I took a half hour walk on the Mohawk Hudson Hike-Bike Trail. The few times I've taken walks during the pandemic, it's always been disappointing. Watervliet is safe, relatively inexpensive, and as scenic as the back of a strip mall. So I thought the trail would be a nice change. Nature. Fresh air. All that silly hippy shit.
The trail is far from idyllic, at least not where I entered in Watervliet. The traffic of 787 screams by on one side. And whatever sounds the Hudson makes on the other, you can't hear it. There are overpasses and helicopters and asphalt.
I committed myself to a half hour walk. The plan was to walk 15 minutes down the trail, and then turn around to head back to the car.
I'm not sure when I started crying.
Really, it started as soon as I got to the parking lot. The trees block any clear view of the river while you're on the trail--at least the small part of the trail I walked. But you can see the Hudson from the parking lot and it was gorgeous in the sunlight. I was overcome with this stupid sense of wonder, as if I hadn't known this living wet thing hugged every corner of my hometown since I was a child. It was as if a voice was telling me, "this is here, this has always been here. You just haven't shown up."
On the trail I said hello to people who walked or biked from the opposite direction. I didn't feel anger toward any of them. Under the extra weight I lose and regain and lose and regain, my ankles hurt and my back hurt and my knee hurt.
And at some point I started crying into the sweaty back of one hand, still walking, wiping my eyes and looking down when any new hikers or bikers showed up. Everything hurt, but I didn't cry from pain. It was pleasantly warm and the air was hot and sweet.
I thought of the dark rooms that have been my home for the past year, and how at some point I truly believed I would never be able to feel the sun like I did on the trail or breathe the air like I did on the trail. I thought about that early August day in 2016, five days or so after they carved the cancer out of me. When my girlfriend at the time drove us out of the hospital parking garage, we passed under the bridge from the garage to the main hospital, and I said "I never thought I would see any of this again."
I thought about walking. Just walking. How many times I felt better just walking. How many times in high school, friendless and with nothing else to do, I walked for 6 hours at a time in Albany, my pockets fat with tapes for my walkman (because yes, that's how long ago it was). I thought about how far the Hobbits walked, and the books that made me want to be a writer. I thought about my mom in her hospital room saying that on the picture on the wall in front of her--of a road leading off into the distance through a forest--she had seen a man at the end of the road and that she knew he was waiting for her.
I thought "This is here." This sun, the water, the sweet grass and the birdsong. It's here, all here, and it has been here. I have been hiding in my apartment and this has been here. As the walking kept making every part of me hurt, it occurred to me I could keep coming back to this place and that someday soon, I might finally feel like myself again. And every now and then on the trail I cried a little more.
I saw things that were things I had seen before. I saw a boy feeding grateful ducklings, bobbing in the little waves like Titanic survivors waiting for rescue. I saw a bird as red as new candy. On the way back, through the trees, I saw a still finger of water reaching inland from the river flanked by handsome, almost flat rocks. It was nothing I hadn't seen before, but this time I cared.
Fifteen minutes was up when I reached the Menands Bridge. There were trolls beneath it, or Mad-Max-ish raiders in spiked football gear like in the post-apocalyptic video games I've spent so much time with this year. I turned around and headed back. Lighter.
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