Stuart and I have a great tradition of summer adventures where we get in the car and drive someplace we heard about once, without spending too much time planning it out.
Yesterday found us driving to deepest Brooklyn (and a little Queens), wandering around the abandoned hangars and airstrips of Floyd Bennett Field and the deserted sand of Jacob Riis Park Beach. It was beautiful, exciting, relaxing, communing – all the marks of a good adventure.
A good friend of mine from Kenya once noted that there’s nothing wild left in the US – we pave and sign-post and renovate and captivate everything here. It’s mostly true. In a way, it’s the mark of a well-run country. Marnix was comparing it to Kenya, where whole swathes of the country exist outside any organized overseer not by choice, but by default.
Although FBF and Jacob Riis are both owned by the National Park Service, they had that feeling of graceful abandonment, of land and structures given over gently but irreversibly to nature. Hangars with broken ceilings and opportunistic vines. Cracked, sunken tarmac on wide, sweeping runways. Lots of little organizations taking over little parts of the Field for their own esoteric purposes – model planes, WWII aircraft enthusiasts, community gardeners. It reminded me of what Marnix said, and although for the most part I appreciate our ordered landscape, it was nice to break into a little abandoned corner of the world without anyone politely directing your attention.
The weather was showing its own independence, veering away from the glorious heat of July into an altogether more Septemberish day. It was windy and grey, with high, swift clouds and a damp chill edge. Not the sort of summer day people write home about. But for picture-taking, and fast driving, for crosswords and sandwiches on the beach and digging of toes into wet sand, for holding hands in companionable solitude, well, it was just what we needed.
And it didn’t even rain until the minute we got home, where we curled into the couch for quesadillas and Doctor Who while the storm raged on outside. A perfect adventure day all around.
click here to see the full set in regular old flickr.

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