Article 4 - "PEEBLES ISLAND STATE PARK" March 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

Sometimes when I am out on a trip and I've planned to call it a day, it just doesn't seem like it is time to go home just yet. It's as though I'm leaving the trip before it leaves me. Then, it's time to forget about plans and go with what the encounter has to tell me, which is the whole idea of travel. Plans are guides to be broken rather than dictators that I need to bow down to. That's what I felt during a trip enjoying an especially warm winter day in Albany. It was just too nice to go home, so along with my husband and dog, even though we'd been traveling all day, it was time to go somewhere else.

We drove until we got lost in Troy, an industrial city just outside of Albany. Thronged with the traffic that inched its way through like a drugged insect, we crawled to Troy's edge. In that maelstrom, it felt as though the city never ended, as though the swarm had its own way of holding one prisoner. But soon enough, we wound out to the edge of Troy, and the factories, stores and strip malls began to die off. As we went through Troy, it at first seemed like Brooklyn with all its low level buildings compacted together, and once past the commercial district, it looked more like Queens, with its large old houses together, as though they were encroaching on each other like an endangered species pushed to the edge of its ecosystem.

    Once we bushwhacked through the metropolis of Troy, we continued on NY 7 until we came upon the state road of NY142. Out of curiosity, we took this road, which headed north. It was a road never taken by us, so it seemed as worthy of exploration as any far-flung places thousands of miles away. It headed north, past quiet looking houses that seemed to have been built as insulation against the reality of the city just a few miles away. The ubiquitous mowed lawn stood as a proud symbol of tranquility and of man finding an artificial way of wresting peace out of the urban jungle, even if he had to spend all weekend obtaining that illusion.

    Soon, NY 142 ended, its demise preceded with the houses getting closer together and the long roads interspersed between residences shrunk to numerous blocks that divided the buildings into squares askew with charm, like a painting hung on just the wrong angle. We were obviously coming up to a sizable town of some sort, and the signs literally pointed us to the town of Waterford. Our highway came to its peaceful but quick end at US 4, a north/south thoroughfare that ran parallel to the Hudson River. We traveled as it carried us over the river without incident, a road leading its travelers through the restful idea of a quiet town enjoying peace on the river. There were no other people to greet us, but plenty of small bungalows and big houses alike to stake their owners's claims to the river. The silence was welcoming, but reminded us that we were visitors and others belonged here. We were to go home at the end of the day while the rightful owners came back to their stations.

    As we drove on US4 and just before we got to the main part of Waterford, there was a sign which directed us that Peebles Island State Park was to the left of us. This was a state park that had been formed around the same time as the atlas I was looking at, at least from my interpretation. Peebles Island wasn't in the official list of state parks, which updated constantly as Governor Pataki dedicated more and more land that had been donated to state preservation. It was, however, cited in a strange font that it was a state park on the actual map, a font different from the other official parks, which I took to mean that just as the map went to print, the park was born into existence.

    Somewhere along here was the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, where, I wasn't exactly sure. The park was devoid of people on this still Tuesday afternoon, but there were ducks everywhere. They were on the water, and moseying through the grass. Now that the humans were gone, it was time to play. They ignored us, but seemed unafraid of us, as though they were used to people but considered them a necessary nuisance to deal with as they conducted their lives. There was a picnic pavilion, picnic tables, and shoreline for someone to have a picnic someday. But it was doing fine here even without its use. It looked not so much asleep or deserted, but off-duty, as though we had caught up with it on vacation while it was having a beer and watching college football. The houses in the distance rested in the unusually warm sun as their owners were away working. The glass of the water sparkled, reveling in the fact that no one wrinkled its pleasure with a powerboat or even a canoe. Everything in the quiet picture seemed personified, even as there were no people in the picture to depersonalize them.

    Still in the parking lot for Peebles Island State Park, we meandered over to a building standing like a sentinel on the banks of the water. One had to walk up stairs as though approaching a museum or library, but for now, it was hibernating. It was some kind of resource center, like the kind of building that housed welcome kiosks at state borders. But, with its locked doors, it obviously wasn't expecting any visitors today. The stairs went behind the building, leading me, the pedestrian, to a brick boardwalk of sorts that paralleled the water. From there, the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk rivers was visible, with signs announcing it like a spectacular event.

    Yet despite the fanfare, it seemed as quiet as anything else. Though it was as seminal as anything could be in nature, it proceeded like a hero who shirked the limelight, content to go about its business while allowing others to watch it at work. I walked along the sidewalk and let the sun sink into me, enjoying this rare artifact of a spring-like day in January. Though if the prognosticators were right, this would increasingly be less and less rare a phenomenon, and this river would be rushing with the influx of melted ice being carried away in a watery sarcophagus, not such a serene sight to contemplate.

As we made our way back to the front of the concourse, we ran into a couple of people, one a woman strolling alone, and another woman in her fifties powerwalking, her strides in perfect tandem with her swinging arms. Both of them greeted us with the same warmth that the sun had, and then went their ways, not even stopping to pet the dog. It was a perfect greeting of brevity that didn't mar the tranquility that surrounded us. Too much conversation would seem to spoil the setting, like leaving the detritus of a leftover lunch behind. Everything, the houses, the park, the resource center, seemed to set things up for a benign encounter with nature, perfect after dealing with the hassles of Albany all week. And why not? If man could work with nature to come up with this compromise, it worked in its own way. I took in some more of the silence basking in the sun, and smelled the heat around me. It all meshed together, and when I left, I felt ready to deal with the mess that civilization usually tended to be.