Epiphanies Totc




Going down below the bridge, it started to look less like a highway and more like a monument to the width of the Hudson River. I was on my second trip to the Palisades. I had just moved back to New York City, started a new job. The Palisades sound like an amusement park, but they're actually section of forest and cliffs along the Hudson River, in New Jersey, facing the northern-most part of the island of Manhattan. You take a walkway from Manhattan over the George Washington Bridge, then cross over onto a path that leads along the cliffs or along the shore of the river. At the time I thought again, disappointed, how I never knew about the Palisades while I was living just seven blocks away from the bridge on 171st street a few years before. During that time I know I tried to complete some absurd adventure, like running from 171st street down to Central Park by way of the west side, but all that time I couldn't manage to walk seven blocks north, onto the George Washington Bridge, just beyond Papaya Dog Restaurant. But to be honest, it would have been hard to stumble upon this route; it's not easy to find the walkway; it's not visible to the naked eye between the concrete on-ramps and off-ramps surrounding the bridge. I only found out about it from reading about trails online. Tern of the Century

So now that I live two boroughs away, and have to ride almost the entire length of the A train line, from Brooklyn to 175th street in Manhattan, I finally want to go to the Palisades. It’s a long ride, so I brought along a throw-away read - my unsustainable practice of bringing an article or newspaper that I can either throw away or leave out for somebody else when I get to my destination. This time, the throw-away read was a book. A whole book. I found it on the "Free Books" cart at the library on 23rd street. It’s Don't Sweat the Small Stuff For Teens (The inside page is stamped, EPIPHANY, for the 23rd Street Branch library). Don't Sweat the Small Stuff for Teens is just right for a time like this, where I don't exactly want to lug a book up and down the Hudson River shoreline, but I do need something to read on the way there. But on the train, I started to really enjoy the one hundred mini chapters. Somebody like me, susceptible to inspirement chatter and the redundant simplistic pysch-up mantras that fuel selfhatred magazines, like "Self" and "Teen Vogue" and Oprah, is very taken in with a book like this. It says a lot about me that this was also the "teenage" edition of this work. Chapter titles included “Trusting Inner Signals,” “Daring to Show Enthusiasm” and so on. I couldn’t throw it away when I arrived at 175th street. It's a small, soft cover book so I ran with it across the GW Bridge, which added to my wind resistance against the winds pushing west to east. It's a strange shaped book actually, it's shape and size say "gift book." It's good for a really well weak-legged coffee table. When I finally reached the trail and the greenery of the Palisades, I decided to hide Don't Sweat The Small Stuff For Teens * * * Simple Ways to Keep Your Cool In Stressful Times so the I could get it back later. I put it under some leaves near a log just off the path. The run was very good, and although I was sweating, it was not that kind of sweating. I managed to find the trail that runs right along the river (Special reader hint: Photo on page is actually of me on one of these paths). The views up and down the river are wide and make the city look fortified, with the giant pillars of bridges rising up, and lit up at night, and the skyscrapers peering out from behind each other. The city is so loud that even from that distance you could hear it whirring on every pitch of the acoustic range, especially the noise from the bridge, a double layer of traffic, one hidden under the top. Up on the ridge, I passed by a couple and their young son and the father asked me if you could get down to the water and I said it was just a little further. Much later, down on the shoreline trail, it was nearly dark I passed them again, they were headed further from the bridge and I was going back. Maybe it was the sound of the soft waves breaking or because I wasn't sweating the small stuff but I didn't feel afraid for them going off into the darkness like that, they seemed unafraid. Across the river in the dark I saw a silver Amtrak train come out of the trees and then disappear into a tunnel. I managed to get back up to the ridge, with a little help on the stones steps from my xenon headlight, and then of course I had to look for Don't Sweat the Small Stuff For Teens. I couldn't find it, even with the light. I was starting to wonder if Don't Sweat The Small Stuff For Teens may have been snatched by a soul-searcher or a wayward bandicoot. I hadn't seen very many people so it seemed unlikely. As I poked around like somebody who's looking for lost keys in the dark, I thought of the implications of sweating or not sweating over losing Don't Sweat. What would Richard Carlson say? How could I not sweat losing the book that was supposed to tell me how not to sweat it? This was a problem. I thought about Chapter 78:Cut Your Losses, but then I realized I was looking on the wrong trail (Ch. 23:See Your Choices as Forks in the Road). In the dark I reminded myself to take my time, take a deep breath (Ch. 55: Remind Yourself that No One Is Out to Get You). Calmer, I found the right trail (Ch. 56:Go the Extra Mile) and there was the book, saying hello, looking out under the leaves. So it came back with me over the bridge, and read it on the way back from Washington Heights to the Brooklyn Heights. (Ch. 26: Put it on Paper)

Tern of the Century