“TRAVEL IN LOCAL SPACES” “A RURAL PICNIC”

by Jessica Kuzmier

     There is a stereotype that upstate New York is nothing more than lush valleys with quaint small towns. In this vision, everything breathes the freshness of the air and basks in quiet beauty. There's something in New York City known as the Fresh Air Fund, which sends kids from the inner city to rural areas in the summertime to experience mountain and country life. One of the destinations is upstate New York, which basically constitutes anything north of the Bronx to most people in the city.

     Of course, I can see their point; both of how upstate New York seems cleaner, and how anything north of the Bronx is upstate. Seeing that I was originally from Long Island myself, I had also harbored at one time an idealistic view of the vast geographic plain that spread north of the city. Any drive past the massive projects of the Bronx began to yield the rolling mounds that marked the southern tip of the Catskill foothills. To make the interstates, bulldozers had to plow through reams of shale and limestone; the sheer rocks adjacent to your driving lane would give the impression that nature reigned here, especially since the hills hid any commerce that may have been lurking in back streets off of the interstate. Even built up areas such as Westchester and Rockland counties gave this impression coming from the megalopolis of  New York City. When you crossed the Tappan Zee bridge over the Hudson River, there were houses nestled in the hills overlooking the water. What made it seem more rural than suburban was that the trees seemed to outnumber the houses by vast proportions. Cities just didn't have that type of nature lying around.

     If counties that are counted amongst the New York Metropolitan area can seem like nature havens compared to the rest of downstate, imagine the impression that you can get once you clear those regions. You drive further away from the city, cutting through Catskill Park and heading north through the Leatherstocking Region until you get to Adirondack Park. There must be nothing but farms, quaint college towns, and ski lodges everywhere, you think. It's easy to forget that places like Utica and Albany exist when you get in that mode. Perhaps you experience a bit of a denial: you're lured into thinking that cities like that are so small that you can drive through them in a second and not notice. You experience traffic, and it seems strange, because you don't expect it. Road rage seems particularly out of place as well; visions of people stuck at a four-way stop sign having a lively debate based on who will successfully waive his right-of-way for the other guy are smashed as you get nearly run over by a truck pulling out of the Quik Mart. The idealistic city person is shocked: what is happening to small-town America? How could the city have destroyed it like this?

     Of course, what is more likely is that small-town America like upstate New York probably never was so charming that its population was automatically of higher caliber than the city or large suburban centers. Not all urban drivers are road rages waiting to happen, and not all rural people are church ladies and gents. Seeing that most likely people are people wherever you go, the proportion of good to bad is probably about the same. The difference is that in the cities there are so many people that it's just easier to run into the lousy guy, and in sheer number there are more of them. That doesn't mean that no one in the rural areas could do with a good personality makeover. There's just less of them to go around.



     The same goes with rural pollution. Just because you show up at a natural river doesn't mean that civilization's debris hasn't touched it. That misnomer is similar to the stereotype where urban people half-jokingly inquire if they have electric in upstate New York. Few will doubt that Syracuse or Albany might have some combustible pollution, but the idea that the pretty lake in the mountains might have any pollution seems alarming. Likewise, the concept of litter: that's only something that happens in cities, or maybe in the upstate campgrounds after the tourists all go home. The idea that the locals in the small towns would ever litter seems shocking, as though it shatters the haven of a pristine refuge. You mean, we're not safe from our habits anywhere in this planet?, some might ask. It does happen here? This becomes a preconceived notion whereby all people in rural small towns are dedicated environmentalists, and like all preconceived notions, it is unnerving when the reality crashes in on them.

     All these thoughts crossed my mind one day as I sat in a pulloff of a state highway eating lunch one day. On one side of me, a cleared hill climbed in the distance, likely leading to someone's field. There was a barbed wire fence that would prevent the average snowmobile from just hauling itself onto the property, but there was an opening in the fence big enough for any vehicle to go through. I wonder if anyone ever did that on an average day of traffic

     The other side of where we ate yielded some kind of stream, strewn with debris from other people showing up here to hang out. It was the kind of detritus that would occur from carelessness. You're sitting there with your friends in the car, and the idea of recycling doesn't quite occur to you in your atmosphere. It could have come from anywhere, the litter, but it still shatters the idea that the rural culture is innocent of blighting the landscape.

     It's just like anywhere else, and the people are like anyone else. When you see the garbage laying in the stream, it's a reminder that there is no escape from humanity's sins, if humanity is present. Which means that in order for things to change means that you have to change, whether you are moseying in the country, suburbs, or city.

     We finished lunch, and wrapped up the garbage in a plastic grocery bag so we could throw it out when we got home.