South Mountain Reservation Guided Hike

Join me at South Mountain Reservation on Saturday, June 4th for a guided hike in Millburn, New Jersey. Beginning on the Lenape Trail, this moderately difficult, scenic route offers sweeping views across Newark Bay to Staten Island and passes by Hemlock Falls before turning back to the Locust Grove parking lot. Get a little exercise, support a local park, and celebrate America's 200,000 miles of trails. Hikers should bring sturdy footwear and a reusable water bottle; granola bars will be provided. Please note that this event is rain or shine. 

For additional day trip ideas in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, pick up a copy of my new guidebook, Best Hikes Near New York City.

One Drop of Rain

When is someone going to re-popularize the waltz? It's such a listenable time signature, and yet based on the concerts I've seen lately, most drummers seem unable to play anything that doesn't involve a pounding 4/4 kick drum beat.

Last Friday night Marcellus Hall (of Railroad Jerk and White Hassle fame) took the tiny stage at Union Hall with a trio of Hostages. As the headlining act they didn't need to hurry to setup, and the small crowd was quite receptive, but when they began performing a short set of earnest songs it was as if their lives depended on it. I appreciated the subdued drumming for sure, but honestly, they had me at The First Line.

In my humble opinion, the most memorable song of the evening may have been a waltz entitled "One Drop of Rain," a somber melody that cleverly mimics the refrain with an instrumental passage in all but the first and last iterations. Mr. Hall's plaintive lyrics are matched by the timbre of his voice, and his band treads lightly as the story unfolds with each verse. The structure itself is simple and could be mistaken for something A.P. Carter might have composed if the grandfather of country had written about death and electronic communication instead of death and salvation. Whether or not you agree with the comparison, "One Drop of Rain" works as a piece of music. Fans of timeless songwriting, harmonica solos, and yes, slower tempos take note: his will be an album to watch for next year.

I Was Waiting To Be Struck By Lightning

Maybe it's all the rain. Or perhaps I'm actually a melodramatic person. I suppose there's also the possibility that I have a Scottish cell or two in my bloodline. Whatever the truth may be, I can't stop listening to Camera Obscura's new album, My Maudlin Career. Songs like "The Sweetest Thing," and "Swans" are fantastic, four-minute synopses of emotional devastation. With lines like "When you're lucid you're the sweetest thing/I would trade my mother to hear you sing," it's clear that lead vocalist Tracyanne Campbell endows her lyrics with a peculiar Glaswegian sensibility, but it's the rest of the band that really elevates the music from mere pop to sheer poetry.

What I find most appealing about this quintet is that so many of their compositions involve a solitary journey: in pursuit of a feeling, to reunite with or escape from a person. Others lament being alone somewhere, or express a desire for another place, another time. We travel for lots of different reasons, reasons that occasionally change mid-trip. It's curious to me that the experience itself can often produce feelings we didn't expect to have at all.

A couple of years ago, towards the end of a ten-day trek through Thailand, I found myself standing on Hat Rai Leh underneath limestone cliffs and an inky night sky that seemed to stretch infinitely westward. The friends I was traveling with had gone to bed, tired after an afternoon spent fighting the Indian Ocean's tides. Our Asian holiday had been thoroughly enjoyable thus far, and yet as my mind drifted off with the sound of the surf breaking at my feet, I was overcome with an intense feeling of loneliness. Suddenly I longed to see the girl I'd been dating for the past six weeks. And the longer I stood there on the beach, the deeper the pit in my gut became.

I could have used Camera Obscura then. Something with swooping strings, a throbbing bass, a bright horn part, and plenty of jangly tambourine to drown my mood with noise. A song to tell me I'd been struck by lightning.

Munro Bagging

Rainy days in June remind me of Scotland. Two years ago I had just returned from ten days in Caledonia and as I gaze out my window at the rain falling over Brooklyn right now, I'm reminded of the gray afternoon I spent struggling up Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak. Nevis also happens to be the tallest of the "Munros" (mountains with elevations topping 3,000 feet), and it's a climb made all the more challenging by the unpredictable nature of the weather at the summit.

To quote one of the safety notes printed on the Harvey map I bought at the tourist office in Fort William: "Always be prepared to turn back in the face of a sudden deterioration of weather." In hindsight I'm happy to have bagged this, the most famous of the Munros, but I can't say I enjoyed the hike all that much. The visibility went from bad to worse and what started as a light drizzle became a steady shower that left me soaked from head to toe. Which might have been tolerable had I not been greeted at the top by wind and snow. Mind you, I did pass a older gentleman in shorts and a running singlet on my way back down, but I'm pretty sure he was insane. In any case, my Scottish folly led to the single best night of sleep I've had in my life.

Of course some people are of the opinion that the real reason to visit Scotland isn't the hill walking, the haggis, the golf, or even the abundance of whisky distilleries. As I argued in an article for Transitions Abroad, it's the beer.