From there to here

It's Canada Day here, much to the chagrin of the Quebecois but much to our enjoyment. We arrived yesterday at about noon after a two-day journey from New York. The lack of air conditioning was sufficiently inspiring to get us to abandon Brooklyn and head for the Adirondacks. We drove out of the city on route 9 (the Henry Hudson Parkway), which takes you through the Bronx as high as 232 Street and through Yonkers. It’s spectacular and amazing—a sort of raised highway that passes over and through monstrous trees and New York bedrock and high rises. We more or less stayed on the same road all the way to the border, driving through Adirondack Park along Lake George and Lake Champlain. A good portion of the region seems to be made up of 1950s resort hotels with names like "The Tiki" and "The Lake Breeze." The accent sounds like a muffled Boston accent with a slight lisp and occasional resort to Brooklynese. The valley area between Lake George and Lake Champlain, centered around a farmy little town called Ticonderoga, was full of green, pillowy farmland that smelled, alternately, like green, pillowy farmland (that is to say, fresh and good) and like a paper mill (that is to say, like slowly rotting chemical decay). It was by far the most enjoyable route between the two metropoli that I’ve traveled.

We pulled off the road just north of Saratoga Springs at a little privately owned campground at about nine o’clock. No one was in the office, so we just found ourselves a spot and set up the back of the truck for slumber. It was our first night camping in the truck, which turns out to be luxuriously comfortable with the sheepskin rug spread out on top of the boxes John built. We opened the tailgate, patted down our pillows and listened to the rain fall on our tin-can roof. Were it not for my cold, I think it might have been the epitome of a perfect way to begin the ranging, roving, unmapped portion of our trip. As it were, I woke up in the damp at four in the morning coughing and sneezing and aching. I wandered down to the river (what river?) and sat sort of uncomfortably, watching the mist creep over the opposite bank. Another fusillade of coughs and I went back to the car to wake John and get moving. We were driving by six, and arrived—exhausted and dirty and sickly—by noon. The city was a welcome sight, populated by the welcome sounds of chirping, summery Quebecois and soft, lovely Canadian English. After my favorite sandwich on the terrase at Santropol, and a game of bocce on McGill’s lawn, we made our way to Mike and Julia’s feeling soulful and calm again