Deep into the summer in year two of the pandemic, New York City’s piquant vibe of menace had curdled into a dank atmosphere of dread. The plague mimicked uber-common NYC maladies hay fever and asthma, commanding attention to every bout of congestion or labored breathing. A wet cough was something to celebrate. With our imaginary quarantine bubble's settings limited to sweltering, rainy, or both since March, we were haggard. Umbrellas doubled as parasols. Something I swore I’d never do, but there you have it. They served triple duty as distancing cues. Claudia and I could no longer delay surfacing for air. We needed a long respite somewhere viable.
Summer trips most always veered northward. We just had to determine what was still possible under existing travel precautions. Border crossing policies, accommodation restrictions, park closures and restaurant limits were all daunting and in deep flux. All scenarios would be relatively short trips fraught with compromise and stopping short of Canada, which was reviewing its off-limits status on a weekly basis. We settled on a familiar motel near the borders of three New England states, an area dense with modest hiking trails, generally terminating at some sweet swimming holes.
We booked a scant week there and slapped together a compendium of useful websites then loaded the Camry to capacity. To go with our vehicle’s portable home vibe, we packed a summery variation on ‘refugee drag.’ No reason to look like a prosperous tourist or to let on that we could be idly, very idly, flirting with the role of “hotspotter”, those monied folks from high plague incidence cities looking to make a cash down payment for a safer telecommuting base. Our friends and neighbors were entitled to their own equations, but it wasn’t for us. More of a distaste thing. We wouldn’t be so readily rousted from the cultural capital of the world. Not saying that we were incapable of panic, just warily keeping copacetic for now.
We accidentally wandered into that hotspotter crossfire on the way up. We’d stopped for lunch in a nominally bucolic spot and noticed a neighboring realtor office. With the weather suddenly suitable for little more, we stood under the awning reading two bay windows full of real estate porn postings with amenities like wraparound porches, inground pools and private beaches brazenly displayed.
We decided, truly on a lark, to put an agent through his paces, provided we’d be out within the hour. Robbie was mid-sandwich when we tripped the door chime, but he was all ours, “Nice young couple around the corner ready to downsize. We can go right now.”
“We couldn’t just barge in on someone.”
“They’d love to meet folks from Manhattan!”
An elbow pinch prompted, “Too strange. Let’s take your card and arrange something on the rebound.”
We braced for pushback, but he motioned to a desktop card display and returned to his surprisingly mingy sandwich. The door chime heralded another pair of vacationers who passed us silently as we exited. I lingered by the window display and noticed a round sticker proclaiming “EXTERMINATE VRBOs” on the lip of the windowsill. Block letters along the rim were unclear but ended with “available”. A bit harsh, but likely just merch for hipsters ambivalent about gentrification despite their own recent arrival.
The drizzle petered out and the sky briefly lightened as we headed north. We soon lost the sun and gained a dark cloudbank on the horizon. Presently, a roiling black sky warranted a scan for weather forecasts .and we landed on an emergency alert station with tornado warnings urging motorists approaching Kingston on the thruway to get off at the nearest exit. We qualified but no signage for exits was forthcoming, and the turbulence held some enchantment to forestall panic. A water funnel crossed the highway well behind us, warranting a brief goose of the accelerator. By the time we reached the Kingston exits, the display had settled into a stodgy slab and we could keep on the long trek northward.
The road hadn’t puddled much, so we picked up the pace, hoping for a few hours of daylight at our destination. Our target motel, which we’d visited often in the past but not in recent years, had decent rates, ample vacancies and a huge indoor pool which they’d assured us was reopened. A bonafide find in this environment.
At sign-in, we were given the option of red silicone wristbands to signal preference for social distancing. I found it odd that such a cue would be needed. For the duration of our stay, we were the only ones there wearing them, staff included. The desk clerk nonetheless doled them out to us with a pair of salad tongs. He had one more thing to impart. The breakfast buffet would - in a surfeit of caution - be limited to individual packs of corn flakes, corn syrup-shellacked energy bars, a jug of 2% milk and a coffee urn. Annoying, but we had our own refrigerator and a microwave. Anything else we needed to know? He shrugged, “Restaurant’s closed tonight.”
