---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Invisible Ink” cc&d (v248) (the January / February 2014 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book a New Pen the cc&d Jan. - June 2014 collection book		get the 394 page Jan. - June 2014 cc&d magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Adventures in the New York Mountains, the Catskills and the Adirondacks

Dr. (Ms.) Michael S. Whitt

    Several years ago Amanda Rosaleigh Blake and her live-in lover and soul mate, Michael Demian Randolph, vacationed in the New York Mountains for two weeks. Their major destination was the Adirondacks. Neither of them had ever been to these beautiful mountains. They spent most of their time around Long Lake, a small town in the midst of them. There were two places in the Catskills Michael and Amanda had never been in the several times they visited these mountains. The two decided to spend half a day in Woodstock and Bear Mountain, two places within a few miles of each other.
    Their visit to Woodstock was short lived and rather disappointing. As most readers know a famous rock festival was held there in l969. It was attended by a half million youth people and many famous folk and rock singers. The latter included Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Arlo Guthrie, and the Jefferson Airplane/Starship. It also is known as a place where various artists congregate to work and share ideas and community. Fourteen years after the concert Woodstock seemed dulled out, yet rather strident and stuck up about their alleged artistic community and history.
    The only worth while adventure they had was in nearby Bear Mountain. It concerned the home and works of a brilliant man, the late Dr. Harold Rugg, who was a pioneer in founding Amanda and Michael’s field: Foundations of Education. Harold began his career as a Dartmouth educated civil engineer. However, this did not satisfy him for long. After obtaining a PhD. from the University in engineering, he became a professor there. Soon he developed an interest in the processes of education. He obtained another PhD. in education, and spent the rest of his career as a progressive teacher-educator at Teachers College, Columbia University.
    Amanda and Michael shared many of his interests and had read almost all his writings. They found his magnum opus, Imagination, quite useful and had read it from cover to cover three or four times. It was a gigantic work which explored creativity and the workings of the imaginations from numerous perspectives as different as the arts and cybernetics; as poetry and physics; and as anthropology and calculus.
    Michael and Amanda were professors in the foundations field. They were especially excited with their shared idea that not only was teaching a creative art, but that teachers should pursue areas of creativity outside of their teaching fields. Amanda and Michael wrote poetry and short stories and engaged in experimental horticulture. Amanda also dabbled with water colors and had painted several pictures for their home. Dr. Rugg chose building a beautiful weekend and retirement home in the Catskills for his main extra-teaching creative project. Many of the home’s materials were gathered from the surrounding area.
    When the couple was headed Bear Mountain, They found a bookstore in which they discovered one of Dr. Rugg’s works, Now is the Moment. Rugg had written a note and signed it. They were thrilled to get the book. They went on to Bear Mountain and searched unsuccessfully for his house. Finally, Amanda drove them back to the small Bear Mountain commercial area. They asked a man they met where the Rugg house was located. The man was reluctant to tell them until they explained the details of their relationship to him. He gave them excellent directions to it.
    When the couple arrived at the house on a mountain side, they were impressed with the beauty of the setting and of Rugg’s home. As they walked to the yard from their rental car, two small fawns and their mother appeared from the woods in back of the home. They dashed across the front yard and back into the woods on the far side of the house. This was a beautiful adventure itself. The two lovers took it as a good sign about the whole adventure, and it turned out to be true.
    They were exploring the yard and enjoying the view from the mountain when they heard noise within the house. Soon an older woman opened the front door. The woman was Harold’s widow and fourth wife, Elizabeth. Harold died rather young even for the time. He was 64 when he died while working in his garden in 1964. Amanda and Michael, being avid gardeners, thought that was a wonderful way to die.
    Michael and Amanda were excited when they found out who she was. They were worried for a moment that the house had been sold to strangers who did not know anything about Dr, Rugg. They explained to Elizabeth that they were second generation foundations scholars and admirers of her late husband’s work. She invited them in to chat for a while. She was by this time in her mid-eighties.
    She said, “I finally remarried in l975. My husband and I are preparing to go to his home near Jacksonville, Florida where we plan to spend the winter. It is after Labor Day and soon the weather will cool in these mountains.”
