Happy Memorial Day

Raised flag, in the Hudson Valley.

A Walk in the Park: Kennedy Dells

Mushroom Tree

One of the nicer aspects of any homecoming is revisiting those areas we have fond memories of. 

I discovered Kennedy Dells Park years after I moved away out of sheer necessity. My very large and energetic Malamute anxiously needed lots of space for his urgent morning walk, and like any harried parent, I rushed to the computer for an online search of just such nearby places in Rockland County.

Out of the woods

Growing up in New City, I mostly hiked the Harriman State Park system because of its' close proximity and enormous intersection of trails; infamous, historic ones at that, like The Appalachian Trail and The Long Path, overlooking nearer spots, or maybe this park just wasn't around at the time. Whatever the case, I come back to this place time and again throughout the seasons, and I'm always struck by the beauty of New York's wooded paths, with its' variety of nature so close at hand.

Field of green

Path through the thicket

I honestly had my heart set on hiking High Tor State Park yesterday, but it was closed. More on that trip later in the summer. In the meantime, here's some of the wild lush beauty I saw on Memorial Day, so alive and teeming with growth, that the very vines seemed to grow before me, like magical apparitions out of a child's fable.

Nothing but blue sky and fields to roam

The happy hiker

It was the perfect Spring day: warm and sunny but not hot, cool in the shade without a chill, and a bright, crisp, cloudless blue sky overhead. Add in the burger and fries I had, followed by a hot fudge Sunday, and you've got one healthy slice of the American pie. That’s the kind of day it was.

Treeline and sky

Small Town America: Nyack Memorial Park

Nyack Memorial Park, Memorial Day Weekend 2013

Hello, Readers! This weekend may have begun cool and rainy, but it ends with something grand: the remembrance of heroes past. I started practicing Tai Chi Chuan again, here in this beautiful park (weather permitting) and at the end of class, our venerable Lao Shi (Teacher), told us that it is a law for Americans to take a moment of silence today at 3:00 pm for our vets. 

Of course, no one will come to your house and arrest you if you don't, representing another brilliant, beautiful part of our shared American experience: freedom. Oftentimes, I make work about the inequities and flaws within our system, but it is always done with the greatest of love. 

I believe that our society and government represent the ultimate experiment ever endeavored in the history of the human race: the quest for a true equality. That's certainly something worth fighting for, don't you think? All of us living together in relative harmony, here on Earth. It's a lovely thought, and a worthy ideal. Peace! Osu!

Small Town America: Memorial Day

We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields. 

 

excerpt from We Shall Keep the Faith, Moina Michael, November 1918