Once situated, we found the pool closed until further notice, another drag but safety first. The front desk wasn’t answering the phone. Regrets, we had a few. Our room was vast and the roof extended over a broad shared porch. Moreover, AC and cable were flawless on first try, so we would muddle along, at least the first night
The sky darkened with that resolution. Songbirds, grasshoppers and bullfrogs fired up like a foley orchestra. As the blackness seethed in from the west, the row of tall poplars bordering the parking lot set into a jazz hands routine that gradually stiffened into a hard lean, lasting for hours as the clouds spouted like an indignant faucet. A tornado watch had reached the neighboring county but we would brave the plaza across the street for take-out and key provisions. On the way, I swung by the office which was already manned by a solitary night light at 7pm. We beat the worst of the storm, picked at our take-out, and drifted off under the flat screen’s nightlight.
A morning spell on the porch confirmed our initial impression that the neighbors were largely young, mildly seedy and sizing us up from a mutually safe distance. Most didn’t do the mask thing, but they would smile shyly when we backed away from them while hustling to get ours on. I caught, or vividly imagined, “Those two look like nice people.” as we swung by one cluster sprawled on miniature Adirondack chairs, but I couldn’t really judge the tenor of the delivery.
We foraged in the untended office and our most notable find was a stash of those “EXTERMINATE VRBOs” stickers on the travel brochure shelves. In better light, the block lettering spelled “by all means available”. Yikes! Evidently management didn’t stock the shelves, but they didn’t monitor them either. Shellacked by breakfast, we drove to a grassy spot along a wide, slow-moving river, cleared the rocky shore and soaked our heads. The river was low enough that we could alternate between swimming and wading, like cursive to printing. We caught some shade from the steep, wooded hill on the far bank. There was a lightly-trafficked bike path on the crest and stout rope swings dangled from branches 15-20 feet above the water but no daredevils overhead and the tension just seeped out of us. Lunchtime came and went. We didn’t feel waterlogged until late afternoon as cocktail hour approached.
Ensconced on our porch perches, we mapped out the balance of the day. One dude who’d been doing some slack Taichi/kung fu hybrid far down the lawn approached our post rapidly but stopped at a safe distance when we slapped our masks on. He wanted to know whether we’d visited the pool. I related the staff’s belated phone message that it may open later this week, probably not before we leave.
“I saw bathing suits out drying so I thought you’d gone in.”
“Naw,” I volunteered. “It’s like they’re just waiting for us to go. Good luck!”
Once inside, Claudia dropped, “So, we’re under scrutiny.”
“No doubt. We’re what passes for entertainment.”
“I knew that cheap motels tend to draw folks on the Greyhound Bus circuit, but I think ol’ Homestead is doubling as a halfway house. I know that New York has some homeless accommodation in hotels, but I assumed there would be transparency and protocols for anyone doing it. Here with staff so MIA there’s lots of opportunity for this population... backsliding. “
Compelling argument. It was balmy there, but these neighbors were consistently in long pants and manual-labor boots, often with a jacket over a t-shirt. Also, very much in smoke-em-if-you-got-em mode. In fairness, this common walkway was the designated smoking zone and the zinc butt pails had hungry maws.
The balance of our night was jarred by angry phone conversations just out of range, also some bullet-head pounding on a door and shouting, “Willie! Willie!” far longer than could have been productive. I spared Claudia my speculation that this show was performed for our benefit.
We were parked at the very rear of the compound, using a near-empty parking lot no longer humming with visitors for the shuttered pool. There was a sharp drop-off at the tree line then freight train-only tracks then another steep incline to a nearly unbanked stretch of the Connecticut River.
Ahead of us were all the motel’s other units with maskless folks bantering out front, ripening bags of garbage and random pieces of debris that appeared to be still in use. Between us and the town’s less suspect population was a tranquil gauntlet of immense, convulsive peril until proven otherwise. We sought to stay harmonious with our not-outwardly hostile neighbors but, either way, they didn’t mask and a closely-guarded civility was our highest aspiration.
We drifted inside before long, keeping just enough lights on to navigate the unfamiliar space. While I inventoried cable options, Claudia read me an op-ed from a local weekly. It essentially sounded the alarm over the influx of hospotters. Not much harm to them (us) unless someone was being displaced. Or harassed. Some commission-besotted realtors bring them into homes unannounced after a perfunctory knock while the occupants – often battling foreclosure – are there and terrified of the wealthy claim jumpers being hustled into their home reeking of contagion. So, Robbie’s awkward stunt was a standard ploy.
