Week in Seven Words #363

alchemy
As evening closes in, the tower of the High Bridge looks like the home of a mage. A light gleams inside it, eerie and suggestive.

chewed
Over sweetened almonds, we talk about embittering life events.

disk
A blank, bright field, and at the far end, two kids throwing a frisbee that they never catch.

geometrical
Long walks through the city are full of interesting shapes. Some buildings look like a wedge of pie, narrowing where two streets split in an acute angle. Metallic semicircles shine from the side of a substation. Buildings march along the river in cubes and rectangular prisms.

lunar
There's a free class on Photoshop, which I'm not familiar with, though I figure it may prove useful at some point. I'm the only one who shows up. The instructor looks as awkward as I feel, but we get past that quickly enough, and twenty minutes later I'm pasting a giant baby onto the surface of the moon.

relief
He crouches by the side of a tennis court and buries his face in the dog's neck. It's the happiest moment of his day so far.

whisk
The evergreen sapling looks like a glowing gold feather duster in the forest.

Ides of March Hike: Tarrytown to Van Cortlandt Park

This past Sunday, I went on a group hike from Tarrytown, NY to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. The hike more or less followed a segment of the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail.

It wound up being 18.5 miles (the hike leader had initially estimated 16).

It also should have been scheduled a month from now. The trail was in terrible condition - a sludgy mix of snow, ice, and mud that the hike leader hadn't anticipated (at least not to that extent). And I wore boots that were only casually waterproof; they'd keep your feet dry on a walk home from work in the snow, but not on a messy trail for miles, so my feet got soaked early on.

Had I wanted to (and it was very tempting!), I could have dropped off at a few points before the end. We passed through towns with Metro North train stations that can take you back to NYC. But every time I got to one of those towns, I thought, "I've come this far… so…" And admittedly, had I known the hike would be 2.5 miles longer with the same kind of nasty trail conditions to almost the very end, I maybe would have bailed out at the last drop-off (which was around mile 11). Ignorance can help courage along.

From the mind of Lemuel Moody

The Portland Observatory is the last of its kind in the US - an old maritime signal tower, now preserved as a museum and as a great viewing spot overlooking Portland, Maine and the adjacent water and land.



Before new technology came along and made it obsolete, you stood at the top with a telescope, sighted approaching ships, and used flags to signal how many and which kinds of ships were coming, so people on the docks could get ready for the arrival and the unloading of cargo.



It was constructed and initially manned by a retired sea captain, Lemuel Moody. An enterprising and meticulous individual, he lived nearby with his wife and brood, who spent significant chunks of their childhood running up and down the stairs:



These days, along with footsteps, other sounds you hear regularly from the stairs are the words "watch your head", followed by a loud hollow thud.

The lovely views make up for the minor headaches.





You can also spot patterns that at ground-level would go unnoticed.



And once you're back on the ground, don't forget to look up.