Seeking in the Sylvan Glen
Here is the short version and the part everyone cares about: Last October, Sage, my rescue Labrador, and I went to the dog park in Yorktown, New York, for a late afternoon romp and a short hike. I took out my phone to take a picture of a huge beautiful rock, and then we headed along the trail back to the car. I reached into my pocket to check the time on my phone, no phone. We doubled back as dusk quickly fell, and we got lost in the suburban forest for over an hour, couldn’t find the phone, but eventually found the parking lot, returned the next morning and found the phone. Yes, I found my phone.
Sylvan Glen is a nature preserve near Mohegan Lake in northern Westchester. Six miles of woodland trails on the site of a 19th century quarry satisfy my pursuit of peace in nature, historical intrigue, and outdoor exercise. The great pieces of granite are mostly roughhewn from gigantic boulders, but some are measured slabs with score marks, destined for some long ago construction site, the old cables and pulleys laying on the ground, the rough means of delivery. The trails are notoriously twisty with many colored medallions. Red, orange, and pink look alike, blue, purple, and green intertwine at short intervals, yellow and white connect the necklace. Over the summer, I pledged to memorize favorite paths, but instead regularly lost my compass bearings, had to take the paper map out of my pocket to find the way back. Sage the hiker, as I call her, sniffs along the trails usually leading the way, another reason why we got lost so often. She pulls me along as I get lost in thoughts and enthralled by the sight of the old quarry remains and the stunning old growth forest. She likes the hiking, but prefers the dog park near the entrance.
Snake Hill is barely a half mile from the dog park—white to yellow to red back to yellow, a climb along green, back to yellow, a moment of pink, back to white. The ground was just as colorful with leaf duff of red, yellow, and brown soft and thick and wet from rain, making the trails hard to see. As it grew dark, we headed back to the car, or so I thought. As I look at the map now, it seems we walked not yellow to pink to white but yellow to pink to blue, across the pipeline ravine, which is when I knew were going in the wrong direction. I looked at the sky to judge how much daylight was left, then reached into my pocket to check the time on my phone. Panic, no phone, now too dark to see the map clearly, only instinct and sense of bearing would get us back to Snake Hill, find the phone, and get home. So practical, yet I had no idea which way was which and ever-confident Sage galloped along, taking us even further into the Glen. It was suddenly dark, we stopped, and succumbed to fear. I’d like to say that I called out to Silvanus, god of the woods, to point us in the right direction. The woods that provide such solace became eerie and we needed guidance from above. Instead, I said “Sage, what the hell are we doing?” I couldn’t call anyone and there was no one else around. Trouble in paradise.
In our dog training, the cardinal rule is that I am the pack leader. I had clearly failed the human training by letting Sage lead. We sat on a rock and I said to her, “I’m in charge and we are bushwhacking to the light, we have to find the light.” I swear she rolled her eyes. She pulled us back onto the trails and I pulled her back into the bush, looking everywhere on high for light that would indicate houses or roads on the edge of the preserve. Within a quarter mile or so, it came, a bright glow to the right. We trudged through the mucky leaves, over fallen trees, into puddles, toward the light. The glow grew stronger, immensely bright, so curious, surely not a house or a road, illuminating the sky. We were in brushy plants, prickles sticking to my pants, and then I lost my footing, slipped and recovered. What is underfoot? We paused, I looked down: hundreds of golf balls. Dream analysis connects golf balls with the need to relax, slow down, focus, small insignificant things getting in the way of bigger vision. Real life connects golf balls to sport and yes, yikes, we were at the receiving end of a driving range. Crack, I heard a club hit a ball, and then yelled, “Sage, we’re in the line of fire!” We scrambled back into the forest and continue to mush our way, with terrific alertness, toward the sound of the balls. We emerged again out of the dark just near the driving platform, where 4 men were reaching into buckets of balls and bags of clubs for an evening of sport. Sage and I climbed the side stairs, startled the first golfer, smiled, put on my COVID mask, and looked for the door inside.
Two young men greeted us with “Ma’am no dogs allowed.” I explained that we had been lost in the forest, and had no idea where we were. “At the driving range,” said one of them explaining the obvious. “But, where are we?” I asked. The specific answer I sought evaded them since they knew exactly where we were and I seemed a lunatic. A lost woman with a dog in an obvious place is still lost. That pretty much sums up the entire experience. We were seeking the light, trying to find our way home, ended up in an oasis on the edge of a sylvan glen, and had no idea where we were. Who said “wherever you go, there you are?” Confucius, Jon-Kabat Zinn, Willie Nelson?
As it turned out we were walking distance to the car, if a frightful half-mile walk along an unlit road with cars coming fast. We darted on and off the road, running the final leg of our journey, or perhaps just the beginning. The warmth of the car, a bottle of water, dog treats felt like rescue. When we returned the next day, just after sunrise, Sylvan Glen was bright and welcoming, I found my phone lying in the leaves by retracing our steps back to the spot on Snake Hill recorded in my image of the boulder. The phone now barely mattered. We set out on a long morning hike, never once looking at the trail medallions or the map, and paused when we saw the driving range in the distance. What was so clear and mundane in the day had been so challenging and confusing in the night. Let there be light.