I had meanwhile - no digging required - learned more about motel vouchers for the displaced and I debriefed Claudia, “Google maps had flagged some motels, including this one, as sheltering essential services workers and it struck me that this could be a euphemism. There had been numerous articles in the national press about vulnerable communities bunking in college dorms, two-star motels and most any housing that could be spared. This was just the first time we were far enough from home to encounter it”
“There’s rarely anyone at the front desk and the staff who appear on the grounds draw a blank on even rudimentary English.”
“You’d think these extraordinary arrangements would entail some support staff, maybe a social worker on site.”
“We’re getting into Bobby Peru territory. Do we not mention that in our Trip Advisor review? They are putting up some scary lowlifes.”
“That gets into classic white privilege territory.”
“Well, it’s Vermont, so race is a negligible factor.”
“There’s still that classist 'I'm being exposed to the wrong element’ vibe.”
“Hold that thought.” I opened the door to check the 10PM skies for an overdue storm front and the tiny blonde girl from three doors down stood there staring, close enough to bite, flashed a bit of defiance then fled.
“Let’s assume she’s not the gang leader. Her folks are former felons borderline unemployable for life, can’t vote, habit or two to kick and rightfully freaked by those New York license plates representing gentrification.”
“So, these are relatively permanent residents who are alright with us provided we make no sudden moves, not some naturally sordid population who would otherwise be in even worse distress without the plague’s motel housing windfall?”
“Let’s just slip those lenses in and see whether they add any clarity. Meanwhile, we’ll try not to make these folks flinch. They may be the communicable ones, but we’re the lepers.”
Some solace, but our careful planning had left too many variables unanticipated and we were now imagining how the scenarios we’d rejected would have played out. We felt the place closing in on us, much like the congested city we had fled.
The next morning, there was a baby skunk lolling half asleep in the Indian restaurant’s courtyard adjoining the office. Indolently squirming on its back in the sand between flagstones and proffering its belly for scratching, the critter was cute, disarming and terrifying all at once. I mentioned it to a passing young subcontinental staffer and he balked, “She’s only a baby!” She was still there when we headed out two hours later.
Was she an orphan who’d missed out on key survival skills training? Had she reset the calculation for relative safety a few times and chosen a warm spot for a charm offensive? We ended up dining at that restaurant thrice during our stay and it would have been a standout in a much larger city. Fair chance that her only calculation was following the aroma.
We struck out northwest to a network of swimming holes along tributary rivers. Many bathers were out and there was little mask compliance. All paths were wide and forky, so bottleneck risk was nil. Swimming options were abundant enough that we upgraded to vista hunting and moved often. We wouldn’t be bonding with anyone out there, so we imposed narratives from a safe distance. That soured when I riffed on how one disparate group led by a bearded “father” must be a cult out for its monthly bath.
We ended up on a popular stretch of river where a vanload of high school students
are there with their “pastor” and several smaller groups share the spot. The students were being somewhat boisterous with rope swings and low cliff diving but in a responsible, well-practiced way so we weren’t preoccupied with the prospect of getting into fast-moving water haul someone out and make a stab at first aid. We had our fun for a fair while, relishing both a feeling of community and unspoken consensus on safe distancing. As we headed out, a mother and young son were quietly discussing the three leeches that had fastened onto hercalves. Others, not so geeked out by the leeches as we were, gathered around to contradict each other with advice.
We took a wrong turn on the way back. We had GPS and were still headed eastward, but I was quickly creeped out. Scores of otherworldly, nearly human-sized pods hung from low branches along one side of the road. Stretched taut like spider webs spun from dryer lint, they recalled Invasion of the Body Snatchers cocoons, but the material was closer to hornets’ nests. I felt panicky but still slowed to take it in. Claudia was amused, “You’ve never seen tent caterpillars?”
“Nothing remotely like this.”
“They’re an invasive species, gangbusters for years. They’d be a huge problem by now except that bears, skunks, bats and many bird species just feast on them”
“We’ll have to thank our little friend.”
