Shoreline Saunter, West

DAY 1:

A car alarm went off at 9:27.  I opened my eyes halfway, then closed them again, remembering that it was Saturday.  My head was throbbing with the intensity of 4 bottles of white wine, although it had only been one.  I'd had plans to start this day early, fresh, with a clear head and determined feet.  I sat up, looked down at my bare feet, and saw the two matching blisters that had formed from wearing heels yesterday.  I never wear heels!  What was I thinking, wearing foot-ruining fake fanciness the day before I planned to walk the perimeter of Manhattan?  After thorough consideration of the irony of the notion of beginning a day which would inevitably end with blistered feet, with blistered feet, I laughed aloud and went to the bathroom to throw up.  After chugging water throughout an entire episode of Sex and the City, I stretched.  After eating oatmeal and a banana, I loaded my camera with new batteries, only to find it still malfunctioning.  Settling with the fact that all of my photos would have to be taken with my phone, I tossed it into my bag, strapped on my New Balances, and hopped on the 4 train to Bowling Green.  

Following suit of others who have taken this journey, I began at the southern tip. In Battery Park, the nose-picking tourists waited in long lines to travel over-charted waters to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, smiley Marines passing out American flags, and overstuffed seagulls flew around with the smell of roasting nuts.  I began to count languages, but after 23 I stopped keeping track.

In Wagner Park (of Battery Park City), I found sunbathers, hydrangeas and enormous willows, slow pace and slow peace: a pretend reality.  Nelson A. Rockefeller Park housed pool tables, swings, loud-fighting basketballers, shuffleboard, a much welcomed bubbler, and a kid who almost whapped me with a baseball bat.

 

At the World Trade Center site, I gave two foreigners directions to the crosswalk.  "The World Trade Center had this fascinating opacity: two steel-gray slabs stopping thought." -Phillip Lopate.  Their absence stops thought too.

Hudson River Park is so huge that it must be broken into Piers. [Pier 40] Chewing a PB & J, I listened to two men wax poetic about Venezuela, slapped "free kayaking" onto the to-do list, and witnessed a man meditating with an extremely hairy back. [Pier 45] A man swiftly roller-bladed past playing Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads from a boom box on his shoulder, and a long marble wall boasted: "I can sail without wind, row without oars, but I cannot part with a friend without tears."  [Chelsea Piers] A driving range with an actual clubhouse, a golfer looking directly at my chest for more than long enough, and a condom wrapper stuffed into a chain-link fence.  Note: this is where the humming started. Over the Top of Manhattan Helicopter Tours, at only $272 per person--the name speaks for my feelings about it. [Pier 81] New York City Ducks (I thought those only existed in The Dells!) playing old show tunes, I watched as the riders boredly licked their Popsicles and staring westward, probably toward home.  [Pier 86] At The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, I purchased a Cherry Garcia Ice Cream bar, which dripped down my leg because I was busy staring at my NFT. [Pier 96] Norah Jones on a bike (maybe!), more willows, a birthday party, an enormous bottle, possibly for messages... 

DAY 2:

I opened my eyes yet again, at 9:27, which I took to be a good sign.  I had given myself a day to recover, stretch out my shins and the arches of my feet, and drink copious amounts of orange tea and water.  I would close the gaps of the West Side of Manhattan, today.  Figuring I wouldn't want to be dipping my toes into the Harlem River and snapping photos of the Bronx across it at the end of the day, I decided to take the A train all the way up to the start, thus coming down the West Side along the Hudson and closing this notebook where I'd stopped the other day.  I ate two packets of oatmeal and a banana and listened to a Savage Love podcast, grabbed a coffee and hopped onto the train, feeling exponentially better than I had on my way to Battery Park.  Delighted that the A goes express between 59th and 125th, I dazed out in an upward motion until my stop at 207th street, the last stop and northernmost in Manhattan.  

Under the Broadway Bridge, large tour boats disturbed the peaceful, brown Harlem River, and a Target was the only interruption in the otherwise project-ridden landscape.  I stopped for a bathroom break at the Dunkin Donuts, where the light turned out on me mid-stream.  My mood erased it immediately.

In Inwood Hill Park, the best analogy I can make to the tippy top of Manhattan in this Eden-esque park is to [for those who are familiar] the Camin's property.  I wanted to bottle the air so I could huff it while crossing Houston Street every morning on the way to work.  I counted 6 different baseball games - the ting of baseball hitting bat was about as regular as the cry of a gull.  A haven that is watched over by the blue-gray grandfatherly Henry Hudson Bridge.

As the trees opened up into river and air, I realized that I was at the bottom of Inwood Hill Park.  A chain link fence opened up into a straight, narrow gravel path which was flanked by two not-so-friendly looking chaps, but I was determined to stay on the shoreline, so I ducked between them.  Along the path, within gravel, shore, dirt, and oak, a group of Jamaican men quietly puffed joints and played poker.  My favorite noise (gravel under tennis shoe) crunched beneath me for nearly a half-mile when a biker passed and shouted "It's a dead end with naked men, you know - I'd turn around if I were you!"  I thanked him and did a 180, imagining that these likely weren't the types of naked men I'd be alright with gazing at.

Then, in The Cloisters, in the very place where I had last seen them, walked Kelly and Mark, on their way to lunch.  It's been a while since Serendipity's webs have surprised me, and I was happy to seem them and offer them a sweaty hug.  They'll be married in 3 weeks, where Pat, dad and I plan to join them in getting down on a dance floor overlooking the Manhattan skyline.

At Riverside Park, the Little Red Lighthouse pointed skyward at the ugly underbelly of the George Washington Bridge, which reminded me of the inside of the whale in Pinocchio.  I noted 3 men swimming and smiled at the thought that, maybe Kramer wasn't that crazy after all!  Then I watched a group of Latin American men playing volleyball and calling each other ese.  All at once I was surrounded by the smell of jet ski exhaust mingling with sweet, burning charcoal, and I realized that although I wasn't with my family this Labor Day, I was with 700 Latin American families and that was okay.  Feeling like a minority brought me back to my travelling days, and those memories alone took up my thoughts for at least the next mile.  My reverie was interrupted only when a man selling pineapple in a bag asked me if I was Russian.

At the 91st Street Garden, where Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks finally meet at the end of "You've Got Mail," I saw the baby blue Columbia Cross Country team stretching.  At this point, my brain melted, I removed my jaw from the cement, and I don't remember what happened in the next 10 blocks.

I will always remember, though, the sensation I got when I saw the Pier I Cafe, where I had ended my first leg.  I'd made it.  Happiness flooded my every molecule.  And now, as I sit on the floor of the 72nd Street C station, (yes, the floor - that's how much my dogs are barking), I can breathe in, tuck my sweaty hair behind my ears, and listen for the train that will take me home. 

 

** For the entirety of photos taken on this trek, please visit http://picasaweb.google.com/lcmattingly/ShorelineSaunterWEST#

Next up in a few weeks: EAST.