What to discuss this morning?
There was this terrific sunrise to start the day.
Whether looking between my feet across the east pasture when I wake up at the farm, or gazing out the solarium window after P leaves for work, these sunrise moments have always been the most moving for me, more so than sunset. Maybe it's because there are fewer of us awake to appreciate the grandeur. Maybe it's the hope of a new day, embodied in a pastel glow. Maybe it's the fact that I'm contemplating the scene with a great cup of coffee instead of a glass of wine. In any event, it's lovely.
Or, if you're feeling more the policy wonk this morning, there was this thoughtful and comprehensive essay on the failures of our response in the west to the Covid pandemic:
I guess what I found most refreshing about this analysis, preliminary as it might have been, is that it begins to capture the complexity of the problem, and the fact that we as a global community were faced with policy choices and trade-offs that often revealed no clear correct answer. And the common thread in those places that "failed" was denial and politicization of the situation, leading to fatal delays and half-measures that got us where we are today.
But yesterday I promised to continue the travelogue, so let's go back to the Interlaken Inn in Lake Placid, where we've just been thrown out of the bar not for drunken misbehavior, but because the proprietor decided to give our barstools to restaurant patrons whose dinner reservations could only be honored at our expense. We felt a little like the Iroquois who once roamed those hills, until some guys with tricornered hats and guns arrived with a piece of paper proclaiming the happy hunting grounds were now their rightful property. Like our Native American progenitors, we dejectedly made our way west, in our case to a dinner reservation in Saranac Lake.
The village of Saranac Lake is everything Lake Placid is not.
Although similarly nestled along the edge of a lake, and probably loaded with tourists in the season, Saranac Lake maintains an authentic, small town feel, less-than-bustling and without Lake Placid's entitled jerks from the City wearing those goofy Canada Goose jackets that, for $1400 a pop, should not only keep you warm but give you a happy ending whenever you wear them.
Ah, I digress again.
Our dinner reservation was at the Campfire Adirondack Grill, in the refurbished Saranac Hotel. I broke diet and feasted on a hamburger and fries, a decision that would result in ten hours of GERD agony that might have led to a different decision with the benefit of hindsight. Peg ate trout and some unnamed green vegetable. She's the disciplined one, although eventually she was overcome by the sight of me across the table gnawing my way gleefully through a hamburger roughly the size and shape of a balled fist, and I was forced to share . The wait staff was friendly, the pace unhurried. It started to feel more like a holiday.
Sated, we drove back through light snow to Lake Placid, and crawled blissfully (except for the heartburn) into bed.
When we awoke the next morning, it was obvious the snow had not abated overnight.
We schlepped with our bags out into the frozen scene after I dropped off our key with the host, whom Peg assiduously avoided by wandering around outside taking pictures. Then we descended the hill in the Honda, learning the hard way that the "snow" button on the console, supposedly providing better traction in this stuff, was simply there to give the driver a false sense of efficacy. We helplessly slid through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill, thankful no one was coming the other way.
Peg wanted different scenery on the way home, so we drove west toward Watertown rather than south toward Albany. We stopped again in Saranac Lake, this time at the Blue Moon Cafe,
where we treated ourselves to a couple delightful lattes while my screaming heartburn counseled against the delicious looking Irish breakfast they were serving.
From there, we drove into a blizzard. Really. It was snowing that hard. We stopped for another latte in Star Lake, greeted warmly as we walked through the door by a pair of couples playing some sort of trivia game involving the British royals. As we left, I was concerned we'd pull out in front of another westbound vehicle, seeing as how there was only a wall of white beyond the tailgate of the truck. We found ourselves making our way in what amounted to a white-out, a foreign experience for a Tennessee ridge-runner and her California candy-ass husband.
The snow kept up for maybe another hour, but abated as we approached Watertown, home of Fort Drum and the 10th Mountain Division.
Watertown is as unlovely as pretty much every other Army town I've visited. The old Victorians are crumbling, with duded out Japanese compacts out front indicating Sergeant Something-or-Other is living inside. The fringes of town are necklaced with chain stores and chain restaurants, so Sergeant Something-or-Other can feel at home wherever he's stationed. It is easy to find a place to get a tattoo, although Peg always demurs.
And yet we had a delightful late lunch there, at Maggie's On the River.
That would be the Black River, which rushes through town and provides a venue for kayaking adventures on warmer days. We chose to stay inside and feast on Korean tacos and surprisingly good wine--the general manager of the place, who talked us up at length when he saw we were the only customers in the place not drinking beer, is a trained sommelier--who knew?
One could tell from our Mighty Honda that we'd descended from snow country, unlike all the clean vehicles around us.
I try not to think about how all that salt must be eating our truck. Peg washed it off the next day, but I'm thinking that rusted out wheel wells are probably an inevitability.
From Watertown we snaked our way south along now-familiar roads after six months here--Syracuse, Ithaca, Horseheads, and finally home to Pine Street. It was sunny and above freezing, with no snow to be seen anywhere. Spring is in the air, and maybe another adventure on the horizon this weekend. Pittsburgh, perhaps?
Comments