Circumnavigating Wallace Pond

Yesterday

Somewhere around 3:00pm I couldn’t stay inside any longer.  Cold as it was I had to be outside.  Bundled up, dog excited by the prospect of a mid-day walk, we trucked down the driveway and stopped at the bottom to decide which way to go.  We decided on an adventure.  Over the top of the road-side ice bank and onto some virgin snow under Mr. Turner’s pines we stepped out onto the ice and began a 360 degree walk around Wallace Pond.

Despite the cold this was a fair weather adventure.  The sun was strong and the wind was light.  I had no idea how long it would take to walk all the way around the lake.  I had never done it before. 

Even though the weather had been so cold for so long, and I was reasonably certain that the ice was very, very thick, we proceeded with caution.  Some of the stuff at the very edge looked watery.  I kept to a path about ten or twelve feet from the edge just to be sure. 

There were two types of ice I had to walk on.  Clear to milky looking stuff that was extremely slick and stuff covered with a little bit (1/4” to a few inches) of frost or snow.  The former was extremely hard to stay up on as it gave me no traction at all.  To walk on this polished ice I had to assume a crouched stance (for balance) and slide almost as if I were skating.  Many times my feet almost flew out from under me but I never fell.  My walking stick was little help on the slick stuff.  On the snow-covered ice I walked comfortably, upright and with confidence.  Consequently I plotted my path along the shadows where there was more crunchy snow and as few patches of the slick stuff as possible.  The alternating pattern of my progress was Walk, Walk, Walk, Walk, Slide, Slide, Walk, Walk, Walk, Slide, Walk, Slide…etc. 

Gurler plotted her own path more or less parallel to my own, but mostly on the snow to the ‘landward’ side of the shoreline.  I had to keep one eye on her as she gave no thought to coming close to the patches of ice that seemed thin and watery.  I came close to one of those watery areas to inspect it and was surprised to see how thick it actually was.  It was strong enough to hold me easily but had no entrained air so it was perfectly clear.  I could see down to the bottom a foot beneath the surface.  Still cautious, I worried less about the dog’s curious path and paid attention to my own efforts to stay upright.

While I was on the slick ice, fighting to stay on my feet, I couldn’t enjoy the view, but when I was comfortably moving on the snowy surface I could relax and take it all in.  I was walking where I had never walked before.  Perhaps the winter would end and I would never have the privilege of this perspective again (at least without a boat).  It was beautiful in an agoraphobic sort of way.  On a floating, thirty acre raft of ice.  Tethered to nothing.  A flat, cold vista that nature rarely shares with humans unless they loose themselves from their books and T.V. and get in a boat or, like Gurler and I, decide to scuttle out there on foot.  Also, on the relative stability of the snowy surface it crossed my mind that I wished I’d brought my camera.  I killed the thought at birth and put myself back in the moment knowing I could easily enjoy the experience without my electronic geegaws.  (I would placate the impulse later with my cell phone camera-does that count?)

When I had turned the corner at the southeast corner of the pond (about half way around) I discovered the character of the ice had changed.  It was considerably thinner and I redoubled my watch for my own safety and for the dog’s.  She was in heaven smelling the smells of people’s backyards especially the ones who owned dogs.  She was in their runs.  She was sniffing their private smells.  Once or twice she even trapped herself in the fenced in confines of the yard and had to figure out how to get out.  I was proud of her in one case where she looked at me for direction and followed my hand signals to escape. 

The last and crowning moments of the trip as we got back to our side of the lake was the landing of a flock of Canadian geese onto the ice.  They circled a couple of times to see what we were up to.  They swooped down to get a closer look and seeing the dog they pulled up abruptly and stayed up in the air.  By some unseen/unheard signal they all landed twenty or thirty yards away in the middle of the pond and then ignored us completely.  Gurler, not so fond of the slick ice, ignored the birds as well.  I stopped and watched them for a while.  When I turned and looked for Gurler she was looking at me, waiting to climb the bank to get home.  It had taken us only an hour and five minutes to circumnavigate Wallace Pond.   

Chest Pains.
Clears up a lot of misconceptions...Fast!
Sit up and take notice of the time that is left.  Don't know how long it will take to make the concept stick but I will keep on until I get the point.  Here it goes.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Rode home from Phyllis/Stuart’s in a tremendous rain storm.  From my seat I could see long bolts of lightning out in the East over the Shawangunks.  The vista from some of the hill tops on route 17 was enough to crank me several notches on the Caution meter. Then I hit the rain and the Caution meter broke off as it cranked all the way at the end of the scale and snapped.  I had hit some showers just  as I passed out of Wurtsboro but they were nothing.  When I got to Blooming Grove and turned onto 17 the temperature dropped and it got darker, grayer. 

Right after the on ramp the downpour started but I thought it was hail.  The sound it made when it hit my face shield was like pennies hitting a storefront window.  A .22 caliber sound muffled by the padding in the helmet.  It was cold too.  It began to soak through on my boots and the deerskin gloves.  They became nothing more than sponges.  The rest of me was dry-ish.  I figured I would be soaked through if the intensity of the rain continued. 

Surprisingly the traffic slowed significantly.  Usually people in cars and trucks have a false sense of invulnerability when they hit a heavy rain.  I felt stable despite the rain and comfortable at fifty, maybe fifty-five.  But traffic slowed to forty-five and I felt boxed in with the “wakes and wind” of tons of automobile all around me.  Not to mention a tractor-trailer or two in the mix.  I can handle the road and the weather but I was straining a bit trying to predict what all those autos might do in the blinding downpour.  My mind was processing a thousand bits of information a second.  My eyes scanning the wheels and the lights of the cars and the water on the road and the buckets of water coming down.  Truthfully, riding the motorcycle is not something I was thinking about.  That was happening automatically.  All systems were  in survive mode.  If I don’t know how to ride by now, I thought to myself, I won’t be learning here.

Exit 130 off of route 17 was like a river.  If anything the rain was getting harder.  On the north bound side there was a line of cars pulled off the road with their lights blurry through the rain and haze on my helmet shield, they looked like a string of pearls on a gray velour display.  I was in the ramp up the Long Mountain Parkway-in the left lane wanting to go about fifty.  The cars were remarkably all on my right and I pulled past and into the front of the line.  No trucks in front of me with their accompanying, buffeting wind.  No super slow economy car full of grandparents and kids doing thirty.  Nothing but road and a few miles of very wet, but none-the-less, magnificent scenery.  I was very lucky.  I only looked back in my rear view mirrors once and I saw the line of cars and trucks half a mile behind me- I never looked back.  Didn’t use the brakes once until I hit the traffic circle at exit 18.  Same on the “Goat Path” below the Bear Mountain Bridge.  Just lucky. 

When I got home I was high.  I had taken on less water than I had thought.  The rain suit worked.  I pulled the over clothes off and hung them to dry.   There was a dry towel on the work bench.  I dried off the instrument cluster on my bike and the face shield on the black helmet.  Then I dried my hair.