The Milstream

All my life whenever something really has troubled me or upset me I've gone to the same place. Somewhat deep in the woods behind a house I lived in a long time ago there is a stream. Its in Woodstock, past the Cuomo property and a couple miles upriver. We lived in that house when I was five after we had moved out of the tipi. I met Ayman and Aliya who were my best friends there, they lived below us and we spent hours of our lives playing Castlevania or Wizards and Warriors. Many snow days spent entirely staring at a television and mashing our thumbs frantically. When there wasn't snow on the ground we cut down saplings and made make-believe swords engraved with our initials.

Anytime I've peaked into the backyard of that house I am struck by how small everything is. As a young boy that backyard and the small thicket of woods behind it was a rich exciting world. Today I can see far past where I was allowed to explore as a kid. I remember walking along the frozen ice of the small stream in the winter. Anyways, back to where I go and why. Behind that small patch of woods there is a huge field, that extends far past our neighborhood to a place we called sled hill. I spent days in that field throwing boomerangs or wandering around looking up at the bright stars with my dad. Anytime there was a decent snowfall sled hill would be packed with everyone from the town.

Behind that large field was a soccer field where I started and finished my soccer career. At the age of six I was completely disgusted by parents yelling and screaming at us to kick a black and white ball in opposite directions on a field. I remember walking off in the middle of a game. I just didn't see the point. We had no idea what we were doing and the adults cared more than anyone on that field. Bordering the edges of that field was a thick forest. Paths led deeper into the woods toward the stream, along the way there were massive uprooted trees - which makes me think of my family covering ourselves with clay and posing in front of a massive tree's roots and my mom taking photographs. Eventually the path reaches the water but there is a steep drop and no safe way to get down to the rocks bordering the stream, there it splits in two and one can travel either to the right, upstream, or to the left, downstream. To find the particular place I prefer you take a right.

The forest floor is perennially covered in old pine needles. The path mostly follows the stream but draws closer and further from it occasionally. After awhile there is a tree that fell across the pathway. Someone cut a large section out of the middle and made each end of the tree into chairs for people to rest in. These makeshift seats are covered in carved initials of ancient young couples. The chair on the right side of the path is broken, its right armrest is missing. This landmark signals that soon it will be time to head to the riverbed. The river or stream itself is about twenty to thirty feet wide but not very deep. This of course depends on the rainfall. Sometimes I have visited only to find water dribbling between rocks. The stream itself is ancient. There are beautiful portions of the rock where the water has carved out pathways that run along the surface of these elevated portions of the riverbed. Small waterfalls appear here and there, or whirlpools where the water circles briefly before passing further downstream.

Generally here I would make my way further upstream balancing on rocks or walking along the trunk of fallen trees. I love the feeling of focus and calm as I try to jump from small rock to larger stone to the pebbles of the other side of the river. Sometimes I have to double back, but it reminds me of my fascination with mazes and labyrinths that I also had as a child. I would spend days navigating through the most complex labyrinths and then hours designing as intricate and massive a maze as I could painstakingly create. I think the reassuring thing about mazes is we know there is a way out.

I usually make my way upstream by crossing to the side most conducive for travel and keep my path on the stones of the river. The sound and smell of the water are really important to me. Moving water has always soothed me. After some time I reach where I think our swimming hole was. When I was young my parents made a small dam to trap water in a deeper portion of the river where the water ran slower. We would build rock sculptures and swim in the hot summer days. It always felt like my family was okay there. The water is cool and slightly green from the moss covering the stones underneath it. It is on the far side of the stream. I'm never positive if I've found the right spot but I don't fixate on it too much. A lot has changed over time, but the water is the same for the most part, and I walked on these very rocks long ago to find wherever our swimming hole might have been.

In my mental map of the river further up and on the side close to the path is where we released my father's ashes into the stream. I'm not sure if it was my mom or aunt's idea to bring him here but whoever thought of it, their reasoning was that this was somewhere that David (my father) had always been happy. Nature always seemed to help him fight his addiction. So after his funeral we had made our way here together, my sister, my mom, my dad's sister Robin and her husband Roger. The funeral was terrible. None of my father's true friends said a word about him. Everyone who was left had been stolen from and betrayed too many times to trust themselves to say only good. I had been estranged from him for three years when I found out he had overdosed and died. I thought about saying something but I couldn't. I didn't know what to say. I hated him for what he had done, and I hated him for leaving without fixing it. So instead of eulogies from people who knew him we had anecdotes from people who knew him as some sort of town character. I listened to how my dad had apparently always been reading and riding his bike through town with a smile on his face. Or how he was such a kind man. The truth was these people had no idea who my father was or what he was capable of. In all likelihood he didn't even like them.

My dad was always great with one or two people but anytime there was a party he was off alone. Maybe it was because he couldn't drink since my mom was watching but he never was gregarious. It also seemed very unlikely that all of these people had only seen my father do good things. He was an angry, violent drunk. He also was a heroin addict. The funeral was either an outright lie or a bunch of mindless strangers talking about someone they had made an acquaintance of. Being there was terrifying for me. I wondered what my funeral would look like and whether anyone would really be able to say anything true and wonderful about me, or if I would be alone with silent lost friends and vocal strangers. Or would anyone even be there? I didn't cry or feel like anything was resolved. There wasn't any release. I watched his girlfriend cry without any sympathy. She knew why we left him and yet she chose to love someone who was killing themselves.

Back to the ashes. I don't remember what we said but Emma, my Mom, Robin, Roger, and I all said something about my dad. For the first time in a long time I cried about him and felt relief. I was surprised by how much ash there was. It was stuck together and sealed in large plastic bags. We spread his ashes and left. All of the anger and disappointment I felt at his funeral was washed away. I felt like we had done exactly what he would have wanted and that for once we didn't have to worry about him.



I came back to that stream when I found out my girlfriend had cheated on me, I came back when I felt like I had failed and had no idea where to go, and every time I left feeling a bit better. Its a really special place to me but I have never shared it with anyone. I've had people who I technically could have shared it with but I've never brought anyone there. Maybe it is trust, but I also have felt an urge to bring someone important there, almost as though visiting this place would reveal something about me.