Love Exists in Hunter, NY
Bum Diary spent July 4th in the American Nothingness
WORDS BY Christopher Buchanan
IMAGES BY Johnathan Arellano & Max Van Hosen
7AM—Irritated, sluggish, and more than a little underfed, I haphazardly tossed an incoherent collection of clothing items and toiletries into a suitcase. It was on this (far too) early morning that my fellow residents of 242 Parkside Avenue and I were tasked with boarding the Q-train from Brooklyn to Port Authority Bus Terminal in hopes of making the 104 bus northbound to Hunter, NY. My roommates and myself had deservedly garnered the reputation of being habitually behind schedule, having been more than late to a number of get-togethers and meticulously plannedvents. It was for this reason that our other fellow travelers, Eth, Pierce, and Max continually and repeatedly made us aware of our 8:44AM deadline.
It’s pertinent to note that I found myself in this state of irritation due to several reasons of which I find, upon writing this piece, to be comically insignificant. Foremost, I found myself upset with the planning (or lack thereof) put into this trip.
I am not typically one to complain about the lack of a concrete plan riddled with fleshed-out details and responsibilities for each partaking individual. In fact, I am the first to complain in a scenario in which any plan is asked to be explained further than a simple, “Let’s do it.” However, my level of frustration stemmed from the fact that I was asked to pay a measly $60 share for transportation on top of the $130 asked of me for our lodging despite being unaware of any plan 24 hours prior. In hindsight, I have found (in the same manner I always do after being forced to free myself of any amount good ol’ bones) that the monetary value of the journey would go on to become the most insignificant aspect of the trek to Hunter, with the dollar amount and my mood only being noted due to their importance in the process of writing this piece.
Another contributing factor to my less-than-stellar mood was the inherent wear-and-tear placed on my body after days of plane rides and overstimulating excursions through the city. This trip to Hunter was to take place only three days after my arrival into the five boroughs. It was not against my will that I experienced this strenuous, taxing travel. New York City had offered to me a seemingly endless labyrinth utterly devoid of silence and solitude—an experience I had desperately longed for throughout my 21 years of living on the opposite end of God’s country.
My place of birth and, for lack of a better word, home had always been in a lowly valley located in the Southern edges of the great Californian state colloquially referred to as the Inland Empire: Hemet, CA — and an empire it was not. For Hemet was, as were several of the other cities in the region, widely known as one of the most miserable, deplorable, and (socioeconomically) valueless stretches of dirt and bramble to be quickly sped through and forgotten about on one’s journey from the other forty-nine to see the state’s advertised landmarks as told through its astounding vistas and breathtaking coasts. Crime dominated our news, unemployment (and its subsequent and inevitable descent into poverty) dominated our statistics. It was a place where hope lit its last cigarette before lying down to pass in the scorching sun of the California desert. Having grown up in this particular stretch, I constantly found myself dissatisfied with the speed and quality of life, hopelessly aiming for something bigger, something better.
Which is exactly how I found myself, a soon-to-be-graduate struggling to pay for basic necessities, scrounging $256 together to book a one way flight to the insomniac’s city. It was a desire to experience anything other than the impoverished suburban doldrums that had plagued all of my known existence up to that point. And, despite my physical frustrations, New York City had delivered to me exactly what I had been searching for. A hectic, anxiety-inducing, and beautiful never-ending sprawl of skyscrapers and bodegas, containing one of the most colorful casts of characters this country has to offer within a 468 square mile stretch.
Being asked to not only leave a city that had completely enamored me with its lotus-esque qualities, but to also fork over some currency to do so en route to a town unfit for comparison located 3 hours north of it, is exactly why I found myself in such a down state on the first morning of our journey. To be removed from sanctuary brought me immeasurable dissatisfaction—a dissatisfaction I did not attempt to conceal well from my fellow travelers.
Grumbling my way onto the Q-train, muttering my frustration under hushed breaths on the short walk to Port Authority, and groaning upon presenting my ticket for the 104 bus to the polite attendee, I begrudgingly made my way to the far end of the bus, hoping to be left mostly alone lest my friends desired to become undeserving victims by the evil individual who takes control of my thoughts when in an agitated state.
