Article 4 - "SCHOHARIE CREEK" August 2008 edition of First Church of The Streets

     Sometimes, you never know what will happen when you park your car at the side of the road and leave it. At least, I don't. There is some switch that seems to go off in me when I have the impulse to leave the world of concrete behind and instead explore some crevice that intrigues me. A nice Sunday drive with everything from graffiti to trees to mountains won't cut it when I am in that mood. Better to pull over, shut the engine and get out. Time to slow down, and let the impulse that draws me to lead it where it wants me to go. Most times, this indicates some instinct of discovery that I never would have met had I been busy flying through at fifty five miles per hour. Some things just operate on a different timescale. I've found it best to obey the impulse when the call to slow down comes upon me.

     That's what happened to me one day as I was driving along SR 30 in Schoharie County, New York. It was one of those journeys that had started out in search of one thing, a reservoir appropriately named Schoharie, couldn't find it, and so onto the next thing. Journeys are like that sometimes, it seems. I start out with one destination in mind, and find something else along the way. The map had the reservoir on its agenda, and I couldn't find it. Instead, there was this place to pull over. A nondescript unpaved path, a dirt road that led away from the highway to a makeshift lot in the middle of nowhere. No sign of this landscape on the map, but that seemed like where the map had intended to take me all along.

     This was autumn, in a year where not too much rain had fallen on our doorstep, nor had it here. It wasn't officially a drought, not like it was in the Southeast where reservoirs were running dangerously low on supplies, but it was pretty dry. Our vegetable garden constantly drooped over from the lack of water, begging for mercy from the torture of thirst. Vegetation seemed somnolent and laconic, as if conserving all the energy it had to keep it alive in the first place; vibrancy was an extraneous detail that could be done away with and was. Survival, first and foremost, was the priority. Waxing poetic about nature and how bucolic the whole experience was wouldn't really be the whole story without containing that fierce struggle to even live. copyright 2008 John B.

     And so, that is the backdrop in which we found ourselves in. Nature doing its best to try to survive in the ecosystem we had created for it, and us, two humans with photo equipment and video recorders showing up in a carbon emission spewing box to document what we found here. I had no idea what the wildlife around here thought about their new visitors. Oh crap, here come two more of those bipeds with bad breath? I knew what I would be thinking, and it would probably make the last statement seem quaint. As a human being, I was culpable in the re-creation of nature into a suitable frame for homo sapiens to have a thriving culture. My willingness to show up here in a vehicle was only another small piece of evidence to back that argument. It seemed awfully ironic that to appreciate nature I drove here in the very kind of vehicle that was probably causing a slow death to all that was around me. But here I was, wanting to experience what little nature there was around me, to take it all in, perhaps before in a few years when it was no longer here to enjoy.

     There was a path which called itself the Bluebird Trail for some reason that seemed obscure to me at the time. This was the place where I found myself. Covered by trees limbs like a bridge, it was like entering into a tunnel where I would leave the world that I knew behind and meet a place that I had no memory for. Even at the beginning of the trail, it felt like the literal bent to speak another language. A grassland was to my left, decorated with dashes and touches of graceful trees. A perfect place to have a day park, where families could spend the day picnicking. Except in this place of repose, there appeared to be those who had chosen to make this spot their permanent home to rest: here and there were gray headstones, with a torchlike statue standing amongst them like a huge complex amongst ranch homes. Along one of the trees, a cluster of headstones held sentry, as though they were lounging around on call, waiting for the day to be on permanent duty for their assigned individual humans. No blue birds sang on the tree's branches, but perhaps they had taken their winter vacation. The eponymous trail echoed with that silence, and with the stones, seemed to create a requiem for summer's last hours.

     Water has always been something that fascinates me. Growing up not far from the ocean's edge, I spent days and hours not worshiping the sun, but the water. Time seemed to mean nothing to me as I watched the waves crash, ebbing and flowing like that tide that carried it. Moving from ocean's edge to the mountains and hills didn't mean that there was no more water to behold. Rivers and creeks meandered from here, to there, many times snaking and sneaking through hamlets that were small enough to sleepwalk through and never miss, just like the waterways themselves. Their presence ubiquitous but fickle, they came and went in their own rhythms, many roaring their sermons in early spring to whispering their vespers in the early fall. But not all of the times and not all of the ways, each creating their own song to sing its story. copyright 2008 John B.

     But here, as I walked, I didn't really know that I would meet another river. The terrain in which we had been driving was marked with the rolling hills and soft greenery that upstate New York seemed to be renowned for. Here in Schoharie County just several miles south of interstate 88, we were somewhere in the terrain between the Schoharie Valley and the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Where the reservoir received its bounty, I was unaware. Here, landscape took the leading role over the supporting cast of waterways, although water in the shape of glaciers had given its form millennia earlier. One could easily be hypnotized by the mountains that rose like sentries on the edges of the road. It was as though one was being swallowed by a canyon that was so small that no one caught it, but here it was, luring unsuspecting travelers into its path.

     Now that I was walking the path, it was as though those mountains had never existed. Trees, vegetation, and the smell of leaves decomposing made it seem as though the hills I had seen, the cemetery that I saw, all were imaginings that I told myself to give a map to what was in front of me. Everything that was in front of me seemed to serve as something to trick me away from the familiar, and to give me something almost but not quite. There were the carcasses of maple leaves and elm leaves all around me, resting in graves of the ground around me. They were, however, like no other elm or maples that I had seen before. Twice as big as the leaves I was accustomed to seeing, it made me feel like I had moved into some kind of portal and was walking in the land of some kind of giant. Yet the trees around me seemed to be no bigger than anything I had seen before, making the leaves seem displaced to me. That is, until I saw some of these still-live behemoths of leaves making their homes on their respective trees. Then, I truly felt like I had walked into a portal that I was unsure how I would come out of.

