NYC by Wendy Rank
My son signed up for a camp.
In New York City.
The camp ran from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon, for five days. I was left to my own devices for hours each day.
I mean, have I died and gone to heaven?
Whole days by myself in New York City?
Well, maybe not a whole day. But a good chunk of one.
We start each morning on New Jersey Transit. It faithfully deposits us at Penn Station, twenty minutes late.
After walking my son to camp, I navigate the rivulets of festering sidewalk juice to a French café for an iced tea.
I know that sounds awful – fetid green-gray water trickling across my footpath.
But a few years ago I attended an outdoorsmen event with my husband. We camped.
In tents, which I don’t recommend.
I went on a hike with the other attendees, to learn how to forage for food. I only tagged along because, well, I’ve seen Castaway.
On that hike I almost stepped on a snake.
So the putrid water – if it even was water – was really much more appealing.
I drink my iced tea while I walk through sixteen blocks of skunky cigarette smoke, blasting horns, and trash so old, it’s melded with the sidewalk.
Yeah. I still prefer that to the snake. I even prefer that to the foraging hike because, really. I’m only interested in foraging out of fear of getting stranded on a deserted island.
But do you know what isn’t deserted?
New York City, my friends.
My destination each morning is the New York Public Library.
The library in this part of New York is divided into two buildings. The first is the Main Branch, which opened in 1911.
More importantly, it was used in the opening of the original Ghostbusters.
I spend the week holed up at an oak table, surrounded by marble and books, a fresco painted to look like the sky high above me.
On a tour of the library, I see a Gutenberg Bible and an original edition of the Bill of Rights, written in James Madison’s own hand.
What I do not see, sadly, is the ghost librarian from Ghostbusters.
But I also don’t see any snakes. So that’s something.
Across the street is the lending library, with seven floors of lending materials.
Seven.
I spend an hour wandering its stacks. Still no ghost, but there is a book tracking historical events in London – year by year – from 1065 through 1998. I spend Friday with that book, curled up in a chair, reverentially turning its pages.
You don’t find a gem like that on a foraging hike.
At two each day, I pack up and head to the smoothie shop two blocks away.
See, the trouble with camping is you’re limited to the food you bring.
So if – just for example – the ice melts in your cooler because the temperature in the blazing sun is eighty-eight degrees, your chocolate-covered donuts turn to mush.
Why are the chocolate-covered donuts in the cooler, you ask?
Well, because you don’t want wild animals to get to your donuts.
I mean, of course.
When your donuts turn to mush, and you’ve almost stepped on a snake, and you’ve slept in a tent for two days, and you have no idea what your eyeliner looks like because there are no mirrors when you camp, you’re done.
So you pack up the tent and hop in the car and drive an hour down the road to a gloriously air conditioned café, complete with indoor plumbing and breakfast sandwiches.
So you see why the smoothie shop in New York City is so much better.
Our travels are over. But I have an eye to next summer, another round of camp, and days lost in a library.
And no snakes.
