#4. The Adirondacks

I felt a minor key descending. I missed her like going through a breakup. There’s always that double edged sword, guardian angel or not. Shadows swaying ephemeral like smoke; puppets pulled and jerked by chronic loneliness and fear of open hearted love that might unleash the fearful flood. These currents run deep and you need a cosmic dowsing stick to find them before they take you over the edge. 

Summer was fading fast and the last days had been splendid.  Walking on a path by a blue lake that went to the horizon, through scrubby forests with sinew roots that gnarled and curled and squirmed under foot and you could hear a woodpecker. On a cobblestone cemetery path, deep shadows and oak trees, sidewalks and late summer sunflowers and milkweed for Monarch butterflies in front yards and in the sidewalk cracks. 

Near the end we found a boutique pizza place on a shaded street. You could see the fire wood burning in the pizza oven and a young man with a large wooden spatula watching.

Once when she was away a few days on another mercy errand I walked further than usual. I found myself lost with no direction home. It was hot and dry leave scuttled on the sidewalk and the streets were quiet and I felt queasy unease rising in my guts. I imagined falling or fainting on this sidewalk in Rochester with a urine bag strapped to my leg and no guardian angel close by. Sometimes we feel alone in this world full of people.

I wandered aimlessly because if you’ve ever walked trying to follow your mobile phone you’ll know exactly what I mean. Of course I could have called a cab but cabs these days don’t always answer. You’re supposed to message Uber. And I wasn’t ready to call the police. I breathed and paced myself and pretended to be a tourist. 

We are like shadows together, moving around one another. Sitting quietly at night watching a “romcom” her daughter called them. Romantic comedies. Nothing violent she said breaking out the Graham Crackers and decaffeinated herbal tea . We sat there watching. She didn’t like accompanying commentary so I kept my comments to myself. 

When we drove she sat quiet and steady behind the wheel. No music now.  Didn’t talk much like we’d reached the bottom of the barrel. The road stretched out ahead like a cliche. We sit there quiet as the world slides by. There was something sad about it. I wasn’t sure what it was or why. 

I remembered years earlier when she’d invited me to Florida. She’d  inherited a cattle property in the north-west of the state about thirty miles in from the Gulf coast. It was open country with stands of tall shade trees and some scrub along the edges. The suburbs generated by Florida’s popularity were still far away though it was inevitable encroachment day would come. She leased the property to a cowboy who ran cattle and you could see them grazing in the fields on the drive in. It was near the end of winter, ice and snow still on the ground back north but  in Florida the air smelt of dry grass and dust and it was hot. She said: “Look for me, I’ll be standing at the gate”.

The truth was I had little money in those years or since for that matter. She knew that. Don’t worry she said. Just get yourself down to Florida and I’ll take care of the rest. And she did. And that was the pattern thereafter. Money was never a concern between us.

I drive south to Florida from Roanoke Virginia through an appalling rainstorm that nearly washes me off I 95, eighteen wheelers roaring past inches from my side mirror, a deluge like a passing battle ship, for a moment driving underwater hoping to see light on the other side. I pull off the road, flashers flashing and window wipers whacking and wait till the squall passes and later find a cheap motel for the night. 

The next day  around noon I reached a wide crossroad near a place called Bronson and followed her directions to a smaller road with barbed wire fenced fields and dry yellow grass on both sides and copses of shade trees. I saw her leaning back against the open cattle gate in blue jeans and long brown riding boots. She was relaxed and suddenly more southern, slower and her face free of northern pallor now tanned and crinkled around her blue eyes in a kind smile as I pulled up in my rented auto. 

I stayed a week and she showed me round. Coconut trees and pandanus, water snakes, swamps, alligators  and manatees and one afternoon we drove to Cedar Key and ate oysters looking at the pelicans. The bar was open on the seaward side looking west over the Gulf and New Orleans across the horizon beyond Big Bend. 

“Look at this”, she said as we drove into Micanopy the oldest town in central Florida - the town that time forgot - this wide dusty street, stone and brick and wide glass windows, a mix of Florida drab, Clark Gable, rusted corrugated iron roofs and weathered wood with Spanish iron work and Spanish moss dripping off the live oaks. We sat with an iced coffee on a wide verandah. Another couple sat nearby in the shade and invited conversation in which we were ranchers down from New York for a week or two. It must have been the shinny riding boots. She looked really good. She looked swell. I left most of the conversation to her and tried to look appropriate. We laughed a lot about it later and for years afterwards.

