The train tracks run along the Hudson River, weaving a thin line between the choppy cold water and the thick dense pockets of maple and oak trees. In the fall and winter, purple and black leaves cover the tracks and chunks of ice sometimes wash ashore near them, so the line between the sides blurs just slightly. When I got to New Hamburg station, I was over thirty minutes early and I stood alone, my black sunglasses bulky over my regular glasses, watching the sun rise over Breakneck Ridge. The mountain gets its name from a local legend about a bull or a goat, everyone tells it differently, who escaped from a farm and climbed the mountain, only to fall and break its neck on the way down. The one time I had tried to hike it, I fainted five minutes up the almost ninety-degree vertical trail. After that, I figured from then on that I shouldn’t test things that were so obviously treacherous. But there I stood anyway.
I had never ridden the train alone before. I wasn’t someone who could go into the city and easily follow streets signs and catch cabs and get to trains at Penn Station on time. But if you looked at me standing there by the tracks, you would say that I had that façade down flat – the façade of someone who knows exactly where they are both in life and on a map. Only half of that was true in that moment- I knew I was at New Hamburg station, that the train would come from the west from Poughkeepsie station on track 1, that I was just a short drive from route 9 and the bright pink and yellow nesting dolls store that I’d never been inside and couldn’t believe wasn’t closed in this economy, and that I was still safe, safe in the Hudson Valley. But the mere thought of riding the train alone, walking across the city from Grand Central to Penn Station, and getting on a train to Huntington was enough to send a shiver through my legs, and they wobbled together as a different train blew its horn and then quickly began to rumble by. The second I would board my train, I would be lost. I’d been to NYC probably a hundred times by then, but never alone, never without a seasoned traveler like my sister. For years, I had mindlessly exited trains in Grand Central station and followed someone out the doors into the city and not once had I paid attention to landmarks or directions. Place me anywhere in the Hudson Valley and I can find my way home, to a train station, to a school, to a grocery store, or even the nesting dolls place that has no reason to even be in the valley. I mean, where was the market for it?
But place me in NYC and I’m walking with my face pressed against my phone screen, with Google maps shouting walking directions like I’m a tourist. And if the battery died, so would my life line. I remember looking at my car parked in the lot just on the other side of the tracks. Sometimes you just have to do things alone.
That summer, I got my first job as a bank teller at Hudson Valley Federal Credit Union and had dozens of people scream at me on a daily basis. Before that, I attended therapy at school for the first time because of my insomnia and panic attacks. Before that and still true, I’d fallen in love with a girl and had to lie constantly to my father’s side of the family about it. Every moment from the past few years had placed me alone at those train tracks and though I knew where I was, I was still utterly lost, but I kept going, kept walking; the life of a wanderer had not completely eluded me. I was going to ride the train alone. I would walk that thin divide between the trees and the river because I had someone waiting for me on the other side.
That phrase, “the other side,” seems ghostly and spiritual, like something my mom would say. She’s always talking to spirits and burning sage in our house, which does wonders for my asthma and getting rid of negative energy. Our perfect, white colonial style house is the first home on Farm View Road and it stands tall like the great oak and maple trees that dot its front yard. There’s a grassy back yard where the swing set and pool used to be, but those both required too much maintenance so now it’s just the leaning cherry, apple, and birch trees, and then the open, pine-needle ridden woods. We live in Wappingers Falls, just one of the many tightly packed towns in the Hudson Valley. Our mailbox is in Wappingers Falls, so we claim that town as our own, but the rest of the property is technically in LaGrange; that’s how close the dividing lines are.
The massive cherry tree in the back leans left, an entire branch as thick as the trunk bending towards the ground, almost horizontal with the dirt. Before my dad left he wanted to chop it off, but my mother refused to let the branch break and had a wire professionally twisted into the arm and then wrapped around the tree’s sturdy top, so it now holds itself together like a random art installation. The wire is taut with such a terrible tension that it makes you fear walking past it.
Just by the cherry tree is a short line of forsythia bushes that assault the eyes with their explosive, tiny yellow flowers. They litter the yard with the petals the way the leaves do in the fall, all the colors mixing like an overexcited painter’s palette. Those petals often tumble into the side yard, an acre of open land except for two tall weeping willows and the line of pines that sit at the very bottom, blocking the view of the road. There used to be the stumps of apple trees on this land, since an old apple farm lived here, but they’ve long been dug up and replaced with grass seed, making for an acre stretch of pure green.
Growing up, I’d always go to the acre to think. I’d come home from school, grab the huge rainbow beach towel from the house, and then lay on it in the grass watching the clouds go by, channeling my inner Wordsworth. Every now and then I’d have to slap an ant or spider off the towel, but other than that, it was always the most tranquil experience. There were no honking cars barreling by or the screeching of tires or police sirens. Just the occasional bird call, usually from a chickadee that was perched in one of the willows.
