Roughly
mile marker 292.8.
New
York State Thruway.
East
bound.
Off
to the right, the ground begins to rise as a bit of a hill. And
just as the grass covered earth reaches its crest, there it is…
A
boat.
Yes.
A boat.
Now,
in fairness… Cross Lake… Seneca River… even the Skaneateles Creek…
are all in the vicinity. Depending on how ambitious we might want
to be in finding the source of this abandoned water craft, there
are places where a boat could be used without having to travel
multiple zip codes. It’s not like we have discovered a boat ditched
on along a major road someplace in New Mexico or West Virginia,
with thoughts wandering to places that might connect what a dinghy
and a cactus have in common.
This
lovely, small, watercraft has been there for a while. Not hours
or days. Longer. I don’t spot it every time I drive by, just because
there are times when the radio is more interesting then scanning
the side of the road, but I have seen it over several months.
Could very well have been there years for all I can confirm.
Hey,
if there is a river on the other side of the hill, perhaps this
is exactly where the people using it store the darn thing. I just
don’t know for certain.
Have
you ever been driving along and seen something so unexpected that
it just didn’t even connect at first? I’m talking about items
so odd, that you can’t even really process what you just saw until
after you’ve passed it. Like, a moose in the Florida Keys strange.
Santa driving the car next to you strange. Something not impossible,
but so unlikely that putting the pieces together takes your mind
several extra steps. Unlikely in a way that it creates questions.
Was
this boat being towed? Maybe it was on a trailer. A tire went
flat and some important decisions were made. Trailer was important,
boat was not. Unload and repair, stack and reload accordingly
leaving some items behind.
Were
one or two people trying to move from a creek to a river and gave
up? Or, perhaps the boat was being brought from a home to the
water and people just got tired.
I
don’t know.
But
each time I see it, I begin to wonder.
And
I can’t see over the top of the hill. Woods on the other side?
Might be. A bend in a river or a boat dock? Could be.
I’ve
moved all sorts of things in a car. Brought toilets and sofas
and extension ladders across state lines. Had people in a rest
area come over to take pictures of our dogs. Driven hundreds upon
hundreds of miles to help people move completely down the coast.
I know, firsthand, that there are plenty of ways for strange things
to arrive at strange places.
A
boat in upstate New York is hardly the same as a moose crossing
A1A between Islamorada and Marathon. Chances are good you’ve spotted
your own version of a boat. Or a moose. Hopefully you managed
to keep control of the car while your brain sorted it all out.