Tappan-Zee

I stepped off the train and walked straight into oblivion. It takes days to unravel what Spring wound up, the stress of a city under siege sits in my muscle memory and I dare not trust the cool grass under my bare feet. We pack up the car and drive winding roads into the forest, lose reception, lose electricity, find a small glen with our names on it, build a little home for a few days. I swim in a quiet lake every day, wake to birdsong at dawn. We make fires at night, roast marshmallows and watch the sun set across the ridge. I run around the lake, trekking through forests that look like my childhood and I have just as much fun making it an obstacle course adventure now as in my youth, and perhaps that's what nature is. Permission to let yourself play. Permission to believe the whole world is an undiscovered piece of clay between your fingers, that you are insignificant and singular all at once. Perhaps it's only chemical and we never ventured further from our maker than that it will forever call us to it.

On the way back, I select a seat with a view of the river. Watch it lazily snake its way to the ocean, sometimes impossible to distinguish from when the first people settled here, wild and overgrown and comforting. I return to a steaming cauldron of iron and glass, return to concrete and hustle. But I have air in my lungs now I haven't felt in months. I have summer in my skin that will not wash off in the tub.