    When the conversation turned to her late husband, Amanda and Michael were amused at her Yankee prejudices about the Deep South. Neither of them were Deep Southerners. Michael had been a military brat who had lived in a variety of areas including Japan, New Mexico, Maryland, and Arkansas before he was nine. Amanda was born in Florida, but her father, her grandparents who lived across the street, and several others in the neighborhood were from the northeast. Her father’s family came to Florida from New England when the children were already in their early teens or late childhood. Amanda’s father was fifteen and never lost his New England speech patterns. She was close to her grandparents and other of the neighbors from up north. She did not sound like a deep southerner either. Hence, they were not defensive and had no need to argue with her.
    Elizabeth told them, “Until recently Harold was ahead of his time. Now things have finally caught up with him, except for the situation in the Deep South.”
    Both of them knew that Harold was still ahead of his time everywhere. He was an ardent proponent of progressive education. This kind of education focuses upon interdisciplinary approaches to social, economic, and political problems. Progressives advocate identifying student interests which would connect with subject matter they would need to know in order to live in the contemporary world. They also favor democratic rather than authoritarian social control. School were not much into these things and hadn’t been since the outbreak of World War II. They were the same mechanical bureaucracies they had been in the early part of the twentieth century. Rugg believed at the larger level in the need for a social reconstructionist approach to institutional structures that had become stale and arid over time.
    They agreed with Rugg on all of these things, but they were not happening much in the Reagan-Bush dominated political scene. The gaps between the few ‘haves’ and the many ‘have nots’ were growing larger not smaller. The few haves were getting a larger percentage of the nation’s various forms of wealth from cash to stocks to real estate. Various figures were quoted and all of them were grim. The last ones Amanda had read were that five percent of the population controlled around ninety-five percent of the wealth. Homophobia, sexism, and other forms of bigotry were by no means gone, and there were other forms of civil liberty violations.
    Michael and Amanda stayed for about a half an hour and bid their hostess good bye. They were on their way to the Adirondacks. Late that afternoon they reached them and rented a motel in Long Lake. They stayed here for five days while they explored the surrounding countryside. Each day they set off on a different road in another direction to explore the mountains. Their motel was less than ideal. The motel owner clearly did not like the couple. He scowled every time he saw them, was sharp with them when they interacted, complained about their taking food in the room, and checked to see if they were “bothering” any of their neighbors in other rooms. He apparently thought they were some sort of crazy hippies. Amanda wore her long reddish-brown hair in a long shag. She wore tight levis and sexy tops. Michael had a beard, moustache, and hair down to his shoulders, not as long as Amanda’s, but too long for the inn owner. Speaking of food, this small village had only one restaurant. However, it was varied, delicious, and served the travelers well for all three meals the few days they spent in Adirondacks.
    The walls to the rooms were quite thin. Cars could be heard going by all night long. This did not disturb their sleep much. They spent all day frolicking, hiking, and exploring in the various areas of the surrounding countryside. They were moving constantly, and were pleasantly tired when they returned in the early evening. Later, these thin walls would cause them quite a scare.
    Their final day in the mountains, Amanda and Michael took a hit of LSD. They were responsible and experienced trippers. They knew the best place to do this harmless substance was out in “Big Nature.”* LSD enhanced its colors, forms, and other aspects of nature’s beauty. A friend from the university town in which they lived gave them a hit for their vacation. They also brought some high quality sweet sensimillia from some plants they grew in the Alabama Woods near where they were professors at Central Alabama University. Another friend got them an excellent deal on an eight ball of cocaine. The cost amounted to only $50 a gram. That was half price. When they reached their motel room that night with some restaurant food, they were still tripping. Amanda turned on the television in order to get the national news. They discovered some late breaking news regarding a Korean commercial jet liner which was shot down over Soviet air space. When Michael and Amanda heard the news and the details surrounding the tragedy, they wondered if the United States had shot down the plane such that it would look as if the Russians did it. The evidence against the U. S. seemed to them to be damning. The main piece was that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger decided not to take the flight at the last minute. The two were intensely interested in the event. They were not at all happy with Ronald Reagan or his Veep., George Bush, Sr. They disagreed both with their specific policies, and with their entire philosophy of government and life itself. They watched the reports while they ate. Then they took a quick shower and returned to the television. They carried on an animated conversation regarding the events.
    “It certainly doesn’t look good for us that Nixon and Kissinger opted out at the eleventh hour on that flight,” Michael commented.
    “I agree wholeheartedly. Let’s keep watching this until we can get a better grasp of it. Meanwhile, why don’t we have a snort of the coke we brought? We’ve hardly used any of it. We can smoke some reefer too. It will make our LSD trip ending pleasant, if demanding, given the news of the day.”
