Sunday, the 25th of May, we celebrated five years of marriage. What can I say, but that they’ve been five of the best years of my life? Anyway, Jeanie and I went to our usual spot in NYC for our anniversary: Knickerbocker’s Bar and Grill in Greenwich Village. Jeanie had their signature T-bone steak, and I had their St. Louis style ribs.

I keep saying, life just doesn’t get any better than this. And then it does get better. And better. And better.

Tuesday was our last day (night) in New York. We spent the day doing chores, which are extensive in a large fifth-wheel that’s been sitting in one spot for two months. You forget a lot. Bicycles that once fit together on the same rack suddenly do not. And basement storage becomes a logistical nghtmare which is more puzzling when we consider that we haven’t acquired anything more than what we had when we first arrived. Hmmmm.

A couple from Toronto, Ontario pulled into a site just a few feet from ours. They had problems with getting the water from the spigot to the coach. I resisted the tempatation to laugh…these rubes obviously hadn’t been on the road long enough to even know how to hook up their water. Turns out they’ve been on the road themselves, off and on, for several years more than Jeanie and me, and their “simple” problem remained unsolved after I’d worked on it for close to two hours. A great lesson for me…nothing is as it seems.

And even though I didn’t help much, they nearly killed themselves thanking me, and I walked away with an email address for two new friends, and a bottle of wine which they insisted I take, in appreciation for my trouble.

Good folks. And I couldn’t help laughing when they told me their names: Orville and Sally Campbell!

There’s a beautiful park with a paved walking trail parallelling the Bronx River Parkway, running south from East 233rd Street down to the Mosholu Parkway. The park is about two miles long, with the Bronx River (the Bronx stream, really) skirting the entire length of the park’s western edge. I’ve been in the habit over the past several weeks of beginning my days “in the city” with a walk along this trail. It gives Annie and me some exercise, and kills a little time until the library near where Jeanie’s son Aaron lives opens at ten a.m. Today would be the last day I would take my walk in this park before Jeanie and I left New York for another year.

Despite its beauty, I haven’t really enjoyed the park as much as I wish I could have. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is its location. The Bronx River Parkway is like most other traffic arteries in most large cities. Huge. Noisy. Four (sometimes six) lanes of traffic, nearly always busy, and a Metro North Railroad track on the other side of the Parkway, with trains running (screaming, actually) by every few minutes. On the other side of the park (it’s a narrow park, about fifty yards wide at its widest point), is one of the several neighborhoods that comprise Bronx, New York. Large apartment buildings, schools, the busy Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. It’s predominantly poor–which leads me to the second reason I have not often enjoyed my walks. There is an attitude I often see in large urban areas populated by mostly poor people. How can I describe it? Unhappy. Angry. Frustrated. Depressed. People I encountered in the park rarely smiled as I passed. They rarely said anything. They rarely even looked at me. And if they looked at me, there seemed (to me) to be something angry and threatening in their faces. I felt likely to be attacked, even in the broad daylight, by someone waiting for me behind a tree or bush.

I realize I bring a lot of my own garbage into whatever situation I happen to find myself. I come from a poor background myself. I lived for several years in the McLaren District of San Francisco, otherwise known as the projects, until I was eight years old. There were many angry, frustrated, depressed people there, too. I learned firsthand just how violent such people can be. And I learned to be cautious, even suspicious (dare I say, paranoid?), when I was anywhere near them.

All of this notwithstanding, I still managed to suck it up and gut it out, so to speak. I dutifully snapped a leash onto Annie’s collar every day and together we strode purposefully from one end of the park to the other and back again. I told myself I’d be damned if I was going to let a little fear keep me from doing what I wanted to do.

