Environmental Autobiography

I live two blocks from Prospect Park, which Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created in the 1860s to serve a rapidly growing urban population. Even though they designed New York's Central Park and Boston's "Emerald Necklace," Prospect Park is often considered their masterpiece (http://www.prospectpark.org/hist/).  I spend a great deal of time there, and I must have walked nearly every trail as well as starting several of my own.

Impressions:  Biking aroound the park. The bike lane and jogging lane are always busy, a steady stream of exercising humans all moving in the same direction. In this case, the Other is the one who bikes or rides clockwise. Horseback riders on our left, then past the pond with the ducks and swans and people tossing pieces of bread.

                                    

Third Street playground--Modern jungle gyms form the periphery. A sandbox, swings, a water fountain, pigeons, spiral-footed plastic rides. Parents or babysitters or nannies or grandparents with strollers. A racial and ethnic mix.

 

The Long Meadow is packed on weekends and summer days. Frisbee throwers, volleyball or baseball players, dogs, babies, picnics, birthday parties, sunbathing. Couples lying on blankets or strolling hand-in-hand.

                                   

Sledding--Several good hills, but the best for sledding is located near the Pincis House. On Snow Days dozens of people use that hill. Sleek sleds with shiny runners, toboggans,  plastic sheets, round boards. The long walk up the hill. The shrieks of joy. Adults running over kids, making them cry. Angry looks from parents.

 

Carousel--Of the 6,000 carousels constructed in the United States during the golden age of carnivals in the early part of the 20th century, only 200 remain intact. The Prospect Park Carousel is one of them. (http://www.prospectpark.org/hist/main.cfm?target=../dest/caro_hist) I've taken both of my children there, often walking across the park to reach it. Happy memories here. Zack and Lila have outgrown carousels now.

 

Bandshell--I make sure to go to as many concerts, performances and special events as I can as part of the Celebrate Brooklyn festival every summer. Already this summer I've seen Laurie Anderson and Natalie MacMaster. Other summers I caught The Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Fritz Lang's Metroplis on a huge screen with Pere Ubu playing live film music, The African Music Festival, Yo La Tengo and Burning Spear.

 

Days after my relationship with the first woman I ever lived with ended, I went camping with my college friend and his wife at Acadia State Park in Bar Harbor,  Mount Desert Island, Maine. It was the only time in my life I've been there, and I remember it as a healing place. I've camped many times since then, but never there.

In 1916, Sieur de Monts National Monument was created with 6,000 acres of land donated by individual landowners. In 1919, it became Lafayette National Park, the first national park east of the Mississippi River. In 1929, the name was changed to Acadia National Park. Today, Acadia preserves about 40,000 acres of Atlantic coast shoreline, mixed hardwood and spruce/fir forest, mountains, and lakes, as well as several offshore islands. (Info taken from the National Park Service)
 
Under the canopy of trees, insects incessantly circled and bit, or else hovered, usually  to their deaths, too close to  lantern lights or campfires.  Dave was a great cook, and he fed me well that week. I must have been a terrible companion as I often broke down in tears, lamenting the loss of someone who now, 25  years on, I remember with some fondness, but no regret.

Always an insomniac, my sleeplessness was particularly bad that week, my nightmares flooded with images of her deception. One night, after hours of fighting sleep demons in my tent, I decided to walk to the shoreline to await the sunrise.

I sat on a large rock, my feet dangling in the cold stony water, gazing at the constellations. (To this day, I do most of my stargazing when I camp; New York is no place for stars.) Here, on the east coast of the easternmost state in the country, I watched the sunrise, while crabs scuttled among the rocks or through the sand, terns flew and sanpipers danced. I'll get through this, I told myself.  This, too, shall pass.

When I was 10 years old, my father accepted a job for the New York State Court of Claims, so we moved from Brooklyn to Albany.  However, my parents' social life continued to be based completely at Brighton Beach Baths (see previous post).  Consequently, we drove three and a half hours each way every weekend every month except January until I went away to college.

Countless hours spent confined with a car with two brothers in the back seat and a troubled marriage in the front, on the New York State Thruway. That major highway was the sinuous cord that connected, at least hypothetically, both halves of our lives. In retrospect it seems inconceivable that parents would unthinkingly subject their children to endless hours of yelling, hitting, crying, and waiting.

The view along the thruway is not particularly scenic. Countless trees, exploded hills, small towns, service areas, roadkill. Hawks circled above us, looking for prey.  We'd see occasional deer springing gracefully in the woods beside the road.  Toll booths, reflectors, lonely exits.

Instead of an exciting double life, those years were schizophrenic, divided, incomplete, glimpsed. Weekdays and school in one city, weekends and summer in another, hours and lifestyles away. Fractured relationships like the broken lines along the Thruway. Yearnings for continuity shattered like all the deer that lay broken and dead along the shoulders of the road.

I still know the names of all the service areas and exits. I remember places, always associated with pain. The one weekend in 10 years that my father had to turn the car around because of my mother's asthma, so resentful. Years later I allowed the truths to enter my consciousness. The Brooklyn life was his alone, filled with sports, alcohol and furtive affairs.

And I remember the automobiles, of course. The '63 Rambler, the '69 Buick, the green station wagon. The interiors of these cars were a living landscape of captivity and longing.

    My youth was inextricably tied to the environment of beach and ocean. I spent every weekend and all summer at Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. My world consisted of sand, shells, waves, breeze and sea life. Hot sand under my feet, coolness under the boardwalk. In fact, "under the boardwalk" took on an almost mystical allure. It was a relatively private spot, shadowed, separate, unseen As a teenager, I hid there to smoke. And I would look under the boardwalk for treasures dropped by the thousands of walkers.

    My grandmother had a daily routine involving canasta games at the beach club, Brighton Beach Baths, then a slow, paced swim between. Bay 2 and Bay 3, then steamroom and shower. In fact, one of my early memories is of my grandmother taking me with her into the women's locker area and women's showers. Everyone was wrinkled and tan. Many spoke Yiddish.

 
  Brighton Beach Baths had a culture, a Gestalt that is now long gone. Sports, tanning in a solarium, card games Mah Jongg, gossip, drinking. And the ocean itself--majestic, salty, home to millions of jellyfish, clams, mussels, crabs, occasional washed-up sharks, a rare whale, porgies, dragonfish, bluefish, flounder. And sea gulls, persistent, vociferous, watchful.

 
  By the time I was a teenager, I had become quite marginal because I was not athletic. I was mediocre at paddle tennis, pretty good but not terribly interested in handball, and downright awful at basketball. My family's social life continued to be centered around the Baths, but I no longer wanted to be there. The streets of Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island and Gravesend were much more alluring, with their promises of intrigues, exotic girls (as in "not Jewish"), and more... illicit activities.

 
  I stopped going to the beach during the days but I loved going there at night. Sitting in the lifeguards' tall chairs, looking out at the expanse of stars, at that magical space where sea and sky kissed. Those nights, when I was16 and my life was as wide open and possible as that ocean, are enduring memories. My life was that beach. But no more. Never again.