My last day of high school I drove up the driveway, parked, and sprinted inside the house laughing and singing a song from the radio. I climbed the basement stairs using my hands and feet like a dog, rocketing up the steps, and burst into the kitchen. My mother and sister stood silent around the corner at the granite kitchen counter, staring at me. The smile quickly slipped from my lips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“Your grandfather just passed away,” my mother said. I looked to Carolyn, as I always did, and saw how she was holding her breath and biting her lip, her eyes rubbed red. I looked back to my mother and she was stoic, unreadable despite the fact that both of her parents were now gone from this world.
“I’m sorry,” I said. We all spoke a few more awkward, strangled sentences, mom took a few minutes to instill her spiritual wisdom, and then I soon left out the backdoor and laid in the side yard, staring at a cloudless sky. From the cherry blossom tree on the front lawn that only blooms every few years, little pink flower petals invaded the grass and towel around me.
My mother said we’d see grandpa very soon and that she had discussed with him at the hospital earlier that week that he was to come back in the form of airplanes, since he used to fly them. Considering Stewart Airport was a dime’s throw away from the house, I figured we’d be visited almost every day, but I didn’t say that. When she and Carolyn eventually joined me on the towel, we all watched the planes dive over the house and I was surprised when the wire holding us together didn’t break after all.
Not when dad left, not when grandpa died, and not when I went to college. Wappingers Falls didn’t break either, which I’m not sure if I thought it would or not. At the very least, I thought it might disappear for the short while I was gone, just because it would in my mind. I wouldn’t be there to admire its hills and valleys, it’s quirks and habits, and it’s community. I was sure Cortland wouldn’t have a Mountainview Ranch, with the horses, brown and black that stand behind the wooden fence and scatter near the red farm house, dotting the hillside. They sort of look like ants from a distance, but they sure aren’t ants when the owners take them for walks up along the road. Their hooves on the pavement echo around the hills from miles away. I was also positive Cortland wouldn’t have a Sprout Creek farm. That’s where we get our fresh eggs, meet the chickens who made them, and watch the hot air balloons take to the skies. I knew I’d miss the rusting bridge for the Hudson Valley Rail Trail too; a nature watching and exercise dream that spans miles and leads to the tourist attraction of the century: The Walkway Over the Hudson. The trees in the spring are a bright green and bend over the trail like they’re bowing to the runners, bikers, and sightseers. Animals like ducks, chipmunks, and even deer frequent the trail too, creating a Disney-like experience for travelers. I’ve run on that trail before, but I prefer going along the road instead; it always leads to treats on the other side, like the Shell gas station and BookWorm.
The BookWorm is just across route 376 and it sits next to the Shell station and looking across at the Fly-By deli, which is the slowest deli in town. The summer before my first year at Cortland, I went into the bookstore and perused the many ancient shelves like I always had. Through the entrance, after the rusty bell rung, I turned left at the peeling painted purple sign marking the “Romance” section just to see if anything had changed. Nothing had – there were still five bookcases on either side, packed closely together so you had to bump shoulders with another person just to see the collection of Nora Roberts books with worn white covers and creased spines. I turned around and headed back past the entrance, the teenage cashier not even giving me a second glance as I weaved past other buyers and into the mystery section on the opposite side of the store. Across from mystery was business, and further back was one of my favorite sections, teen fiction, but it was more like a haphazard mix of a handful of dystopian novels and children’s books. In mystery, the books were tight against one another on the light wooden shelves, and when more wouldn’t fit, the owners had begun piling books in the space between the shelf and the tops of the books. Every inch or fresh breath of air was replaced with a book and the sweet, dusty smell of them. I wrapped my hands around the Agatha Christie collection, seven or so small wrinkled things, and took them into my arms. The policy of the store was based on a simple exchange. If you brought in old books you didn’t want, you could get store credit and then your old books would fill the shelves the next week, so I didn’t feel bad swiping the whole collection. The teenager at the cash register seemed pleased when I dumped my haul onto the counter.
“After taking from your account, it’ll be two dollars for tax,” the cashier said. He had found my name in a stack of index cards they kept of every person in town who brought in used books.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s it. Thanks for helping us get rid of this stuff.”
I had been trying to ignore the closing notice on the counter, but he had said it out loud now and made it real. I handed him the money and started to pick up my books, staring at the sign.
I knew where every author sat on every bookshelf of the store, where every dictionary, how-to, mystery, horror, romance, sci-fi, and young adult novel sat waiting to be purchased. I knew the store was only a two-minute drive and ten-minute walk from Farm View Road. I knew it was the safest place in the world to release my old books from captivity and know that they would be treated right. It was closing just as I was leaving for school, both of us crossing the divide, taking a step forward from the familiar into the unknown. The town would no longer have a-hole-in-the-wall used bookstore to cherish, and it wouldn’t have me. But the town would go on as it always had, it would continue to be a quiet town nestled in the Hudson Valley, a safe haven from the city to strangers and locals alike, and it would go on without us both.
Sarah DeLena, Collin Anderson Memorial Award in Non-Fiction
Sarah DeLena is currently studying English and Professional Writing at SUNY Cortland. She hopes to become an editor for YA literature, her favorite genre, own at least two golden retrievers, and further the legacy of the oxford comma.
The Collin Anderson Memorial Awards in Creative Writing are open to SUNY Cortland students. The awards are sponsored and judged by the College Writing Committee.