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That waterfall in Roslyn
I think back to my childhood: there was a little waterfall in a park in Roslyn I regarded as mine, a place that I would go on my bicycle for consolation, where I met what what was left of the spirit of nature on Long Island. It wasn't in my town, I didn't belong there, but belonging meant much less in those suburbs, unless one was caught up in high school rivalries. My town had been built on pastureland; it had some boulevards, but no parks to speak of, and certainly no running stream coming off a little hill. What I was looking for was the kami; I wanted to be in touch with something in nature more than the incipient sprawl -- even in those days when there were some open fields that I watched being filled in with housing developments. I wanted something like what our family found during our New Hampshire summers at Lake Mascoma, and it's not coincidental that I eventually moved to Maine.