Childhood Perception

As a kid I had an obsession with dams and waterfalls. The Hudson Valley is ripe for them with many streams, creeks, lakes all leading to the Hudson. Up until my teens I spent a good deal of time in the Catskills and my father would take me to see various falls and dams. For adults the Niagara Falls is overwhelming but for a boy of 5 it is otherworldly.

Earlier today I paid a visit to one of the first dams I went to as child. There is a large pond/small lake in Tomkins Cove that has a dam at the south end of it. When I was younger that dam seemed so big but now it is tiny in comparison to all the other dams I’ve seen up close. I started to question if they did renovation on it to scale it down.

I think it was my childhood mind perceiving something bigger than me as being extraordinarily bigger than it actually is. During my walk this morning I took some pictures of the power lines and the hills behind them. Prior to them being surrounded by houses it was wooded area with an unpaved service road. The trails would ice over in the winter and would make for heartracing sledding on my Flexible Flyer. When I would gaze out through those frames of those power lines I’d see a city that wasn’t there. I kept begging my family to take me to it. Occasionally someone would drive me around that area but there would be nothing of what I saw there. My imagination was just running wild.