Of course, there was no reason to think that today’s walk would be any different from all the ones before. But as I started down the path, I noticed up ahead a young black couple crossing the street from (I assumed) their large brick apartment building and heading into the park on the grass. What caught my eye was this: the man carried what looked like a small shovel with a bright red handle; and the slender woman held a small bundle to her chest, about the size of a twelve-pack of beer, wrapped in red cloth, a blanket or towel perhaps. This was a city park, I thought. Why would they need a shovel? The pair walked slowly, deliberately, as if each step required great effort. When they came to a small shade tree still frosted with pinkish-white early spring blossoms, they stopped. They stood there motionless for a few moments and stared at the ground in front of the tree. Finally, the man took the shovel and drove it into the ground with his foot and began to dig. The woman stood and watched him, swaying a little, patting the bundle at her chest as if it were her baby.

It didn’t take much thought to figure out what was happening. They had come to the tree to bury a pet, a small dog or cat.

The paved trail passed within a few short yards of where this little ceremony was taking place. Something prompted me to stop for a few seconds, maybe even to say something to them. After all, I was walking Annie, whom I had grown to love over the nearly five years Jeanie and I have had her. Back at the coach, we had Angus and Argyle, and Pele waiting for us. They were (are) our “kids”, our family. I could easily understand what these people must be going through. Nevertheless, I ignored the prompting, telling myself theirs was a private ceremony, I hadn’t been invited, and frankly, might not have been welcome. I hurried past without looking and continued my walk.

I tried to concentrate on the beauty of the park, the green against the sharp blue sky, the big puffy clouds like white elephants (to borrow from Hemingway), the smells of fresh cut grass (the park personnel kept the place immaculately groomed and free of the litter I’d been accustomed to seeing at other parks). But the image of the young man slowly digging into the grassy hillside, and of the young woman hovering nearby, watching, waiting, gently patting her precious bundle, followed me like an invisible ghost, whispering in my ear. How had the animal died, I wondered? Had it been sick? Was it old? I recalled the extraordinary efforts Jeanie and I had put forth just recently to save not one but both our cats from eating disorders and urinary tract infections which had nearly killed them. I guessed these people had had to put forth the same sort of effort for their own animal. I looked down at Annie, who was obviously happy to be outside, her tongue hanging happily from her mouth, her ears and eyes alert for birds or squirrels. It was easy to imagine the anguish I would feel if I lost her.

Suddenly, I realized, these people were kin.

That’s not to say that I had anything approaching a religious experience, that I was suddenly consumed with love and understanding and free of the fear which had plagued me. But something inside me seemed to shift just a little. I came upon a group of young girls, mostly black, sitting together inside one of the playgrounds. I heard their laughter; there seemed something free and clean about it, as if they’d somehow managed to avoid the anger, frustration, and general unhappiness amid which they lived. One of the park workers, a grizzled black man, looked up from raking a pile of dead leaves and nodded at me, just long enough to let me know he’d seen me. I gave a surpised nod back, and he turned and walked away, dragging his plastic trash can behind him.

The young couple at the tree were still working when I passed them on the return leg. The red bundle was gone, and the woman was patting and smoothing the fresh patch of dirt with the shovel. The man was busy nearby, carving something in the trunk of the tree with a large knife.

Once again, I was tempted to go over to them, introduce myself, tell them I was sorry for their loss. But, again, I resisted. I averted my eyes as I strode past with Annie, still telling myself they deserved their privacy. A few minutes later, I’d loaded Annie into the truck, and was pulling from the curb to begin the short drive back to Pelham Parkway where Jeanie and the library awaited me. And as I turned the corner for the on-ramp, I could see the two of them, she still tamping down the dirt, the man patiently working on the tree with his knife.

That’s the story, I guess, as far as it goes. And it might have ended there. I could just as easily have motored on as if nothing were different. But I think one of the things I am learning, slowly, is that pretty much everything we see, and how we see it, is a matter of conscious choice. If nothing changed in how I viewed life, it would be because I wanted for nothing to change. Today, I decided, I wanted different.

And so I tucked the moment away, safe in that small corner of my brain where I gather all the little snippets which serve to remind me that, despite appearances, we really are all cut from the same fabric, even if it’s from a far removed section of the patchwork quilt we call life. And I breathed a silent promise to this young man and woman, whom I would likely never see again, that I would share it with the other people in my life who care about such things, and so would understand.

