Several years ago I visited Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts for the first time in decades. My sister, her husband, and daughter slowly inspected each and every painting, while I sought out Northeast classics such as Fitz Hugh Lane’s OWL’S HEAD, Winslow Homer’s THE FOG, and Childe Hassam’s BOSTON COMMONS AT SUNSET. I have admired these iconic images for ages. It was good to be close to them, as was seeing my family members out of the corner of my eye. Familiarity breeds more familiarity and I am a native New Englander.
A few years later my producer and I traveled north from New York to work on his lakeside house outside of Springfield. After New haven we detoured off the route to visit East Rock, a basalt traprock promontory north of New Haven. A tall stele tops the park. Eric and I had driven by this monument hundreds, if not thousands of times after our move to New York City in the 70s. Atop the butte many Mexican families celebrated the sunny weather, even though one side of the base was dedicated to the American victories against Mexico in the 1840s. The other side were dedicated to the soldiers and sailors of the American Revolution, and the Civil War.
“See that bump on the far horizon?” Eric pointed to a blue hill beyond the farthest ridge.
“Yes.”
“That’s Mount Holyoke.”
“I haven’t been there since the early 60s.” My father had taken our family there on a Sunday drive.
“We’ll go there this afternoon.” Eric motioned for me to get back in his car. His house was another hour away and we had plans on eating at Crazy Jake’s. The family restaurant in his hometown had great fried clams and that compliment comes from a man raised on fried bi-valvals from Wollaston Beach.
Lunch was delicious. The clam bellies were fat and succulent. Eric’s house was a minute away from Jake’s. We unloaded the van and I pulled weeds from the front lawn. The backyard was overrun by knee-high dandelions. Eric mowed the grass and after an hour of landscaping we had tamed nature.
“How about that trip to Mount Holyoke?” I threw the piles of weeds into the woods.
“I have a few things to do on the internet.” His video production company was a non-stop enterprise. “We’ll go around 4.”
“Fine with me.” I went outside to chop down a tree shattered by a winter storm. A long branch endangered passers-by. The ax was dull, but my heavy swing hewed a gut in the log and within a half-hour I shouted ‘timber’ to the bugs. The limb fell several feet from me with a threatening thud. Sweat stained my shirt and I dragged the branch to the wood pile, ready for a beer.
“What was that noise?” Eric didn’t lift his head from the computer.
“Chopped down that hanging branch.” A real woodsman could have accomplish the task within five minutes, still I was proud of my effort. I had all my fingers and toes and hadn’t thrown out my back.
“Give me another ten minutes and we’ll head over to Mount Holyoke.”
Fifteen minutes he drove us through the verdant green woods of Western Massachusetts and I listened to his recounting tales of his youth. The park was open to visitors and we wound up the narrow road to the summit teased by ever-scenic vistas of the Connecticut River Valley. Eric parked the van beneath the mountain house, which was surrounded by a chain-link fence for renovation. A path led to the northern side of the summit and we climbed to granite slab.
“That’s the oxbow.” Eric pointed to a gentle loop in the river.
“I know this view.” I had seen it recently.
“Thomas Cole painted it in the 1840s.”
“The View from Holyoke.” I had stood before his arcadian tableau at the MFA. His viewpoint was more to the east, but recognizable from my vantage. “For a second I thought it was a deja-vu. I once had a similar one in the South of France.”
“Where?” Eric had family in the Luberon. His father had met his mother in Normandy a week after D-Day.
“Perpignon.” I had spent the summer of 1989 with my faux-family on the Cote Vermillon. “I was writing a collection of short stories there. My cousin and I drank in various towns up and down the coast. We gambled in Spain and ate great meals in Sete. One afternoon Jacques said that he had a favor to ask me. I said, “What?” and he replied that his wife wanted us to attend a classical quartet concert in a mountain monastery. I hated that type of music. Always thought it was music for when the king sat on the toilet. Jacques felt the same way, but demanded on our blood that I accompany him. I agreed and that evening we drove up into the Pyrenees under a glorious sky. Turning a corner I spotted the monastery atop a hill and was staggered by a tidal wave of a deja vu. I had been here before. Physically. Jacques asked what was wrong and I told him about my reincarnation. He laughed and explained to everyone in the car about my deja vu before explaining that half this monastery had been sold to an American, who planted the twin at the end of Manhattan.”
“The Cloisters.” The renaissance edifice was a highlight to everyone driving up the Hudson.
“One in the same.”
“So no deja vu.”
“No and I guess none today.” I couldn’t recall the last time that I had experienced that mystical sensation. Maybe I’ve seen too much over these last six decades to be surprised by deja trop vu, but I doubt it and my eyes stripped away the trees and the laces on roads to time-travel back to the view of Mount Holyoke seen by Thomas Cole. It was easy once I took off my glasses. Without them everything was a blur and painters back then always painted a blur.
Just the way I like it.
