They are not commensurate, or interchangeable. The barrel of a 5-inch 50-caliber pistol will reach a temperature of about 275 degrees if fired twenty-seven times in less than four minutes, give or take. A can of soup must be heated to 248 degrees Fahrenheit, more or less, in order to be called sterile. A gun is a metaphor for the damage the body cannot accomplish on its own. A soup can, in this account, is a metaphor for convenience and consistency, for flavor preserved by heat and lightlessness. Of course, the soup can is not a gun, though in this imagined moment it succeeds in delivering its own violence. The woman yells impatiently, “Go away!” and through a small opening in the doorframe she tosses a can of Campbell’s soup in my direction, just missing me. I apologize for the intrusion and turn to go. I say, “I thought you waved me up-” but this does not change her disposition. Perhaps I was mistaken in seeing this gesture as an invitation once I ring the bell, the woman shouts through the door to ask what I am doing here. Or let’s imagine that as I approach, I see a woman inside the house at the end of the dirt road pull a curtain back then beckon me to her door. Though she is well within her rights, let’s say the lack of nominal pleasantries still stings. I say, “Excuse me, I am lost.” That’s when the woman asks me to leave. When I approach the house, a woman opens the door and asks me what I want. But before I proceed, let me put the guns out of reach, allow the homeowner to pull some other object of mechanical invention from the cupboard. The next steps in this journey are speculative, ancillary gestures offered to further the example. I will run the risk of trespassing, an offense for which the severity of reproach will be decided by someone I do not know, who does not know me either.
If I cross the road, I will have plodded past the boundaries of my own momentary entitlement. Because this world is both familiar and unfamiliar, the words that come to my mind are open and free. The gentle Catskill mountains roll and tumble into blue-green valleys beneath the shadows of clouds behind it. In the distance I see a modest white farmhouse with its lawn of low-cut native grasses. I look at the blacktop road that separates the properties. I also know that much can be gained from changing one’s perspective, from going forward without knowing exactly where one is headed. Here’s what I worry about: What if I get lost? To whom can I turn to find assistance or direction? Where might I be allowed to rest as I make my way? As much as I want to embrace the walker’s right to roam, I know that to poke about or meander in unfamiliar lands comes at great personal risk. Just as I suspect some people who live in the country fret over being subjected to violence when they come to the city, violence is on my mind when I come into the country. They complicate my understanding of neighborliness and community, especially in places new to me. Together they relocated to Wisconsin in 1831.īecause this is the United States of America, guns remain an unresolved factor in the history of the landscape, including the vista I saw during my walk on that hill above the farm.
In the early 1800s, after centuries of violence, the Munsee sought to make a home in new lands jointly with the Stockbridge, a neighboring indigenous people. Another dispute along the nearby Esopus River in 1656 was hastened to its end by the spread of smallpox among the Munsee, leaving the surviving community at just a few hundred people. While the Dutch used muskets to fight, the Munsee had been denied access to them. That conflict had a lasting impact on the Munsee’s security in this territory. The land I was walking on originally belonged to the Munsee Delaware, who suffered nearly two centuries of assaults by settlers, including Kieft’s War, or the Wappinger War, fought from 1643 to 1645 with the Dutch. These two homesteads appeared peaceful, but either one of them might have contained guns. Looking across it, I noticed another white farmhouse set far back from the road. As an invited guest at this farm, I felt emboldened to walk in any direction-that is, until I encountered the blacktop road that also served as the property line. It was a particularly cold and wet spring, and the new grass flickered in a vital green, as if lit by the ground itself. Below, vegetable gardens with spoon-leafed lettuce and thin stalks of new onion unfurled in the mud. The pale blue sky was hazy, so the outline of the mountain range softened against it. From atop the hill, I got a good view of my friend’s large white farmhouse and its barn below. Late in the spring of this worrisome year I went for a walk in the countryside of upstate New York.
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