Today I went for a run on the tow path. It’s a gravel path that runs alongside the Delaware Canal from Bristol, PA to Easton, PA (approx. sixty miles in length). I used to live in a neighborhood that backed up to the canal and tow path. Near one end of our neighborhood was a foot bridge that gave us access to the path. I parked in the old neighborhood and when I was done my run took a short walk around the horseshoe shaped street that my house was on. Aside from tearing out the bushes that separated our back yard from the neighbor’s yard behind us, the new owners haven’t done much to the exterior of the house. They did not replace the deck or the front steps – two repairs they noted as a way to knock the price down.
Yesterday, I went for a walk in Tyler State Park (I’ll probably go again today). Tyler’s another place from my past life here in Bucks County (where I’m spending a few days before hitting the road). I started visiting Tyler when I was in high school. I dated a girl who went to a school not too far away from the park. It was a place where friends had wedding photos taken. I’d occasionally meet up with friends and do short hikes there. On one amble early in our relationship, my ex-wife stepped in a pile of crap as we walked through a field. I nicknamed her shit-foot for a few weeks. It was meant to be more funny than cruel. For the brief time we were together, my ex-fiancee and I would sometimes take her dog there for long walks. As I took the long loop around the park a lot of these memories came back to me – not flooding back, but soft and ghost-like: the field with the crap in it, the corner where the dog stopped, rolled around and refused to walk any further, the rocks and bridge where pictures were taken and where I might have gone fishing once or twice as a kid.
I have a few more days here in Bucks County and a few more friends to see. I’ll probably go to some restaurants I used to like and maybe go to a bar or two that I used to frequent. I feel like there’s something pleasantly haunting to say about this familiarity, but I’m not quite sure what it is. It might have something to do with the wistful sensation of having once “owned” an experience or feeling and now approaching it with the borrowed confidence of an old-timer.
At one point while walking through the park, I felt drawn in by the smell of leaves and the feel of fall weather. It made me excited to find new places with which I hope to become equally familiar. Passing by an old root cellar that I had passed dozens of times on prior walks, I was left wondering what makes a place special. Is it the inherent qualities of the place (its natural beauty), or is it the memories we make and the depths that we come to learn and appreciate? I’m sure it’s a little of both but I suspect it’s the repetition that burns it into the craggy folds of our memories. I’ve seen these places in all their seasons and there’s a fondness in that type of knowing.