A Free nonfiction E-Zine that explores all areas of reality, updated by the 1st of the month.
Our February 2007 Edition
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A Free nonfiction E-Zine that explores all areas of reality, updated by the 1st of the month. Our February 2007 Edition Home | Archive | Books & Sites | Contact Us |
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January isn't exactly what it used to be in upstate New York. Sixty degrees in Albany in the first month of the year is beyond the so-called January thaw, at least in my opinion. To me, a January thaw is when the snow that falls is heavy and wet rather than dry and fluffy, not when you can go jogging in your shorts like a bunch of people were doing in Albany, New York. But that's what this January day was like, sixty degrees and counting, begging for the masses to play hooky and call in sick so as to convalesce by having a picnic lunch outdoors. Global warming? Probably, but I was going to be enjoying it as much as any relieved upstater who is normally beleaguered with three feet of snow by now. And so far as I could see, the city of Albany shared my sentiment. As we drove, it seemed as though everyone was out on the streets, and most people had given up on their offices for the day. There was the guy wearing the Ipod who bounced his way along the sidewalk, seemingly oblivious to anything like a schedule that would keep him indoors. Amongst the busy roads in downtown Albany, there seemed to be miles of wares to lose yourself as well as your money; it was as though the motto go shopping now while the shopping was good. Or at least, while the weather was good.  We reached a red light, and I got a better look at the scenery around me. There were row houses interspersed with the commercial areas. Someone parked on the curb and left his car looking like the leaning tower of Pisa, vehicle style, running towards a building and running into people and things with the same haste that he treated his car. The people he nearly knocked over were three women walking together, two white and one black, stopping and gesticulating at the guy and his car. Either the guy didn't notice or didn't care. I wonder what a conversation between him and a marriage partner would be like: "Honey! You never listen!" "What? Were you saying something? Wait, what was your name again?" A jaywalker cut us off just as we responded to the green light. Maybe he was related to the oblivious guy that parked his car like a bad art display. Some people hadn't quite got the news that global warming had cancelled the winter wardrobe for the day. There was a guy smoking a cigarette with a woolen cap walking by, clutching his arms to his sides and looking down like he was bucking an imaginary blizzard. There was another guy in a long winter coat sitting on the steps of a church that looked plain enough to not look like a cathedral but ornate enough to not look like a storefront church, which meant it probably belonged to some mainline Protestant denomination.. Maybe the person residing on its steps was a homeless guy looking for a comfortable place to rest for a moment, or maybe it was someone who lost such faith in the weather forecast that he didn't believe the digital thermometer that read sixty degrees but was exhausted from a surprising burst of overheating. But it wasn't just guys who were climatically challenged. A woman on a cell phone walked briskly by in a snazzy winter coat and fur hat, elegantly dressed as a businesswoman would normally be on a January day in Albany, when it wasn't so warm people were treating any jackets as refuse as they stripped them off. Maybe she was too busy cutting a business deal to be bothered with weather reports. Maybe if she didn't dress this way she wouldn't feel professional. Maybe she didn't even know how hot it was, she was so obliviously entrenched in pie charts and contracts. In any event, looking at these people while I was seeking a breeze in the urban smog made me feel overheated.  The whole point of this drive through Albany was to find 787, which according to our map, ran parallel to the Hudson River. The object was to find a place to pull over and maybe find a park to go to in order to see the sights, whatever they might happen to be on this day, and to let our dog get some air and maybe meet some of his kind. We'd crossed the city on NY 5, and eventually, seeing that it was heading east away from our original destination of Colonie, it would smack us dead in the river, or at least, hopefully at a park near the water. Most likely, the highway with its limited access would get us nowhere near the park, so we knew to stay away from that. Hopefully, there would be a road right along the river that would have enough stops that we could pull over. What the map didn't tell me was that we were headed straight for a park. Well, not exactly a park, but it was close enough. There was a trail that we saw people walking on, jogging on , and biking on adjacent to the water. Parking areas were interspersed along the way. We missed the first one, but it didn't seem like a big deal because pretty soon there was another one, like numerous rest stops along the way. It was a good way to get nature and exercise in the same breath without leaving the city. The people walked to and fro, oblivious to another newcomer, in the manner of wary oblivion that city people normally conducted their lives. We parked near a sign that announced "Corning Trail" to join with the crowd.  The walkway ran in between the interstate and the river, of which at this point could have either been the Erie Canal or the Hudson River, the intersection not being all that far away somewhere in Troy, as far as I knew. There were old suspension bridges that seemed old enough to have seen World War II, giving the feeling of a decaying industrial world that had outlived its usefulness. I thought of how there had been some controversy with General Electric and the dredging of the river, and it was like we were pretending to visit nature but we were really going to get a good tour of PCBs. That was what the city was like: it provided the nuances of high end civilization, but it came with a price, causing an invisible river of toxins to be masked under the veneer of what nature man created in the guise of a park. But it worked for the society I resided in its own way, and besides I was the visitor here. I obviously couldn't be much of a critic if I came to the place and enjoyed what it offered. It made me part of the problem. So with that bit of philosophy taken care of, it became a matter of when in Albany, do as those in Albany do. My husband, dog and I joined the revelers playing in the winter sun that was too warm for this time of year, but you didn't see anyone complaining in the spring fever glory. A guy jogged past me, wearing gym shorts and a tank top, masked with sunglasses but wearing a smile of goodwill for anyone he passed in this cavalier kind of day. People sat at picnic tables admiring the water like it was a Sunday day in June. We walked under a viaduct by the interstate and bridges, hearing the river crashing up against the wall put to stop it from flooding the city. A woman came over to me, delighting in my cairn terrier, the warm sun making general friendliness more natural than a stiff breeze that only Canada could bring. The Amtrak train chugged on the tracks above us, and I wondered where exactly the station was, thought about all the places that train could take me, and how much more quickly I could come and go than a traveler from only a hundred years earlier could. And yet, here I was with many other city dwellers, using the oldest form of travel, my feet. The train quickly disappeared from view.  The trail turned away from the busyness of the river, the constructs of bridges, and with it, most of the crowds. We passed though sleeping bushes that hadn't quite woken up in the unusual warmth, reminding us that it was still winter no matter what the thermometer said. It was quiet here, and if it were not for the highway above us on the left, it would seems as though we were in some wilderness preserve and not in the city of Albany. The warmth sustained us as we reversed the process, through solitude, to people and back to where industry prevailed, until we reached the turnoff for our car. The trail continued past us, providing a temptation to continue and live like a city reveler for some more time more...But the thought of getting home lured us enough to get us into the car, though in the end, we would wind up further down the road away from home, lured by the meanderings to enjoy another spat of warming before winter decided to fight back against the warming sun. |