Check out the prices at the gas station near where we are staying in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. The white arrow is pointing to the category we’re interested in here, as our truck runs on diesel. A note of hilarious irony: we decided to buy a diesel truck because it would (snicker) save us money on fuel. Of course, we bought it in those bygone days (two years ago) when diesel fuel was approaching a mere $2 per gallon, and we thought that was high!

Thus begins our last full week here in the gorgeous state of New York. The park personnel came around late this morning with their lawn mower (a surprise, given it’s Sunday, and a good thing, too; the grass in some places here was approaching knee-high to a twenty foot grasshopper, as someone in my deep, murky past used to say). Afterwards, a light but steady rain that didn’t clear up until dinnertime. But the sun popped out and everything was beautiful and clean-smelling. We will miss it. In fact, when we went into the park office to pay for our last week-and-a-half, the curmudgeons we mentioned in an earlier post were actually pleasant!

A few images I managed to catch while walking around New York City this past weekend.

1. Sculpture of Woman in Time-Warner Building Lobby
2. Doorman outside of Essex Hotel
3. Lion sculpture outside of NY Public Library Main Building
4. Police vehicle.
5. Looking south on Broadway from 59th St.
6. Trump Parc Hotel Marquee
7. Pansy outside of Essex Hotel
8. View upward from sidewalk.
9. Columbus Circle
10. Best intersection in NY!
11. Gothic-style building overlooking Central Park
12. St. Thomas Cathedral icon, 5th Ave.
13. Street scene, 5th Ave
14. Interior, NY Public Library Main Building

…And finally some time and inspiration to bring things up to date. It’s Wednesday afternoon, Jeanie and I are sitting here in our coach enjoying our view of Croton Point Park. Beautiful. Hard to believe this is less than an hour outside of one of the largest urban areas on the face of the planet. A different sort of beauty than what we experienced here in the fall of last year, when the leaves on the trees were every shade of fire you can imagine, from the hottest yellow to the cooler pinks and reds. Unlike the fall, when everything is preparing for a deep sleep, springtime is a coming alive, and we were fortunate to arrive here when the trees were still bare from winter, and, therefore, were able to bear witness to this reawakening. And it’s been wonderful.

Which is not to say we haven’t had a few trials to work through. The view is great now (we can actually see blue stretches of the Hudson River peeking through the trees to the west of our site), but when we first arrived, we were assigned to the other side of the campground surrounded closely by several other rigs belonging to a traveling band of contract electricians and construction workers. A rowdy bunch of guys who like to come home from a hard day’s work to relax with a few beers (several, actually), smoke a few cartons of cigarettes, and watch Coen Brothers movies while barbecuing their dinners. I can, of course, understand, even applaud their love of the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, they seem to prefer watching their film fare from their outside patio areas while their TVs blare from inside the coach through open doors and windows. Cigarette smoke and loud cussing seeped into our own coach. Outside, beer bottles and cans were left strewn around the cramped area. Add to that a general lack of privacy from guys with big bellies and shaved heads wandering around outside…well, you get the picture. Five weeks of this behavior, and it was time to move.

Sadly, the folks who run the park were considerably less than gracious when we first approached them about moving, citing openly how they resented the extra work of taking care of a bunch of freeloading gypsy workers taking advantage of relatively low rent (we pay $180/week for our site) in a county that prides itself on having the highest property-tax rate in the nation. “This is the Motel 6 of Westchester County,” the man said, wearing a smile that looked more like a grimace. “We’ll be so glad when November comes and you people (it seemed to take a lot of effort for him to refer to us as ‘people’) move out and this place becomes [just] a park again!” He then proceeded to do as we asked, and moved us to a different site–conveniently forgetting to mention that the new site didn’t have a sewage hook-up. . And, as the office was closed for the day when we discovered this unfortunate circumstance, we were forced to partially “dry camp” that night until we could come back to be re-re-assigned to yet another camp site

That said, we love it here! It’s quiet, beautifully serene, and the wildlife is abundant and healthy.