It was under those flickering fluorescent lights of the 104 bus that my compatriots and I found ourselves shifting in the less-than-comfortable seats of our inglorious public transportation—a misfit collection of varyingly eccentric individuals, bound for a destination with no real idea as to what the journey would–or should—hold between start and end. Yet, upon exiting the bustling concrete jungle and entering into the gorgeous, lush greenery of the areas of New York not followed by “City,” I found my dissatisfaction almost immediately dissipating.
As an infatuated onlooker at scenic landscapes, particularly that of the green variety, I could not help but find myself gazing out of the water-stained, poorly maintained windows of the 104 bus to ensure I took mental note of what I was experiencing through my eye’s centerpoint and peripheries. Endless stretches of trees in the rolling hills and towering mountains that housed them, proudly displaying themselves to me through the glass. Tens of thousands of paintings wishing to present themselves to me in such a way that there would appear an illusion of motion, affirming their existence in the very same world I lived in.
After three enamoring hours of barreling through the gorgeous vegetation, intermittently stopping to pick up various other travelers—parents with children, elderly women, and twenty-somethings clearly on their way to music festival—my troupe had finally found ourselves in the very place I had unfairly decided I would harbor disdain for; Hunter, NY.
A town of a mere 3,035, Hunter was seemingly indifferent to the turbulent, inevitable shift of culture between now and 1955. It was Americana in every sense of the word. American flags waved, elderly folk took their morning walks, all while an eerily deafening silence acted as the soundtrack for this patriotic village, save for the babbling of the creek running along the town’s main (and really, only) traversable street. Enormous forested mountains blanketed the cozy town, contributing to a sense of isolation from modern life that I had never truly experienced before. This was backcountry.
Yet, the most distinct aspect of Hunter was its absolutely miserable weather conditions during our time of visit. I have always taken a liking to colder climates, finding myself infatuated with the sense of cleanliness they bring. Hunter was the absolute antithesis of my preferred conditions. It was hot—brutally so. Even worse, the heat brought with it an unimaginable level of humidity that caused each and every article of clothing to stick to my body in an instant upon leaving the 104 bus. Any bodily movement increased this wet heat, making our mile-long walk to the lodging all the more grueling.
Acting as our salvation from the despotic heat was the lodging, a little home nestled directly on the banks of the town’s creek. The exterior presented a perfect snapshot of life here—calm, mundane, remote. An exterior emitting a feeling not all unlike the same one a home in Hemet exudes. The interior resembled that of a lake cabin, decorated with various trinkets and chatchkes seemingly collected in decades much farther away from this one. A favorite of mine was the miniature pack of Marlboro Reds that sat with other miniature branded items, lining the entire shelf end-to-end. Both aspects of the home culminated in a profoundly strange sense of nostalgia in me. I always had an affinity for cabin-styled homes, so I felt a unique sense of comfortability throughout my time there.
However, upon our arrival, we were struck with one of the most perplexing questions a group of travelers can ask upon arriving at their destination: what do we do? The lodging was lovely, yes, but there was no real plan set in place as to what we would do once we got there. I, like the others, found myself roaming through the house, striking up a couple of small conversations here and there, but ultimately not coming up with much of something to do.
My personal answer to this question differed to that of my compatriots, who either sat to enjoy a film in the home’s bone-chilling air conditioning or strolled back-and-forth along our plot’s access to the local creek. Although the weather was far from ideal and the fact that our lodging was separated from civilization (and more importantly, food) by a good mile, I had decided that going on walks into town would be the cure to my utter (for lack of a better word) boredom. Usually embarking on my miniature journeys in the morning to escape the weather as much as one could in the humid foothills, I found that my solitary steps provided me a great sense of comfortability and helped satiate my desire for something.
