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Route 44 and Vulture Love
by Ray Scanlon Route 44 Stuck in traffic, Cheryl asks, “What's the longest word you can make from Silverado?” So I'm on it, and we toss words back and forth. She's a nerd, which will be no surprise if you subscribe to the birds-of-a-feather theory. As a nerd, I am not in the least disturbed by such questions—they delight me and remind me that I'm a lucky man. Yet even after twenty-five years she is still capable of astonishing me. This summer we were visiting Minnewaska State Park Preserve in the Catskills, off Route 44 in Kerhonkson, New York. In the back seat, my grandchildren and niece, glued to their hand-held devices, learn from Siri that this Route 44 is the Route 44 that passes through our home town in Massachusetts, and we are at its western terminus, 237 miles from its origin near the Atlantic. I am gobsmacked when Cheryl informs me that we are now in honor-bound need of one day driving it from end to end. Because I've never breathed a word of it to anybody. Because it's just so outré. Because if I were to keep a bucket list, it would include doing exactly that—as part of driving the length of every numbered route in Massachusetts. I could try to justify it on the grounds that seeking out new places and exploring are quintessentially human activities, but the fact that I could not do otherwise than to drive them in numerical order puts the full-scale project irretrievably beyond the pale. But now that the cat's out of the bag, I'm thinking we could start with a single route, a minor highway where speed can take a back seat to curiosity. It would be good to get closer to the ground, so to speak, and let journey trump destination. Maybe we will do Route 44. Route 44 will never be the eastern incarnation of the legendary Route 66—there is going to be no stream of quixotic westering Kerouac wannabes heading from Plymouth, Massachusetts to Kerhonkson. Nevertheless it has its shunpiking charm. Over the years we've already traveled many of its miles, though not in a single day, which I'm sure strict bucket list rules would require. The rolling bucolic stretch west of Hartford, in particular, is lovely, an attractive alternative to nightmarish I-84. There is, however, no romance to Route 44 near our town, set in ordinary flat southeastern Massachusetts, unless you count the maniacal red-headed hitchhiker ghost reputed to ply his trade along its edges. Heading east toward the ocean, it passes the long-shuttered dog track, where, to dodge family engagements, I once spent a Thanksgiving evening betting on the greyhounds, but that was before I became a responsible bourgeois adult. There's an oxygen distributor and a propane dealer. An asphalt contractor. Bars. Miniature mom and pop used car lots. They're prosaic businesses, not consumerist yuppie boutiques. A sort of marginal greyness pervades, free of any irrational exuberance. If these enterprises are prospering, they are not flaunting their success. This is a utilitarian highway, fitting, I think, for Yankeedom. Cheryl and I are tempted to believe it's more than coincidence that this road bisecting our town begins a stone's throw from the Atlantic beaches in Marshfield, Massachusetts and ends a stone's throw away from a Victorian resort in the Catskills—two of our most favorite places on earth. It's only seductive nonsense, a lying artifact of our pattern-seeking brains, but sometimes it's best to ignore that. Vulture Love Twenty or so years ago Disney World introduced me to vultures, for which I thank them. Aside from a poorly-suppressed recurring nightmare starring Space Mountain, that's all I remember of the whole painstakingly orchestrated Disney experience—probably not the take-away impression its perpetrators had designed for. As far as I'm concerned, Disney World is yet another major reason to avoid setting foot in Florida. You are welcome to call me a communist, but vultures were the place's only redeeming feature. Every morning Cheryl and I would see dozens of vultures perched outside our hotel catching the early sun, hunchbacked, shoulders shrugged, exactly as every cartoonist caricatures them. We got up close to them on the ground when we toured one of Disney World's swamp-based attractions. They are ugly, spastic and menacing on foot, and they stink. Love came only at second sight, after I got past those pesky cosmetic issues. All I needed to do was see them on the wing, and they had my heart. A soaring vulture is in its element, a creature of consummate grace; off the ground and defying gravity, it is no longer ugly. Even having fallen in love with the essence of the bird, it's still hard to get by the unremitting diet of putrid carrion. However, I believe that our revulsion is an artificial social construct, and I wear my ribbon to promote carrion awareness. I keep meat in my refrigerator for weeks that other people would discard after a day or two, and I cement my solidarity with my vulturine brethren by ostentatiously ignoring all food-package expiration dates. Cheryl's former employer, a corporate behemoth whose logo was known as the “Death Star,” had sent her organization on that trip to Disney World as a reward for achieving their sales quota. But in a stroke of divine justice they swiftly atoned for it, and then some, by sending her office on a team-building junket to a Victorian resort in the Catskills. This mountain house and its grounds appear to be under the aegis of a Ring of Power. It presides in homely golden majesty over a lake, at the end of a two-mile driveway through the woods and up the mountain, discreetly marked by signs: “Slowly and quietly, please.” Its two hundred fifty-nine rooms brook no televisions. And best of all, it turns out to be prime territory for both turkey vultures and black vultures, who've been expanding their range north. Cheryl and I have returned there on our own many times over the past couple of decades. This is the fourth summer that we bring with us to the mountain house our grandchildren and niece, now teens well able to appreciate the place. We don't hide the fact that we hope it will become an enduring family tradition, though of course it's foolish to try to micromanage the destinies of young lives. We all hike to one of my favorite places on Earth, a Shawangunk ridge top a few hundred feet above the Rondout Valley looking out toward the Catskills, amusing ourselves with lame jokes about how the vultures are waiting for us to drop dead of a climb-induced heart attack or to dash ourselves to pieces over the edge of the cliff. The birds do not disappoint. They are always there, patrolling the ridge line. It is such a simple thing, but I take unseemly pleasure in being able to watch vultures from above. I gaze over the valley. I can see for miles. A vulture soars, racing before the stiff northwest breeze and in front of me comes about in a leisurely-executed yet precise U-turn; I can barely perceive the motion of his wingtips and tail. For two heartbeats he is dead still in the air, until he leans in and shoots up, just off the vertical. They never, ever, disappoint. If I'd spent any effort at all I'd have understood long ago the true basis of my affinity for vultures. During our time at the resort my niece diligently recorded several gigabytes of digital stills and video, giving vultures their due. The single relaxed wing-stroke she captured on video shocked me, so little did I expect it. They are even lazier than I am, paragons of ergonomic economy, preternaturally sparing in their energy expenditure. My rule has always been that it's ridiculous to profess to have just one favorite wine or book or bird, but I'll make an exception for the vulture. |
