After ten weeks of staying home, I finally had the chance to get away from the city – if only for a day. A colleague of mine got back to New York City after isolating with her family in Vermont and she offered to take two other colleagues of mine, my girlfriend, and I on a trip with her car. We prepared a potluck lunch and a few beers in the morning and off we went to Tuxedo Park – that is roughly an hour’s drive from the city.
It felt so liberating to leave the city behind and to witness our surroundings turn from the stark and scattered cityscape into friendly small towns and lush woods, looking through the window. After we parked the car at the Tuxedo train station and gathered our backpacks for the trip, we set off to the park. We followed a trail that was supposed to take us to a lake after a short hike, around an hour and a half. Well, after more than two hours, there was no lake in sight and we started to suspect that we were on the wrong trail – some of us wanted to chill and drink beer already – but we took a vote to continue down the road. Finally, after three hours of hiking and asking around, we arrived at Lake Skenonto, a quiet lake surrounded by trees and with barely any hikers around.
We found an even rock by the edge of the lake and sat down for our potluck lunch and the well-deserved beers. The sun was out, and while suntanning, we looked at the shimmering surface of the lake and enjoyed the sounds of nature. It was quite relaxing after getting used to the sound of sirens. With our nerves calmed, we headed back and luckily found a shorter path back to the car. Heading back to the city, we felt recharged and ready for another week.
