OMG It's a Winter Wonderland

Who knew that a longtime Christmas-disliker could have his heart warmed by the snowy, unprepossessing Yule celebrations of a small town on a bluff above the mighty Hudson closer the the Capital than the City?

It happened last night.

The small town--a very, very tiny City in fact--had its annual Christmas Walk last night and nature obliged by lofting great big white flakes down upon the longish Main Street throughout the event, lending it an air of postcardlike perfection. But this small town, this very tiny city, is not just a bypassed burg full of hicks and nincompoops. No, it happens to contain a fair amount of progressives, certified members of the intelligentsia, hip refugees from senseless high rent, and quirky Hudson Valley operatives who've been strumming against the machine for decades.

So the celebration was a happy mix of Santa and odes to the more ancient, more Pagan gods. By this I mean there was not just a teeny tiny parade with Santa sitting atop the back of a Mercedes Benz convertible, but also a dancing Scheherezade in a shopwindow; and in another window, a girl with a dress that had a puppet theater attached to the front of it in which was performed a cloth and stuffing version of the Can-Can. Hot chocolate was served by young folk with multiple piercings; a man walked on stilts and wore a top hat. In the large display window of a pricey mid-century antique store a pair of middle-aged men held forth on fiddle and guitar, one in top hat and tails, the other in a pony-tail almost certainly of Off-the-Pigs vintage (are top hats making a comeback among a certain brand of hipster?) A more traditional hair salon (unforgiveably named "Mane Street") featured a singer of doo-wop and Elvis and gave trinkets to the smaller celebrants.

City Hall had Santa sequestered somewhere warmly inside and the sidewalk was thick with local folks getting their young their rightful meet and greet with the jolly fat man who may well bring them gifts a couple of weeks from now. Bundled brightly in layers of wintry Wal-mart gear, the kids were noticebly asparkle and even the littlest, whom one must assume really had no idea why they were where they were, seemed justifiably amused and many were obviously smitten by the gently falling snow.

There were no chain-store sponsorships nor glad-handing commercial sycophants to mar the small majesty of the tableau.

I bought a handful of old magazines at my favorite store, which seems to be an emporium of all things odd and inexplicable and that plays acid jazz rather loudly, and had some hot chocolate and then went home for dinner. I felt as if, for once, I at least understood why a celebration of the season, well and duly constituted, might be at some point uplifting to a spirit already weary of the dark season upon whose chilly climes we must now embark.

PS there was a hot dog stand that didn't get much business and I think it was the snow. Snow-covered barkers are not much of a draw it would seem. Better that he would sell kettle-corn or elephant-ears or something else already puffy or powdered?

Of Driving and the Original Wilderness

I am a train lover. I am an airline-intense-disliker (especially of the constitution-violating security measures they employ). I am an avid city-walker and an enthusiastic, if occasional country-hiker.

Perhaps it is a surprise to hear that a person (me) living in a place where one needs no car loves--truly loves--driving. Perhaps it is because that person doesn't ever really need to drive? And never has commuted by car in his life (except for a grim and thankfully brief period in his teens, intra-suburb,"carpooling" in the back seat of an AMC Gremlin, an experience so dispiriting it may have been life-changing)?

But I do love driving. And I can think of no more act quite as assuredly enthralling as pressing down on the gas, rounding a curve, coming upon a new vista, passing some relative slowpoke perhaps, and feeling quite in control and on top of the world. I like to think of myself as a "good driver". I don't do stunts. I don't speed. I use my mirrors. I am respectful of other cars, inanimate objects, the odd small animal and especially pedestrians. I am probably a regular goody-two-shoes of a driver. But none of that innate caution detracts from the feeling of power and ascendancy that comes from moving at speed through a gorgeous landscape--protected from the elements, The Basement Tapes playing off the iPod--I become misty at the thought.

Then there is the choice of venue. Perhaps a tour through the clamor and waste of, say, southern Nassau County, or to spin oneself endlessly in circles around the magnificent, vast parking lots of the Paramus Mall would not afford the same exaltation. But I do a fair amount of my driving in the storied, gorgeously well-endowed, quasi-rural and sophisticated Hudson Valley--a geography that has certainly got its due historically but remains underreported as one of the world's Great Locations.

The Hudson Valley is America's first "wilderness"--wilderness being a concept that requires a non-wilderness (and in this case that would be the million-footed beast clutching that last Palisade of the valley before its great river washes out past the skyscrapers and into the bay and the bight and ultimately the sea). It was sold to the masses cramped in city-quarters a such, and so many carriages and trains and parkways endeavored to take them there over the course of, say, the time just before the Civil War to the time just after Woodstock, that it became after a time overlooked and came to be seen as "your father's paradise" and therefore kind of dowdy and maybe even creepy. Certainly the dozens of abandoned, wretched-looking tourist shacks that cluster near some of the interior roadways do nothing to dispel the notion it may have been, for a time, pretty much a lowlife destination and kind of creepy.

I'm here to tell you today that it's not anybody's paradise, but that it's got as much charm and intrinsic beauty (and as many great restaurants) as any richly endowed valley in any part of the world. The other day I drove up River Road on the eastern side of the Hudson north of Rhinebeck (a very winning little crossroads town in and of itself) and was astonished at the autumn finery in the trees, the ancient, native architecture of the houses nestled in crooks of the valley, the way the road wound about through woods and over streams, and at last how it ended up in the entirely underrated river town of Hudson, New York, a very small city whose main street happens to be a study in American architecture from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century and is lined with stores and restaurants of a quality and sophistication more to be expected in urban centers like Tribeca and Soho.

There is a long story waiting to be written about how the Hudson Valley now beckons the driver to its winding, shady roads and tempts the driver with succulent feasts at charming restaurants owned by chefs that might as well have made their mark in Manhattan. But that would be a much longer story than this format will tolerate.

Let me just say it again: a) I love driving and b) I especially love driving in the Hudson Valley.