 |
|
Sometimes it's good to sit by a river and think. Even if in the course of meditation, effluent from some city upstream floats by, and in the near distance there is some crazy guy on a bike whistling Andy Griffith. It's a moment of time in the midst of chaos, and these little reminders that come by make the meditation anything but escapism. That's what it was like sitting by the Mohawk River, which depending on what map one looked at, or the perspective of the observer, was either part of the Erie Canal, or it wasn't. Maybe it depended on some barge operator or the state budget of the day. I wasn't really sure. Where we were was some kind of branch or tributary leading into the main dish. Appetizer or diet meal it might be, but the water was still going by, and occasionally we saw other people with fishing gear get their stuff ready for a big day. Trout season was out, and a lot of the rivers were stocked. You never knew when luck would hit, whether in a remote lake in the Adirondacks, or if you'd harvest the toughest fish imaginable surviving in the leftovers of the Mohawk Corridor cities such as Utica, Rome, Herkimer and New Hartford. Anglers we were not, but we were sitting by the side of a fishing access nonetheless. A place to hang out and just experience nature, even if it was in the middle of the urban corridor of the New York State Thruway. Maybe to a lot of people, the association of cities and New York all had to do with the Big Apple of Manhattan and upstate was nothing more than one big farm. Cities such as Utica, Herkimer and Rome helped dispel that myth. They lay strewn across the path of the Thruway, which traveled nearly parallel to the Erie Canal. The cities brought their traffic and other residue down the river, but occasionally there were spots that one could pretend they lived in that stereotype of the country, like here along the river.
This fishing access was one of many that the DEC set aside here and there in the state of New York. Sometimes they were remote spots in the middle of rivers too difficult to access otherwise, sometimes they were like here, little plots of land in the middle of suburban and urban living, planned nature acting like islands in a sea of civilization. Of course, since nothing in this kind of dense habitation was really natural anymore, it was more like an arboretum or some other atrium man created to put nature in a kind of museum. But, it was a kind of refuge, and where I stood, industry remained hidden unless I stood way at the end of the bank, where the bridge we had crossed once or twice in search of a river photo came into view. On both sides of the banks, there was nothing but trees, nothing to remind me of where I had just come from in the middle of a traffic jam. The world went on, oblivious of this place, but I wondered how oblivious this place was of the world outside. Nature had a way of watching, and sometimes her banks overflowed with her reminders. Though the lot we had turned into was full of cars, there were very few people to account for them. It was as though people had parked and moved elsewhere to someplace else, leaving the remnants of their old life behind. It was probably nothing more routine than a carpool, or maybe as exciting as a bus trip to Someplace Other Than Here. For me right now, Here was a good place. It almost felt good enough to slip into a hazy pleasure of the Eternal Now. I observed what was around me. In the distance, a couple sat at a dock together. An angler walked with full gear towards a small opening in the trees and disappeared, presumably on a cleared path to another section of the access. I was too lazy to care where it went, my exploration instinct on siesta. Perhaps that would account for all the cars, my curiosity tried to rouse me. Perhaps that was where all the anglers were, and I could check it out. Who cares, said the rest of me, full from a German meal I had just enjoyed in the early summer heat. Here was sun, water, and quiet. The couple on the dock started making out, like the heat had woke something in them as it had put me to sleep. A biker darted into the faraway path, and I sat back to do nothing more adventurous than watching leaves appear from upstream and disappear down the river. A family of geese from the distance held my attention for a long time. Quiet by the river. Of course, I should have known better than to let myself be seduced.
Not long after he entered the path, the biker reappeared, as though he'd try to crash some anglers only club and been routed out as an obvious imposter. He sat himself on the dock with the other couple, as though he had been late for a menage a trois and now he was ready for action. The couple, like a deflated balloon, came apart from each other and stood forlorn, as though they had been caught making out on Grandma's couch and now had to act properly for Sunday dinner with the family. There was yelling. It took me a minute to register what was going on, because some instinct was telling me not to look at the scene directly; most humans have the uncanny instinct of knowing when someone is looking at them and will most certainly look in the suspicious direction. But it wasn't an argument. It wasn't even someone angry. It was just the biker. He was talking, or doing some loud semblance of the sort, a nonstop diatribe that seemed to exist solely for the sound of his own voice. Then he must have gotten hot, because he took off his shirt. Something else must have been going on, because he took off his pants. I didn't check to see what was left on him. The couple left. Maybe the biker had the wrong menage a trois. Well, whatever the biker's plan was, if he had wanted the dock to himself, his scheme had worked. Whatever conversation he was having before with the now departed couple, he continued by himself. Hey, it takes all kinds, I thought, remembering not to look directly into the sun because it causes blindness. The water was still flowing downstream, and I wondered what it thought when it passed by the crazy biker. Probably something like, good thing I'm getting out of here. Fast. The river's sights provided its diversion, but unfortunately, it was too silent to cover up the one man routine. The yelling became background noise, but once the soundtrack went from talk radio to the whistling of the Andy Griffith Show theme song, I began seeing the river in a whole different way. I couldn't ignore the sideshow and didn't know what would happen next. Maybe Barney Fife would want to shoot a gun. Try as I could, the illusion of the lazy river went by the wayside. Which is just as well, because Utica was just down the road, and Herkimer was yards away. It wouldn't do good to have too much illusion. Time to go back to what everyone agreed was civilization.
I've never thought of the Andy Griffith Show in the same way since. |
