Canadas at Play: Postcards from New York

 Malone, New York

August 4-6, 2000: The wedding of our college friend Pete Amstutz and Bridget Fitzpatrick brought us to northern New York, where we experienced the scenic Adirondack Mountains, several beautiful lakes and creeks, and some of the loveliest rolling hills we have seen anywhere.  Near the visitors' center at a community called Paul Smiths, I took Essie on her inaugural "moving experience."  Together we hiked the same woods where a young Theodore Roosevelt explored the wild back in the 1800s.  In fact, signs along the way quoted from his journal.  Like Teddy, we saw several natural wonders, including a chipmunk, aspen and birch trees, a lovely creek, a beaver lodge, and a butterfly that Essie asked to pet.  For me, the highlight of our walk was a breathtaking view: From a spot beside the trail, we could look out over a quiet pool and a clump of trees in the foreground and a mountain peak in the distance.  Essie and I took turns photographing it.

Between visiting Adirondack State Park and attending our friends' wedding, Lisa spent a few hours at a homestead very  significant to her:

When I was 10 years old, my mom and dad gave me the Little House series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I read the books voraciously all through that winter -- the Blizzard of '78.  The third book in the series, Farmer Boy, is about the childhood of Almanzo Wilder (Laura's husband). His parents operated a successful farm about 5 miles outside of Malone in the late 1800s, and the home has been partly restored and partly recreated to match the original. This living museum gave me the chance to drop into Farmer Boy and spend a few hours visualizing the jars and crocks in the family's pantry, fingering the linsy-woolsy that the girls would have woven, and peering under the porch where Almanzo's pig got loose. My search for the wallpaper that Almanzo stained with oven blackening, though, was in vain: the parlor had been repapered years previously.  Although most of the original house has been rebuilt, Laura Ingalls Wilder described the home so accurately, and caretakers have restored and preserved the home so meticulously that I couldn't help but feel transported back in time, to my tenth year, to the Blizzard of '78, and -- best of all -- and into the life of Farmer Boy.

Later, we enjoyed another spectacular view at the wedding ceremony, which took place at the home of Bridget's parents. From the spot where Pete and Bridget said their vows, we could look out over miles of rolling hills, trees, even the thin line of the St. Lawrence River and the plateau on which Montreal, Canada, rests.  After the wedding ceremony, we relaxed and enjoyed the reception.  Lisa and I did most of the relaxing--catching up with college friends, for example--while Essie did most of the enjoying.  She took turns riding in a stroller with a little girl she met, kicked and threw a beach ball we brought along, threw snowballs made from snow that Bridget's family had saved in the freezer from last winter, and generally ran and climbed everywhere she could.  Most of all, though, she danced--and danced and danced and danced.  For a long time, she was content twirling around solo while everyone else talked and ate.  Later, though, after the dancing had officially begun, she was spotted in the arms of a smooth-operating five-year-old who gave me the first disturbing taste of what I  know I will have to experience when she turns 15.

Hyde Park, New York

August 6-7, 2000: On our way south back to North Carolina from a wedding in Malone, New York, we stopped in Hyde Park and I visited the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.  In addition to several items from Roosevelt's childhood, including a rocking horse and his notes on birds, I saw his crutch, cane, leg braces, wheelchair, and White House desk, packed with gifts he had received.  The highlight of the museum was his office, the site of many of his "fireside chats."  Roosevelt designed the room himself.  The next morning, I got up early and went for a hike on the estate grounds, which include his boyhood home, the grave where he and Eleanor are buried, and the Hyde Park Trail.  While his fifth cousin Theodore  was better known as the environmentalist, Franklin Roosevelt also loved nature, especially trees and birds.  I could see why as I hiked the Hyde Park Trail, which meanders through the woods around his boyhood home.  Located only about 100 miles north of New York City, this miniature wilderness looks as wild as anything you might find in upstate New York or even the Appalachian Mountains.  On a misty morning walk on the portions called the Cove Trail and the Forest Trail, I saw rocky hills, piles of boulders, creeks, a deer, even a small waterfall and the Hudson River.  Here, young Franklin fell in love with birds, eventually learning to stuff them.  He also became interested in trees and helped his father collect some that they found in other countries.  Over the course of his life, some 400,000 trees were planted in these woods.
 