    The conversation, regarding the plane and the callous sacrifice of life, resulting from either a deliberate act or a misunderstanding, went on for nearly three hours. Michael and Amanda smoked, snorted, and focused their broad range of knowledge in the human sciences, philosophy, the arts, and logic on the problem at hand in the news. Every now and then their social and political comments were punctuated with suggestions to “have another toke off this joint,” or “take another snort; its been at least an hour.” They were having a gay time until there was a rather loud knock on their wall from the room next to their bedroom.
    A deep male voice said, “Okay, it’s time to pipe down. I’ve got to get some sleep.”
    The two immediately became paranoid. They could tell how thin the walls were. They had obviously been talking about using two illegal drugs and hinting at a third. They wondered if the man would call the po-leece. If they had thought rationally at that moment, rather than through their silly fears, they could have surmised that had the man wished to rat them out, he would not have warned them by banging on the wall and telling them to be quiet so he could get some sleep.
    Since they were not thinking particularly logically, they decided they should hide their entire stash of illegals out in a clump of thick shrubs in back of the motel. It was long after dark but luckily there was a full moon. They were able to see to hide their stash. It was now well past midnight and they both wished the night was over.
    “I wonder if he will call the po-leece.” Manda mused after they came back in their room.
    “I hope not. I think we’re safe now though. We’ve nothing on us. Our conversation proves nothing at all as it is our word against his.”
    The two travelers did not get much sleep. They were up at the crack of dawn. By around 7:30 they decided their fears were silly. They retrieved their goods, and decided to go out and get breakfast before leaving for Rochester. Their good friend taught at the university there. When they started their car to go to the restaurant, the man next door was coming out of his room.
    Michael turned the engine off and said, “Manda, I’m going to introduce myself to him. I want to make sure everything is cool.”
    “Great idea.”
    Amanda thought the gentleman looked as though he was in his late forties or early fifties. He was trim, fit, attractive, and had a healthy look about him. He drove a new black Cadillac. The car seemed to fit him, although she did not know why. She watched as he and Michael carried on a brief conversation and shook hands in parting.
    Meanwhile, the disagreeable motel owner had come on the scene. He scowled at Michael as he walked back to their car.
    Amanda thought he does not like us. Well, he does not exactly appeal to me. She heard him ask their gentleman neighbor, “Did those two bother you last night?”
    “Not at all,” the gentlemen said, “They were great.”
    “What unadulterated gall!” Amanda exclaimed as Michael returned to the car. “I’ll bet that old coot is disappointed with our neighbor’s response.”
    Michael giggled and replied, “To be sure. He was a neat guy. He told me ‘Listen. I truly enjoyed you alls excellent conversation last night. I wanted it to go on, but I did need some sleep. I had preparations to take care of in the room. I’ve been working since five. I have an important business engagement about an hour from here at nine. I stayed up as long as I gentlemanly could and still keep my eyes opened today.’ That’s true, it was after midnight when he finally banged on our wall.”
    Amanda said, “I’m glad he liked our conversation.” The soul mates laughed relieved the whole thing had ended well. They headed for the restaurant, picked up breakfast, and took the food back to the room to agitate the “friendly” inn owner one more time. They felt some glee doing that.
    As they prepared leave they realized they had not had enough of this beautiful country. There was still much more to be explored. They were anxious to have a day or so with their friend before returning to their university for fall quarter, but their parting conversation revealed they had fallen in love with these small, but rugged mountains, their creeks, rocks, and interesting wildlife population.
    “This country is beautiful and it is most interesting with all of the birds, foxes, rabbits, and other wildlife we’ve seen. I could come back here for another go round.”
    “Oh gosh, Amanda, so could I. Not only is the country gorgeous, but with the sole exception of the motel owner, the people around here are really swell—friendly, anxious to help, and upbeat.”

    *I need to add that referring to LSD, and by implication, other psychedelic substances, is limited to the mentally healthy who do not harbor unconscious desires and wishes of which they have no awareness. LSD (and mescaline, peyote, the gold capped mushroom, etc.) cause unconscious desires and wishes into consciousness. Mentally unhealthy, repressed persons are overwhelmed by these buried desires and thoughts. At best these shutdown people will have an unpleasant trip, and at worst, they could suffer from temporary insanity. If they get help it will gradually go away, but if not they could remain in a crazy space for some time. However, this is not something Michael and Amanda had to worry about. They knew themselves well and their were no psychological surprises on their trips.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...