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scare reasonable people
Friday, July 14 2006
Again I took the dogs to the Esopus north of Wynkoop for their morning walk. We waded downstream to the second set of rapids below the iron Wynkoop bridge and there I was able to ford to the other bank. The level of the creek isn't all that high, but current seems much stronger than usual and wading in water only as deep as your knees can result in enough lateral force to throw you over, particularly if you don't position one of your legs in the downstream turbulence of the other. The dogs, being smaller, had a greater fraction of their bodies submerged as they waded across, though they definitely had a frictional advantage in being able to seek purchase with four independent paws (complete with claws) on the slippery stones. Sally managed to wade across with me, but Eleanor, having shorter legs, was forced to swim across in two separate wildly-bowed paths.
We found ourselves near a corn field, just to the south of the suburban floodplain development along Brinks Lane. Directly adjacent to the creek was a makeshift artificial levee of building rubble (mostly broken concrete and asphalt), evidently created in an effort to keep the creek from inundating the fields when it floods. What was ironic about this was that there had once been a natural levee in this same place, comprised mostly of quarter-sized pebbles, but it had been extensively mined, leaving a wide gap for the creek to pass through completely unhindered.
While we were there on the west bank of the Esopus, I heard my first Dog Day Cicada of the year.
Gretchen returned from her month-long Adirondack retreat at Blue Mountain Center this afternoon. The sudden end of the experience was causing her unusual sadness. Her little "community" of like-minded creative thinkers would never exist again, and now she had to resume her familiar old life of endless teevee-and-email-enable procrastination. Still, there are plenty of positives to our particular locale. We drove to the Secret Spot on the Esopus and spent over an hour there all by ourselves, completely naked, mostly in the water. I gathered some interesting pebbles on the far shore and the current was so strong I was barely able to wade back across with them in my hands.
One of the many benefits of Gretchen's return is that my diet once again includes loving-prepared foods. We tried eating our cold pasta out on the South Deck but the mosquitos drove us to the East Deck instead. Gretchen is determined to watch less teevee since returning from Blue Mountain, and this accounted for why we didn't eat our food in our usual de facto dining room, upstairs in front of the teevee.
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