats, carrying several bags and ranting. he is fighting with his brain. i can see it on his face. it is how i think my face looks, twisted into a snarl from two different directions. i smile at him and for those two or three seconds he looks back there is no wind and no river and no bridge but then he goes right on hashing things out with his brain. i am moving toward the earth again, can see what safety looks like, when another train goes by melting the pavement and my resolve and everything i intended to use while facing what i always thought was my second biggest fear.

and then i am there over manhattan. a hundred feet up above the little piecrust edge of the most famous island in the world. the bridge curves down toward land and i see the fire first. because what else would end a walk like this? my brain is poised, ready to spring. but i am not afraid of fire so i march forward. the fire is on the bridge, near the curve before it hits the street, maybe forty or so feet above ground. it is in a small can, larger than a coffee can, blackened. the wind is scattering the flames around and two old women are tending it. one is sitting in a folding chair well back from the flames next to a tray of small bowls. the bowls are full of coconut flakes, maybe rice. whitewhitewhite. laid out in a perfect row on the tray sitting flat on the bridge. the other woman squats in front of the fire and feeds it shreds of purple paper she tears off a large sheet. purple the color of mimeographs from my childhood. purple i can smell there at the end of the bridge. the smell of sitting quietly in a desk and knowing the right answers.

the flames leap up with each new offering and threaten to escape the little can but the woman stays where she is. this is some form of praying, communing with something the women cannot see. i do not know why they have chosen this place to set their fire, but i know that from my very first sight of it, when i was way back there still dangling over the east river, i knew i was in the right place.

third day

let's say you forget to go on your new year's day hike up into the fine, snowy mountains. don't worry. you can choose a day, for instance the third of january, and go then. it's okay. you choose a short hike along water.

you know later there will be arkville festival. it will be cold. you trek down the block or so to the corner and walk up toward the bonfire. ten or twelve people you don't know stand around it in the 25 degree weather. you slosh through the snow over to casey joe's. there is the promise of live music, guys older than you stand around with a guitar, a bass. drums. people are milling around in bulky coats and the air is warm. you get a hot chocolate that would be free by the bonfire. you hear from the guy who runs the place that the firehouse is almost out of chicken. they had a hundred more dinners than last year he says and you remember you could only get a half chicken with no sides last year so you hurry out. lynyrd skynyrd is blasting out of speakers attached to the bike shop across from the firehouse. you get your chicken and six raffle tickets and bring your chicken back home to the howls of jim morrison.

the fireworks won't start until seven so you walk back down again and stand around a bit. joe walsh has replaced skynyrd and the doors and you are singing along even though you don't intend to. you decide to walk through town. when you get to the bridge the sky is spitting snow and you hold your camera over dry brook to see what a flash will get you from so far up. you go on to the corner and stand for a bit across from an old abandoned house you've wanted a photo of for quite some time. you pass it nearly every time you leave your own house and the camera is always with you but it is now, in the night, in the snow, waiting for fireworks that you decide to get it. you convince the sweetie to take the photo because you know it will be better than yours and it is. he snaps a few pictures of a house you've convinced yourself was central to the pakatakan artists' colony that settled here and you fully expect to see lost painters in the windows. thomas cole having tea.

you turn back and hear the first explosion. it goes down inside your bones and you can feel them spark. the sky is dark and there are little flecks of snow hovering around the orangy streetlights and then up and above the railroad tracks fire blooms all over. you stand right there on the sidewalk under the railroad crossing sign. you can see down the tracks a bit there are rail traveling vehicles but they are too snowy to recognize. the exploding keeps happening. you breathe it in. there is no other sound. happy third day of the new year! says the sweetie.

forest creature

a few weeks ago the original supernatural nephew came to visit. he and his parents drove from missouri all the way to the catskills to see our new place, the dogs and our own sweet selves. i was sick. i got sick the week before- two days before the sweetie's birthday, three days before our anniversary. i was still sick the next week when the nephew came. nevertheless, his second day with us, my 40th birthday, we got up and went for a hike. when i am sick, i'm slow. i don't notice much. when you're having a birthday and when you're seeing a small child you only see once a year, you don't want to be slow. you want to notice everything.

the hike was a good hike, but didn't have the kind of excitement the nephew's aunt and uncle are generally known for. the nephew was hilarious. he loved posing for photos, pointing at whatever he wanted to be the focus of the image like some wacky tour guide. this drove his mother crazy, but he cracked himself up with his pointing poses. i figured he ought to be able to pose however he wanted since he was dealing with restrictions children from his part of the country don't usually deal with. he is quite a bit like his aunt and loves to collect. when we go on hikes, it takes all my willpower to keep myself from dragging home half the forest. i want to bring home bits of every moss, fern, flower, rock and whatever else might be portable enough for me to shove in a pocket. those signs at the trailheads guilt me into taking photos instead of laying waste to the place out of love for it. because i know the nephew is like me, has this compulsion to pick up every pretty thing his eye lands on, i gave him the talk about leaving the forest the way it was when he arrived. and he took it very seriously. i know because there were times i could see him tense up with the need to pick up and pocket something. i could watch him struggle over his impulse and win, but it was tough, i know. i thought his alternative behavior, pointing out and being photographed with everything he wanted to pick up was pretty smart.

we saw several trilliums and waterfalls. we crossed a couple of precarious foot bridges and wandered through and old apple orchard. afterward, we had honey ice cream from casey joe's. still, i wish i had been more like myself. more able to breathe and move. less tired.


last weekend, with only a cough to remind me i'd been sick, the sweetie and i tried out a new trail, one that promised waterfalls. there was no mention of the wild blackberries or lush moss we found along the way but we were glad to see them. so now the original supernatural nephew will need to come back.

the seager trail is a few miles south of arkville at the end of a winding road with a few covered bridges off to the sides.



this time of year everything is pretty much covered with moss or ferns or vines or running water. you might want to click the photos and see them up close to get the real idea of the trail. there are four falls here, all within a mile of one another. the second flows over slabby stone into a pool deep enough for swimming.

then the stone and water conspire to create some things folks in eastern forests just aren't used to seeing. spires. canyons. craziness.

the nephew will love this hike. he will love leaping from rock to rock on the higher part of the trail. he will love the blackberries (yes, we will eat them. nobody with any sense would walk past a big bramble of ripe blackberries without snacking). he will love swimming in water that is fast at either end but cool and still and deep in the middle. he will love wading through a canyon.