upstate ny | reverse threading

one mention of jack-in-the-pulpit and i was back at blydenburgh park in smithtown. it didn’t take much to find myself in the woods, hiking along the nissequogue river, by the pond. camera in hand, early spring, looking for the earlybirds of the season. jack-in-the-pulpit didn’t disappoint, flowering shortly after my birthday, spotted on muddy hikes on brisk days.

i remember bike-hiking there, with susan. i just googled it and the county park was only 6.6 miles from my growing-up house. we would ride bikes everywhere. our destination of choice – most of the time – was crab meadow beach, but you know that. even in the winter, when handlebar-turned-down-10-speeds were impossible, my trusty little bug would get me there, to that beach. i would walk and walk and walk. the shoreline is a good place to think, to grow, sandy step by sandy step.

last friday – as it approached the end of the workday – we looked at each other. “fridaynightdatenight,” we tossed into the kitchen. as the hour wore on, we pondered what to do – on this datenight. an iffy-weather day, we didn’t bundle up late afternoon for a hike or even a walk. we were looking forward to making a big stockpot of soup, glass of wine in hand. we have three books we are mutually reading. we are binge-watching new amsterdam. dogga was at our feet in the kitchen. it was a cozy fridaynight.

the next day we hiked. because we really do love to be outside on a trail.

and the more i hike, the more i remember hiking.

but somewhere along the way, i stopped.

i didn’t hike. i didn’t take long walks.

and i am somewhat astounded to think about that now.

but not everyone likes to be on a trail or even a sidewalk, for that matter. not everyone likes to merely take-a-walk in the company of someone they love.

i didn’t realize how much i missed blydenburgh park and crab meadow beach and millneck manor and planting fields arboretum and smith’s point park and hoyt farm nature preserve – places so very familiar to me because i walked them – again and again – until i started memorizing the des plaines river trail and the van patten woods and bristol woods and allendale sidewalks along the lakefront.

that’s when i realized how much i had missed, how much each step on trails feeds me – nearby, or in the high mountains of colorado or the smoky mountains of north carolina, along the easternmost long island beaches or in the woods of upstate ny state parks or in the red rock of utah.

the trees were submerged in the river; there had been some mild flooding. i know these trees. we’ve watched them through seasons on saturdaydatehikes or latemondaytuesdaywednesdaythursdayafternoondatenights. we’ve attached to this trail and it feels as if it remembers us as we pass along it. soon, i think i’ll look for jack-in-the-pulpit, just in case. it would likely bloom later here than in blydenburgh park. spring is later here.

as i bent way down, camera in hand, to shoot through the mulch at the river, i was transported back to that suffolk county park, camera always in hand. and it made me think about all the years i had not stepped foot on a trail, had not walked-until-blisters, had not watched the water rise and fall on rivertrees or glimpsed jack-in-the-pulpit in the underbrush.

i wonder about what those decades of trails would have looked like, what mountains i may or may not have climbed, what roiling rivers i might have entered or not entered, what out-of-breath conversations would have taken place, what problems sorted, what challenges summited, what decisions made, what disasters averted, what center might have been out there, what wisdom trails may have gifted me, what might be different.

“in every walk of nature, one receives far more than he seeks.” (john muir)

i’m glad to have found my way back.

walks of nature.

blydenburgh park is 898 miles from here. crab meadow beach is 908. smith’s point park is 924. upstate new york around 1000. the smoky mountains are 739. the high mountains of colorado are 1237. moab et al is 1511. all on the list of places to return to. places to hike, to walk.

but bristol woods is 13 miles and the des plaines river trail is 12. and either of those is a worthy handinhand fridaynightdatenight.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

whenyouarelost WITH EYES jpeg copy every child’s mom’s nightmare is that instant you realize, even momentarily, that your child is lost, that you cannot see him or her. in the midst of department store racks, in a playground, on a sidewalk of a city’s busy street…you turn around for the briefest of moments and you turn back and your child is no longer right there. just the mere thought of it makes my breath uneven and my pulse race.

feeling lost can elicit the same emotions. lost-ness is disorienting and scary; it makes you want to run; it makes you freeze, your breath shallow.

i remember someone once saying to me that when you are lost to go back to where you were when you got lost. not so easy when you are out in the country on some back roads, but i don’t think they were talking about being literally lost. it was more figuratively.

i think that, in general, lost-ness begets action – sometimes any action, just to not feel the displacement. it’s unnerving. so you try to ignore it, you try to do anything to distract yourself.

the only way to go back to where you were when you got lost is to get quiet. to sit still. to go inward and slowly breathe. to realize you are human and fallible and vulnerable and that the earth is continuing to spin and, as my sweet momma used to say, “this too shall pass.” lost is also on the path to something.

when i was little i used to travel with my poppo and my big brother in an old lilco van that they bought, converted to a camper and painted pale pink (the paint must have been on sale.) her (the pink camper) name was lily, although i can’t remember how they spelled it. they would travel all over upstate new york with her. there was this one time i recall vividly. i was probably somewhere around 6 years old. i don’t remember the adventures we had after we drove upstate. what i do remember is that lily was breaking down and i could hear my dad and brother talking about it. we got off the main road and traveled down some country roads. she sputtered and died on the side of the road. not only were we lost (in my opinion) but we were sitting on the side of the road, unable to move. my dad and brother got out of the van and opened the engine hood. then they sat quietly on the white-painted-front bumper for a few minutes. my ingenious poppo got some wire-clippers out of an ever-present toolchest and he and my brother cut a few pieces of a barbed wire fence that ran the perimeter of a farm field alongside the gully next to the shoulder. using those pieces of barbed wire, with some rube goldberg kind of fix, in what seemed like an eternity but was probably only an hour or two, my dad and brother got that pink camper running again. soon we were back on the road, heading home. and – the best part – we actually got there. home.

lost doesn’t have to be a bad thing. it doesn’t have to be a six-year-old’s-version of the-end-of-the-world. it’s an opportunity. to sit quietly. to look closely at a situation. to address it. and to move on. home is waiting. in our hearts, in our minds. it may look different after a time of lost-ness, but it’s there.

STOP. SIT STILL. CHICKEN MARSALA MONDAY – ON OUR SITE

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