     Through the winter gaps that the bones of sleeping trees provided, there appeared to be a dark smudge quite unlike the color of the fallen leaves upon the ground. Switching from a blind glance to a more conscious view, a mirage of water seemed to appear from deep within the trees. Curious to see what this was, we turned away from the path that had brought us here, a marked path which would have led us on some preordained journey, to instead make our way through the unknown road that only existed under our footsteps to take us to the mysterious entity that had only just revealed itself. copyright 2008 John B.

     When there is a surprise that has just about been discovered, there is the anticipation of finder's luck. What is there, what has been teasing around the edges, here it becomes something that is akin to a new friend who has appeared in a crowd of strangers. Whatever mood or sentiment it takes with it into an encounter seems to match that of the discoverer, and otherworldly as what I had come to know here, I wondered what lay behind the primeval cover that the mask of vegetative disproportion veiled.

     Not long into this path through the forest, the grayness of stones loomed large, like a landing pad that goes from dot to behemoth in one minute of hang time. Rocks upon rocks stumbled upon themselves, as though each one clamored to be at the front of some line to a great attraction and trampled the unlucky ones underneath themselves. Just as it had been the forest of the giants where gargantuan leaves decorated the frames of trees, these rocks, strewn as they were, seemed to create a gravel path that was suitable for Goliath. Stonewalling our view was a large hill, layers of rocks flattened by the work of nature spirits over the years. Trees designed by aliens grew out of the sides of the walls, thriving in way that defied the gravity of logic. It was as though we had stumbled into a valley of titans. Into this mixture, a braided whisper through it all, ran a stream of water. It meandered its way through the crowd of boulders, as though it was prey slipping through the hands of overconfident predators. A creek that had almost been silenced, but not quite.

     A giant in a place like this would skip amongst the pebbles that dotted the river, his children playing hopscotch to pass the days when the sun loomed too warm in the canyon that earnest titan fathers created for the children to have recreation. A giant I am not, and hand over hand, foot over foot, I made my way through the maze of boulders that scattered their way across the land. For a time, I stopped in the middle of the watered trickle, able to find my balance on two feet in a place that seemed to have its own equilibrium. Standing there, I found my own harmony with the world I found myself in, although I knew well enough to not let that status lure me into a mindframe of complacency. Traps are usually set with lace and grace decorating their edges. At any time, I knew the rocks I found myself could be painted with moss or water, making a sure footed thing a crevasse that I would fall through. This moment of grace standing in the center was just that, a moment of confidence in a terra unfamiliar. copyright 2008 John B.

     Dancing across the floor of a creek feels like sneaking through a time warp. The water that was here was more spread apart than what I imagined it would be, both as it braided through rocks that once were drowned, and in the atmosphere that was the air around me. Rock walls that marked the side boundary of this tributary marked the difference between the now and the then, like the reverse of a child's proud marking of growth spurts on the wall. The goal here, if some child had been here, was to be smaller. Perhaps he was tired of being one of the giants and wanted to be one of us, a creek that had shrunk himself so that he could better know the humans who visited him.

     Like a long corridor, what I saw in front of me seemed to stretch into the distance either way. The jewelry of stones decorated a river that had decided to take a pause from being a raging fire. Whether it was the dam nearby, dry season, global warming, or some other phenomenon, this water passage had gone on some kind of strike. Deep enough for me to be reminded that messing with this was its own kind of Russian roulette, rocks hidden under what appeared to be calm waters could dash the life out of me if I didn't keep vigilance, but shallow enough to make a statement. Yeah, sometime a few months ago, years, whatever minuscule time increment you biped milliseconds what to call it, I ran wild. I don't feel like it now because too much is happening right this moment. Though perhaps in its timeline, coming from the depths of the ice age, this low point was nothing more than a hiccup after too much soda. Water, rocks, and soil all measured time in a way that I could only begin to imagine.

     In the distance through this cavern, there appeared to be a trickle dripping from the wall of stone. It was as though someone had been watering their garden and left the hose dangling and running after getting a chance to frolic after some gem. In its wake, this jewel was left here for us: someone else's chore was our discovery, perhaps in the way when one traveled to a distant land and the locals marveled at how the stranger was enthralled with this boring hole they called home. Rock over rock we climbed, stepping stones of a larger world which acted as guiding posts to where we made our way. copyright 2008 John B.

Water under us, water in the air, water in the soil, all added to a fertile scent that was not quite liquid or solid. It was easy to feel seduced by the smell, as though the scent of beginnings would prevent one's end. In other words, it was important for me to get my mind off the long view and to remember to put my feet in front of each other, to not forget the rocks below me could be a rug that pulled the balance from out under myself. Remembering where I was, I was able to cross the rocks, walking along the bottom of a river of which I would be drowning in a different time.

There it was, like a coming onto a source of a mighty river. Like a spring that had begun new life, it seemed to be a testament for the river continuing, regardless of the circumstances that man had handed it. By looking at my hands and what I was doing, I made my way up to a plateau amongst the falls, looking down at the trickle below me. From my vantage point here with water above me and below me, it seemed as though the water would always be here, no matter how much of the river's bones I saw. No matter what season I had visited in it, the life of this place would roar in its own way. The rush of water soared past me, feeding the soul of the land below. The water had carved out this place in the form of ice years ago. Soon, the river of Schoharie would roar again. Perhaps in my own way, I had witnessed its rebirth.