On these walks, I found both myself and my mind wandering. The sights were beautiful—a town shrouded in dense trees, nestled between the mountains that housed them. A place where nature desires to repossess what was built on the land, decades before. Small stretches of homes loosely designated as neighborhoods were split by spans of nature desiring to overtake the poorly paved roads. I strolled along these rural, mundane streets and their surrounding forests. I ventured into vintage stores containing artifacts from ages even older than that of our lodging’s decorations. I offered a few nods of greeting and an occasional “hello” to passersby. I was very evidently not a member of the community, but that never seemed to detracts from the warmth of their greetings.
On my daily walks, I came across two sightings of which brought me drastically opposing feelings. The first of which was the extremely out-of-place cafe near the town’s main plaza. A millennial-owned and tumblr-inspired ambiance dominated both the interior and exterior of the cafe, whose customers were aged far lower than the typical resident of Hunter. A room of thirty-somethings conversing about their careers in a space that felt like it was directly ripped from the beaches of Santa Monica. I found the cafe to be completely at odds with the general feeling and spirit of Hunter. Rather than acting as a loving reflection of days-gone-by as the rest of the town and its decor dutifully does, this particular cafe seemed to embody all of the facets of modern life that I struggle to care for. The clean and minimal aesthetic, the overpriced food and drink selection, as well as the general sense of vanity these career-centered discussions would exude all contributed to my sense of unease and anxiety. The cafe, like I, felt out of place and time.
The other sight I encountered, however, would go on to become my sole motivation for writing this piece. On one particular morning (the coldest one I had experienced on the trip), I found myself straying away from the roads and further into the forests, hoping to surround myself with dense trees and give myself a feeling of being lost. In this maze of greenery, I stumbled upon what I would like to refer to as a moment in time by chance. By slipping on a moist rock and into an opening in the forest of trees, I happened upon one of the most beautiful and unexpected moments I had been fortunate enough to experience in my life up to this point.
After gathering myself and getting a quick survey of the new landscape, my eyes widened in disbelief at a pair of two young deer standing before me. This moment felt like it lasted hours, my eyes locking with the deer. It was not a tense moment for either party, but a peaceful one. An exchange of stares and an apparent understanding between each other that nobody meant the other any harm. I had never realized that throughout my life, I had never seen a deer, let alone been so close to one. It utterly shocked me into a frozen state, with the only movement in my body culminating in tears flowing from my eyes. It was at this moment that I felt the entire trip and journey to Hunter was worth my time, Q Train and Port Authority included. Never had I been so profoundly moved in an instant. After standing in disbelief for what felt like hours, I nodded at the two young creatures before quietly and calmly continuing on my journey into the forest. I had no desire to disturb their peace, especially when I was the guest of the house.
It was a chance encounter that resulted from my decision to take these walks on a whim, a decision made in a manner not too unlike my last-minute decision to come to both New York City for the summer and Hunter for the trip. With these decisions came extreme bouts of anxiety and worry as to whether I was putting myself in a place to succeed, or even find inner peace. In my mind, it was the world’s way of rewarding me for my risky life decisions— a snapshot of the beauty life has to offer when you take a chance. A snapshot so convincing in nature that it brought me to tears.
After this seemingly fated interaction, I opted to join my cinephile friends and creek enjoyers in whatever tasks they found themselves up to. The rest of our trip to Hunter was filled with many laughs and fond times experienced by my friends and I, but nothing has remained with me so clearly as my run-in with the deer. Stuffing this interaction in my back pocket and collecting my belongings strung about the lodging, I joined my fellow travelers in boarding the 104 bus to Port Authority and walking to the Q Train, finally finding myself back at home–242 Parkside Ave. The journey home did not contain the surprise the journey there did, but the sheer beauty of it remained nonetheless.
“A beautiful confusion.” A phrase I had so badly wished would capture the feelings that arose within me upon my exiting of Hunter, NY. Yet, within me, I found only a profound sense of beauty—sans confusion. The trip delivered to me a sense of inner peace and comfort along with a newfound confidence in my recent life decisions that I could have never predicted it would. It is not hard to believe that this trip will stick with me for a long time, and the experiences I had will reveal themselves in retelling later in life.