An Enormous Solitary Sycamore

What a beautiful day it is.  It had rained last night.  But this morning was bright and cool, big puffy clouds kept sailing our way over the Shawangunks.  Something must happen as they ride across the valley in front of us and slam into the ridge behind where we live.  They drop.  Discrete, puffy clouds always seem to pause and consider what to do, right above our porch.  And when you look at clouds like that, as the settle and shift and decide where to go, you realize what you already knew that they aren’t consistent objects but shifting blocks of geometry that shift perpetually in dozens of conflicting directions.  I remember quite clearly the first time I’d considered clouds that way.  I was sitting high above the cliffs of Glencolumnkill in the north west of Ireland and each clouds that arrived off the Atlantic, paused there and each of its composite parts considered what to do and where to go, hovering in the wind. 

My younger daughter was up first and it suddenly occurred to me that we should go out for a walk.  I asked her if she’d like to and she said “no” immediately, but I could tell by the way that she did so that the thought was still gestating.  I pressed again and she acquiesced.  Cool, let’s finish this coffee and head out.  “Not now!”  “No. Sure.  In ten minutes or so.”  And before long we were tying up our sneakers and testing the morning air to see if a tee-shirt would suit or not.  Bring a sweater. 

The rail trail behind our house is a treasure.  Walking through the high grass to get there my daughter was terrified of ticks.  They’re out here, certainly.  “But darling” I reminded her, “you’ve walked through the jungle with Howler Monkeys in the distance.  You can handle the woodlands of Ulster County.   Once on the trail I checked her ankles and she checked mine.  No ticks that I could see. 

About a half a mile up the trail towards Gardiner, there’s a bridge over a creek that feeds into the Wallkill River.  There’s a different view than you can see from our place and the shelf of the Gunks extends off in a southerly direction for many miles.  By the bend in the creek there’s an enormous solitary Sycamore tree.  One hundred yards off to the left beneath another big tree four our five cows were seated together, resting.  Idyllic this was the point I’d secured my daughter’s commitment to proceed to.  Let’s rest here.  And we agreed, looking out across the grassy plain that wasn’t hard to imagine form a moment was Savanah, that this would be a very different walk to do if indeed it were the Serengeti. 

Saturday 8/10/19