 

March 23, 2001

Highlights

FAO Schwarz
Ray's Pizza
Lexington Street
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Updated 4/7/01
© Canada 2001

New York, New York

There's something magical about New York.

Lisa, Essie, and I had just piled into the back seat of a cab in Midtown Manhattan when that thought came to me--like a neatly wrapped package handed to me by a stranger.  A few years ago, I might never have accepted such a suspicious gift.  I'm most at home, after all, with towering trees, creeks, and--if possible--mountains.  In short, I belong in North Carolina.  But I also love to travel, and one of the best weekends Lisa and I ever had was one we spent in New York City about five years ago.  Now, we were there for the second time, and we had a new person along for the ride.

With Essie on my hip, New York was all new again.  The train into the city from New Jersey, the subway rides, the skyscrapers, the dazzling litter of people and cars and shops and stands--everything was new and exciting.  To Essie, it must have all looked like a jigsaw puzzle in disarray.  We arrived in the late morning, and the first thing she wanted to do was visit a playground.  In fact, we had exactly that in mind--but not the kind of playground she had ever seen.  After a stop at a bakery on 79th street, we walked a few blocks and stopped at FAO Schwarz, the world's most famous toy store.  Standing in the entrance, gazing up at a giant tower of toys, surrounded by hundreds of stuffed animals, Essie thought she was in an amusement park.  We spent at least an hour, maybe two, playing with stuffed Barneys and Madelines, pushing around wooden train cars, and helping one or another stuffed quadraped find its "mudder."  The entire time, Essie showed a wondrous innocence that I hope never to forget.  Rather than shop, she was perfectly content merely to play.  It was as if it never occurred to her that she could buy these things.  From the menagerie of furry rhinos and tigers to the world of Paddington Bear to the land of wooden blocks and puzzles, she would play for a while and then, when I said it was time to move on, come along with rarely a complaint.  She even observed, at least at first, my ground rules: she had to ask permission before taking toys off their shelves.   Never prouder, we decided to break down and buy her one of the toys: a wooden farm puzzle.  She was ecstatic and talked for the rest of the day about playing with it. 

We were blessed on this trip with having a guide along with us: our friend Brian Carpenter, who had attended graduate school with me at the University of North Carolina.  Brian had moved to New Jersey less than a year ago with his new wife, Michelle Miller, and knew his way around the city.  He helped us to find a restaurant where we could sample our first New York pizza. Ray's Pizza is just what one would want from a New York pizza parlor: a narrow, cramped space lined with pizza pies: pepperoni, cheese, even one with pasta shells on top.

A taxi took us to Uptown, where the four of us split up for some grownup sightseeing.  Lisa headed for the shops on Lexington Street, where she reveled in gourmet shops and more.  Meanwhile, Brian, Essie, and I went for a stroll through a lovely neighborhood, past Central park, and to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Although I knew its reputation and had visited similar museums in Philadelphia and Washington, I was not ready for the Met.  An hour and a half, which was all we could afford to spend, was just enough to stroll through the crowded Vermeer exhibition, to drop in on some of my favorite artists--El Greco and the nineteenth-century Americans--to take in some of the museum's spectacular courtyard, to see the Egyptian temple, and to catch glimpses of other treasures.  Essie was inspired, as well.  Before she fell asleep in her stroller, she asked--and was denied--permission to climb on a Rodin.

All of this was behind us when we sat in that cab and rode like royalty through Times Square at the end of a marvelous day.  We weren't New Yorkers--Essie asked more than once where the cows were--but we were in New York, and it was magical.