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If I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself to be anywhere. A scent that cooked up a recipe of wind, sun and sediment wafted to me, the heat acting like a drug taking me to a tropical beach of any type, far away. The wind blew in my face and took me to a place far away from myself. As long as my eyes were darkened, I could take myself to anywhere I wanted. This breeze calmed everything within me. It told me that everything was all right, as long as deep within myself I could allow its voice to speak to me, and to let its power settle down everything within me to its rightful place in the universe. And it did work. I stood on a spit of sand that stood far out at the edge of water, far away from any bathhouse or comfort station. It was like I had found my own stretch of a deserted island, a modern Robinson Crusoe. Or maybe, a female Paul Theroux sneaking up to the last vestiges of tropical islands not wreaked with luxury hotels in his inflatable kayak. Except, in reality, I was neither of these. Not by a long shot. The comfort station was only a quarter a mile away, and I had gotten here by taking a long walk. Granted, my husband and I pretty far out, but the parking lot with our car was only a half mile away, if that.  No, we weren't on some remote South Pacific Island that no one had ever been to before. We were on the outskirts of Rome, a city in upstate New York. And we were in one of Rome's summer playgrounds, Delta Lake State Park, a sanitized nature that made sure that you were not far away from the comforts and conveniences of civilization. But in a roundabout way, we were in a place that few ever went to. Even though modern plumbing was a quarter mile away and a modern vehicle that made distances go unnaturally fast was a half a mile away, we had found a secret island. Simply put, the water was so low that we were standing on land that was supposed to be completely submerged by water. But the rains hadn't come all that much this year. Even though the Southeast was getting all the headlines for drought in the news, the Northeast had been pretty dry too, and looking at Delta Lake, also known as Delta Reservoir, confirmed this reality. We were standing on spits of land that should have been covered by water, if the water line on shore was any indication. The Delta Reservoir was unnaturally low, if unnaturally was the correct word to be using for something that was unnatural already. Most likely, it had been diverted into the Mohawk River, but the fact that it was so low now meant that the river itself was dry this year.  The village of Delta, which had been submerged to provide water flow for the Erie Barge Canal, was here somewhere under my feet, and in the low waters it seemed it was having an awakening. The land under my feet had appeared from the depths of its drowning, like a zombie coming back from the dead. It felt like we were one of the few to actually stand here since the drowning, though the bleeding of the reservoir for other uses may have happened every other month for all I knew. But in the dryness around me, it felt like we were in the middle of an unearthing, participating in nature's archaeology. Or maybe, her balancing of the books, righting accounts that mankind tended to use for a personal spending spree. The dying of reservoirs and other dry weather had been a dominant subject in recent days in the media. The city of Atlanta was in dire straits, having only a few months supply left of drinking water in its reservoir. There was dry weather in the West, which unbeknownst to me as I stood in a middle of a lake, would soon lead to massive wildfires in Southern California. All around me was land that was usually hidden, and perhaps would be again in several months time, whether snow would assault it, or the rains would become more prolific. Land taking over sea, as a world of water metamorphosed into a sand dune. Man's design had nothing on the ultimate plans that Nature deigned for her personal sculpture, and amusement: man had angling and boating, while Nature had sand castles to make.  Delta Lake usually was a place for anglers. Usually, but not today: as soon as we had walked in, a sign warned water recreationists that the lake levels were extremely low, and there was no exaggeration to what they said. When we had approached the lake from the parking lot, the sand stretched so far that the people at its edge appeared as tiny dots, as insignificant in prominence as any individual pebble of sand that dressed up the beach. Walking past the scenes of sand which still held the memories of summer sunbathers in them, we reached a boundary in which dry sand was stained with water memories and larger rocks, a sign of how far the water had pulled itself from the shore. It was amongst these larger rocks that we made our way, alarming them with the unaccustomed feeling of human feet when they were more used to the blanket of water. On these rocks, I couldn't take my own steps as much for granted as when I walked upon more accommodating concrete or pliable sand. Angled rocks that didn't want to support me were now my footing, and it deemed me well to heed their leeriness of me by watching every step, realizing the horizontal balance I regarded as a guarantee on my usual terrain was not present. The rocks were capricious in how they wanted to grant me access in their haphazard layout. Presently, they gave way to mush that disguised itself as sand, sinking my foot and pulling my shoe off. It felt like I was a somewhat unwelcome guest at this table. At the very least, I was encountering an indifferent host.  Navigating a course, which dictated I look down at my feet as much as looking at the vista like an awed tourist, I made my way to the furthest edge of land that had been drawn by this new invisible cartographer. Along the way, debris such bottles, fishing apparatuses, and even a giant sled made cameo appearances. Looking back, it was as though I was encountering a moonscape rather than the gentle terrain of a state park. It was a view that became more disorientating the more I looked, as though the visual image worked to rob me of rational thinking. A seagull wended its way through the virgin shores, and the carcass of some kind of bass lay to rest on what should have been the floor of its natural abode. A single boat with a single occupant zipped by, so solitary in its appearance that it seemed to be a paid representative for a rare species. Walking back the long way, we saw a deer registering surprise and caution. In my mind, it felt like she was as much startled by our being able to find her as her natural instincts of wariness around bipeds; for the ground we walked on was shore that she may have never seen in previous years, making her all the more vulnerable in trying to flee those who might predate her. Wildlife was supposed to be here, but it seemed as though the low waters had betrayed their hiding places. If they were there, they had scampered deeper into the woods set back far from the beach, further than they probably had been for a long time.  It was as though we walked amongst the remains of volcanoes, of storm surges and tempests as we saw the rocks below us. Grasses and floodplains were misplaced, unlocked from a watery grave to see the sun that presumably they didn't get much opportunity to greet. This park, which I had presumed would be just a simple, everyday excursion to a beach retired for the winter, had decided that it didn't want to be just a ho-hum description of sand and water with locked up buoys in a wintertime vault. And to prove it, a fragment of black debris with a sedimentary rock stuck into it made its presence known. Back and forth we went, both mentally and physically, wondering if in all of this mystique of mirrors we had encountered some strange meteor that had washed its way to shore. It wasn't anything like that, of course. In the end, the rock proved to be nothing more than a lump of tar which had swallowed a rock. But this is what the place seemed to do. It was a place where the ordinary created its own illusion, playing masquerade, becoming a shadow of what normal human expectation presumed.  A sand-edged forest pointed us back to the main beach, and from there, to the place where we would go back to concrete paths, concrete buildings and concrete ideas. But for a moment, if I closed my eyes, I could imagine myself to be anywhere. I could imagine breezes enveloping me, sun emblazoning me, and sediment inviting itself through smell. I could be far away from myself, and I could imagine a town that was no more, and imagine that in some small way, I had met it in a rare encounter. Through magic and mirrors, make-believe and masks, the past had come alive for some small moment for me to see. |
