Woodland
The Encampment, Roosevelt Island. Photo by Nathan Kensinger. I first saw this place through the eye of a drone. Footage taken in summer, when the grass at the edge of the sea cliffs turns gold.
It was three panels of color on my screen, from left to right: blue, yellow, and green. Ocean, sand and field, forest. One long white line unfurled after another, over the blue to the yellow. And faded.
The marshy springs at the camp were mostly flats of cracked mud, so the largest body of water I’d ever seen was our rainwater tank. A dirty white goliath lifted up from the ground on squat legs.
Inland, where I grew up, a dry wash cut through the walls of a canyon. The trees around it were skeletons, the ghosts of cottonwoods and willows. Their roots were frail and had long since ceased to clutch the earth: we once pushed one over easily. But looking at the fallen tree, its broken roots delicate and spidery, we resolved never to push down another. Even standing there dead, they were good company.
Old timers called the wash a river. It too was a ghost.
My baby brother liked to run straight down the steep banks, feet sliding, spindly arms wind-milling as he sped up. I’d feel my stomach clutch, afraid that he might slip. Even small injuries could be bad at the camp. Now and then a nurse or a midwife came through, but we had seen their efforts fail.
Where we lived, everything was brown. I gazed at the colors of that footage on our device and realized place was all there was.
“From savannas and evergreen forests,” said the ad copy on the site, “to the soaring cliffs and rocky pinnacles of this unspoiled gem of the Pacific coast, clients are treated to a spectacular landscape. And beautiful wildlife roaming free.”
There were