Upon pulling into the compound, we noticed that the office building was lit. Intent on coaxing some honesty out of the staff, I stepped up to the plexiglass screen and asked the two unfamiliar white dudes whether they had monthly rates. They conferred quietly and came up with a pretty fair offer for weekly, the best they could do. There was some relief in that but maybe they were just onto my ruse.
As I exited, I ran into the skunk advocate and he advised me that she had been caught in a humane trap and brought back to her side of the tracks. Neat trick as the wooded fringe there would barely accommodate a dirt bike trail. The ‘No Dumping’ signs by the railroad tracks nestled in heaps of refuse, little of it in actual garbage bags. This was evidently where the baby skunk had strayed over from. We’d been warned that it was also the nocturnal feeding ground of a she-bear and her four cubs and that both species, gifted with keen sense of smell would be drawn in close by anything unpacked lackadaisically.
The bear clan was heard but not seen. Fancied heard, anyways. The trashy, underpopulated back end of the property had to be a welcome expansion of territory for them. When met halfway, a fair portion of the road, rail and forest traffic sounds passed for guttural maternal warnings.
With the skunk relocated, we speculated that sharing a tight circuit with the bear clubs would either yield adorable Instagram pics or carnage. An eviscerating swipe would remove any doubt of the outcome as would a shotgun spray from a youthful stink gland. Eventualities included an adult bear and four cubs driven by panic into the light and/or the skunk bleeding out and burdened by a pair of punctured scent bladders suddenly hell-bent on reaching the last spot where she had felt safe.
Public nightlife was on hold in this town. Our new evening hang was a decrepit gazebo housing a hot tub draped in padded tarp, hassock-level to our cedar chairs. A small shelf accommodated our ice bucket, mixers an iPod. Minimally lit, it was a bit of an open-air hidey hole. Not an essential feature but most welcome.
Claudia was making a hobby of this fascination with the local housing crisis and had new material to share, “This notion of emergency pandemic housing isn’t really accurate. You may have noticed that boarding houses, SRO and flophouses are no longer common, but the stagnating minimum wage and the gig economy have greatly expanded the market for minimal housing and the lower tier of independent hotels had increasingly become extended stay residences before the plague. Credit reporting services have adopted a new model of redlining for the working poor because banks are reluctant to work with credit risks and the growing segment of the population with week-to-week residences unsurprisingly have rotten credit ratings.”
All those paying weekly rent are exempt from tenant protection laws. Rent hikes and evictions are left to the landlord’s discretion. While some folks have government vouchers to subsidize these rent payments, they’re often pitching in pretty close to regulated motel room rates. Meanwhile, pandemic age hotels serve both this population and monied tourists. Bit of a social experiment.”
“We’re trespassing?”
“Accidentally.”
“Oh brother.”
We got deep into a break in conversation, courting sleep with Debussy, when “Check this out.” jarred us. The Taichi dude was on the gazebo’s perimeter and gave the nearest pillar an open-palmed smack. Several crumpled brown leaves came loose and deployed like butterflies, both wings unfurling in multiple panels of striking color grids, always symmetrical and using most every color, but favoring a creamy white with a swirl of red dots. Once displayed, they fluttered off in beelines, lit on new perches and resumed the dead leaf stance
“Lantern flies, just our latest invasive species. but one of the worst. They’ve colonized most of the shade trees. There’s little they don’t eat and they can park their eggs almost anywhere. Hear the racket overhead last night?”
“I could have slept through an earthquake.”
“The helicopters spraying lantern flies were louder. “
“Holy shit! I brushed that residue off the windshield with my hand. Wasn’t that much different from the usual morning dew.”
“A bit stickier. Nothing to worry about judging by the lantern fly response, and we wouldn’t do anything to disrupt our tourists.”
“So, you do it on the sly.”
“Me? It’s done on the sly. You know I’m not an employee, right?”
“Bit short on certainties these days.”
“Temporary resident. Not quite as passing through as you. I’m Zeff.” He extended a hand then retracted it, “Old habits.”
“Pascal and Claudia. We favor the mild bow but it’s not second nature.”
“That would be an improvement. You might want to know that folks here are terrified of you.”
“Seriously?”
“Oh yeah.”
“That old housing market parasite business?”
“Right”
“Did we actually displace anyone?”
“No, the housing is just increasingly mixed-use.”
