Anthony's Nose and What Momma Knows

When I was a sophomore in high school, I had an Honors English teacher who inspired and terrified me.  His name was Charles Rossell (which I always thought was made up, because my high school was named after the Western artist Charles M. Russell...suspiciously close), and he was a motocross racing cowboy and aikido master, who would give impossibly difficult tests on the first day of school to see if you had thoroughly done your summer reading ("What color were Jane Eyre's eyes?", etc).  His gaze was unbelievably intense.  He scared us into writing a proper essay.  We worshipped him for making us better.  To be scrutinized by him was mortifying, to be praised by him was rare and glorious.

That fall, during the night of parent-teacher conferences, Mr. Rossell made each parent write an essay.  I have no idea what he asked them to write about, but I'm he sure intimidated the heck out of my mom and every parent in that room.

The next day in class he was telling us about his parent assignment and mocking their output a bit, when I heard him shout my name:
"GROW!"...
"Yes?" I stammered, fearing what he might say about my somewhat shy, understated mother.
"Your mom can really write."

And I was proud.  I'd never really heard of my mom writing before, but she's always been the kind of parent who has exactly the right words for me when I need them.  After my first blog post last week, my mother responded to me with this bit of botanist-philosopher-poet wisdom, which I thought was too beautiful to keep to myself:

I have heard the sadness in your voice for awhile now...Sadness has a way of hanging on and clinging to us like bindweed.  We think we can get rid of it by pulling it out and disposing of it, but it keeps popping up again and again.  Bindweed will take over and choke anything out if we don't tend to it properly.  We can kill it off with poisonous chemicals or we can plant in its place things of beauty that will eventually and naturally get rid of it.  In other words, feeding your sad soul with what is healthy and with things you love will help bring back happiness to your life.  

Zowie.  Do I want to be a momma like that some day?  You bet your boots I do.

Anyway, onto this weekend's hike.  I rolled out of bed around 6:30am and got on the road by 7, cruising up Bronx River and Sprain Brook parkways on the east side of the Hudson River, just across from where I'd hiked last week.  On the radio, I caught a beautiful NPR "On Being" interview with the magnificent spoken word poet Sarah Kay.  Kay speaks powerfully about the importance of telling your own story, the fragile nature of human hearts and existence, and the universal longing to connect.  In her poem "Hiroshima", she writes, "I see the impossible every day. Impossible is trying to connect in this world, trying to hold onto others while things are blowing up around you, knowing that while you're speaking, they aren't just waiting for their turn to talk -- they hear you. They feel exactly what you feel at the same time that you feel it. It's what I strive for every time I open my mouth -- that impossible connection."

And with those words, and the desire to connect - with myself, with the woods, with whoever or whatever I might encounter on the path ahead - I set out on the trail.

The Camp Smith trail starts just north of Peekskill at the old Bear Mountain toll house and skirts a narrow bit of land between Route 202/6 and a military firing range.  So, no venturing off-trail, lest you become target practice.  It's a blue-blazed trail that begins with a gradual climb and quickly becomes rocky and somewhat indistinct.

There's a fair amount of rock scramble getting up to the first viewpoint.  I've never much fancied myself a rock climber, but I do love a good scramble.  To me, it feels like being a kid playing on nature's jungle gym.

Less than a mile into the climb, I arrived at the first viewpoint.

No, that's not the Taj Mahal in the distance.  That's the controversial nuclear power facility at Indian Point, nestled in the middle of the Hudson River.  And just around the river bend, is Iona Island, a bird sanctuary and winter nesting home for bald eagles.

Black-capped chickadees darted around me while I bent down to take a photo of this wildflower (azalea, I think?), and as I reached into my back pocket for my trail map, I discovered it was gone.  It had fallen out of my pocket and was sitting somewhere back on the trail, presumably.  Luckily, it was a simple in-and-out hike, with no trail junctures.  And I had done a section of this hike with a group earlier in December, so instead of backtracking I decided to press on, mapless, and just trust my sense of direction and stay alert for the blazes.

It occurred to me as I hiked that this situation was pretty representative of my current life state.  I am feeling a definite sense of being mapless and unmoored.  And while it would be nice to have a larger view of where I'm going and how I'm getting there, right now I guess I just have to look for the signs, orient myself somehow, and be comforted by the knowledge that I'm not alone in this journey.  Others have gone before me and will help show me the way.

About 3 miles into the hike, I started wondering when I might see another hiker, when I heard a rustling in the grass.  I looked down to see about a half dozen baby wild turkeys, and just further afield, their regal looking mother.  She flew into a tree before I had a chance to grab for my camera, but having watched the strange and excellent PBS documentary, "My Life As a Turkey", I knew that wild turkeys could be dangerous if feeling threatened or ornery.  So I took care to not provoke the turkey family any further and moved on.

About a mile further ahead I began to hear a cacophonous sound.  At first I thought it might be a troupe of Boy Scouts, and then as I got closer I thought, "Maybe geese?"  But as it turns out, I had come upon a marshy pond filled with hundreds of frogs.  In this video you'll hear the constant whir of cicadas, and the syncopated croak of the frogs.  Quite a woodland chorus:

Just about a mile ahead, I climbed again and reached the end point for this hike, Anthony's Nose.  Nobody really knows why it's called Anthony's Nose (which put a little sing-song in my head: "Nobody knows why Anthony's Nose, does what it does, and blows where it blows"... Yeah, I know.  This is what happens in your brain when you hike alone...).  From the Nose, you get a gorgeous overhead view of the Bear Mountain bridge.

After a brief rest and exchanging hellos with an Asian couple hiking with their shih-tzu, I turned back on the trail and retraced my pathway back toward my car.  Not long after turning back, I was visited by the turkey family again, and this time, they stayed put long enough for me to capture the mother on camera:

I hiked happily back, zipping along the trail, feeling strong in my legs, but starting to get hungry for breakfast waiting for me on the other end.  And just I was skipping along, about half way back on the hike, this big boy appeared on the trail and scared the bejeezus out of me.

Nope, that's not a charred branch or a deflated bike tire.  That's a 4 foot long black rat snake.  He stayed frozen on the tail, with just his forked tongue sticking in and out in all his creepy snakiness, and me trembling in my boots.  Needless to say, I took an off-trail detour, giving him wide berth.  Reading up later, I discovered that these snakes are not poisonous and are actually greatly beneficial to farmers in keeping the rodent population in check.  But this guy was only half the size of what a black rat snake can grow to be, and seeing one on the trail definitely startled me.

Heart pumping, legs working, I got back to my car and checked my pedometer, clocking 8 miles in 3.5 hours.  

As I recapped to myself all I had thought about and seen that morning, starting with the words from my mother about planting things of beauty in my sad soul, I heard again in my mind these lines from the Sarah Kay poem, "If I should have a daughter": 

When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away.

You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life.

And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it.

Look momma: this is me, sticking my tongue out and tasting the world.