We knew we were not ranchers, or lovers. We were laughers. We laughed together. From our guts. But I think what cemented our romantic unromantic laughing relationship was an unintentionally romanic dinner in Rochester at a small Italian Restaurant called Roccos.

It was December and snow was on the ground and Christmas lights and tail lights reflected in the steamed up windows.  We squeezed past the patrons sitting at the small bar as the waiter showed us a table for two. I just remember the food was delicious and outside it was snowing lightly and the candle burned down and a wisp of white smoke curled up and the wine was good and the short expresso at the end of the meal. When we got home that night we did what we always did. We hugged, said goodnight and went to bed. But we knew there’d been quicksilver in the air.

A few years later she asked if if I’d ever been to the Adirondacks. No, I said. I’d only heard about them. Rugged, foreboding peaks in northern New York that crossed up into Canada. It was one of her haunts. She knew the back roads and had camped alone at Forked Lake and hiked some of the rocky trails.  As a summer turned to another Fall she invited me and though I’d not been well, I agreed.

She booked a motel at Long Lake centrally located,  fourteen miles of water and sharp peaks in the northern distance. Slender varnished canoes, sail boats and fishing smacks, kayaks, summer homes, Adirondack chairs  and private rickety jetties tucked in along the edges. The motel looked comfortable and we unpacked. That night she said let’s go to the old Adirondack Hotel for dinner. It’s a classic, shingled, verandas, three stories, dormer windows, steep gable,  down by the lake.  And it’s haunted she said. It’s been around since the 1850’s.

Once she’d stayed at the Adirondack Hotel with her daughter and they’d both felt the presence. They snuggled together under the blankets that night and even then in the cold dark felt it. The old hotel had the whiff of Stephen King about it. It was the end of the season and most tourists had left and locals gathered at the bar. I ordered a local beer before we went to the dining room for dinner. There were historical photographs and paintings on the wall. 

When President McKinley was shot in Buffalo. The news reached Vice President Teddy Rooservelt traveling in the northern Adirondacks where he’d just climbed Mount Macy, the highest peak in New York. The weather was bad. He set out on a thirty- five mile ride around midnight on a horse drawn wagon to North Creek train station and thence to Buffalo. President McKinley died and Teddy Rooservelt became president. It was 1901 the year my father was born. 

I don’t remember how long ago it was that I started deteriorating. Years. So I hardly noticed. But by the time the Adirondacks rolled around I was suffering frequent nausea and loss of appetite. More than I cared to admit. I told myself marijuana  might subdue the nausea and I think it did. It was home grown in my own garden. I wrapped up some new clean green bud and stuffed it in my toiletry bag. When we walked back to the motel that night after dinner I smelt the skunk.

I’ll admit it. I felt like a drug addict and in a way I was because the marijuana subdued the chronic nausea and so I’d slip off somewhere and take a delicious deep draw and feel the magic happen and the forest shone more green and the shadows reveled more mysteries and for a while the nausea would subside. 

We drove the winding Adirondack roads up to Lake Placid. The geography was spectacular, the traffic not so much. The gleaming white hotels and condos on the hill overlooking the lake, the yachts and jewelry shops and restaurants. She ordered a charbroiled bison burger with blue cheese and salad. I could’t eat. I looked out across Mirror lake and tried to look cool in my sunglasses. But I didn’t feel good. 

That evening back at the Long Lake Motel she took a long walk while I scrummaged through my bag for my medicine. The room overlooked a backwater and you could see the Adirondack Hotel on the other side through the trees.  I rolled a joint and went to the screened-in open air porch. I made sure to close the sliding glass door behind me, lit up and blew a long stream of blue smoke through the mosquitos netting.

As I turned to re-enter the room that evening I forget I’d closed the heavy glass door and walked into it  - hard - nose first. BANG! That woke me up. Jesus. What happened. I walked into the door. Explain that. At that moment I felt no nausea only mounting panic as I moved in slow motion holding my face,  toward the bathroom and the mirror. By now the sweet fragrance of marijuana infused the room and made its way through the window overlooking the motel access path. And she knocked on the door. “Jesus fucking Christ”, she exclaimed when the door opened and the big reveal happened. She was an angel but had the mouth of a sailor sometimes. 

It was two years later I finally went to a doctor and learned I had kidney disease. I’d been traveling at half throttle all that time. Two years later I wrote about it to try to understand it. I hadn’t written much for years but here I am with Hancock’s Writer’s Group once again tracing the outlines of my life and listening to the expositions of others. I feel grateful for the therapy and for this talking cure that helps me understand some of this past summer. And I wondered when and in what form my guardian angel might manifest again.