“There are lots of places in the northeast where we really like to spend maybe a week at a time in the warmer months, but this sure isn't home. New York City is a freaking joyride and addictive for us, however hectic.”
“Sounds to us like your home is being evacuated.”
“You walk 10 blocks in most any direction and you’ll be dazzled frequently. True, you need a frequent time out, particularly in the humid months, and plague season, plus you can live elsewhere with Google, Amazon and Zoom as equalizers and ready access to nature as a bonus, but NYC, for us, is life undiluted. It just requires staying alert and that’s always been the case.”
“Thought so. I’ll pass that along. Um, meanwhile, I couldn’t help but notice that you favor short shorts.”
“It is summertime.”
“Lyme disease has really gotten bad here. It doesn’t often kill you outright like plague but you no longer have a healthy life unless you treat it fast. There’s heart disease, nerve damage, brain fog – just like plague -, fibromyalgia, meningitis and shorter life spans in general. The spray that keeps the ticks off is expensive and toxic. No effective tick collar for humans yet. “
Actually, a Lyme Disease vaccine was developed and approved by the FDA in 1998, but it got shelved when anti-vaxxers mounted a bunch of lawsuits. It’s still allowed for dogs. Some of the hiking trails are well-maintained, but this lawn [ certified ankle-tickling ] should be shorter. There’s a hose here to blast yourself before you hit the asphalt.”
“We hadn’t packed for this.”
“Board of tourism is never held accountable. There’s a Goodwill down the pike that will kit you out. By the way, we do wear masks and shorts inside.”
We spent the balance of the visit lightly-Deeted and dressed to blend in. Residents, even staff, turned genial, if still fairly baffling. The proprietors were confident that removing the temptation of food was adequate pest control and the restaurant staff was trained accordingly, but housekeeping staff less so. Residents were hardly coy about tossing their trash into the woods and patted their ill-concealed firearms reassuringly when warned about the wildlife.
At least some of the trash got ostentatiously flung great distances in case there were bears just beyond the fringe. The crashing projectiles were sure to rile the bears, but they were at least as fearful as us. No doubt a rough stretch for train crews too. Only the skunk cub feared no one.
On our final morning there, we learned about the Zombie Outbreak Response Team (ZORT). A tricked out, lovingly tended Jeep Wrangler with an array of ZORT-themed decals straddled two parking spaces in the motel’s longer-stay wing. In a less fraught time, I might have been inclined to stop over and get myself regaled.
Instead, I tapped Google, which quickly yielded this link, http://www.youcangoogleityourself.com , sponsored by a worldwide network of volunteers training for horde suppression. The website kept the zombie factor light-hearted but ZORT’s broader mission was to repel any rampagers whatsoever. They were invasive species generalists though the message board repeatedly referenced the invasion of the heyheyhohos. We concluded that we shouldn’t seek them out too strenuously.
At the time, we were tickled by the Zort factor. We pictured serious ordnance being collected in the parking lot as the field commander directed the troops yanking a camouflage tarp over it all. The ZORT emblem did indeed reappear months later among the iconography sported by those storming the capitol building in a documentary on the Jan 6th insurrection. Both their skull in a gas mask emblem and their Hello Kitty with a hair bow appeared in surveillance tapes. So, that fragile, fractious ecosystem now had a wild card.
Claudia and I, the actual urban diaspora, the downtrodden in contingency housing, the South Asian hotel staff whose American Dream niche sector had turned toxic, the baby skunk, the bear clan, the tent caterpillars and the lantern flies, we were all invasive species in our own ways, and most of us tick carriers. Those ZORT dudes, however fuzzy on their mission, would be well-advised to stock up on ammunition. Better yet, made to recognize that they’re at least as unwelcome an invasive species as the rest of us. One might say that plague similarly strikes out to colonize new feeding grounds. That’s an overstatement. It just feeds.
We were various species of trespassers coexisting in a musical chairs' taut helix. There were those with a legitimate claim, those with imaginary entitlement and those who muscled in without giving it too much thought. Most all needed to be there but it wasn’t so much a survival thing for me and Claudia, just an awkward stab at a mental health excursion and one that would sate us for a long while.
We’re now 14 days back and asymptomatic. Still feeling rattled but also like we’ve gotten away with something.
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