Rafael Blunt Walk

On this rare occasion I found myself headed uptown, past my usual haunts in The Heights and Dyckman, I had my sights set on the Bronx. I rode the 1 train all the way up to its last stop, 242nd street up by Riverdale, and of course when I hit the road I usually got a few joints tucked away somewhere. Once I got off the train onto the elevated platform I was slapped with the sharp cold Bronx wind against my face even through my mask. I swear if I wasn’t on a mission for this walk I would’ve turned around with the swiftness, but I pushed forward. As I got out of the station, to the left was the entrance of Van Cortlandt park, New York City’s third largest park and some old smoking grounds for Rafael ‘s college years. As I walked in the park there was a track & field with large beige stadium seating along one end of the track and a baseball field on the other. I spent many times here on the 50 yard line of the field, paranoid as hell that someone would pop up on me, or worse yet, a Bronx raccoon making a cameo. It was daylight so this time around it was pretty emptied out, so it made for the perfect place to find a nook and spark up. As I tucked into a corner to light my J, the wind came back with a furious vengeance blowing out any chance of me lighting it so I had to find another crevice to tuck myself into. After a couple of more tries I ended up getting the cherry going.

I pushed passed the track along a quiet wooded path that led me to this huge clearing, which is usually occupied by picnics and games of baseball but today flocks of geese had the greens reserved. During the summers, my best friends and I would get lawn chairs and plant them dead center of the field to smoke and drink till the early hours of the morning and it always served as a great spot for stargazing. Now behind the clearing is what looks like woods that lead to what looks like a “choose your own adventure” novel, so I randomly take one of the paths and I end up near a beautiful lake. It was full of turtles hanging out on some sunny rocks gathering up what had to be the only warmth in the whole park.

After watching the real life Donatellos and Michelangelos for a while, I found myself on a fenced off trail, now how I got there is another question entirely, but I was walking for quite a while puffing on my J and all I saw were trees upon trees and a lot of construction gear left out on both side of the trail. At one point I finished my joint and I thought I was lost since my phone couldn’t pick up my location but there were only two directions, the one I came from and forward on this endless trail. I had to know what was at the end, even if it was boring at least I could say I saw it. So I walked for 30 more minutes and ended up face to face with a chain linked fence (one I couldn’t get over this time) and my phone pin pointed me in Yonkers, I literally walked out of the city limits without even noticing it.

I Immediately turned around and braced myself for the hour walk back to civilization, all the while bumping Marvin Gaye music to keep my soul warm.

Once I started to see what looked like familiar ground, I must have taken a wrong turn cause I started ascending into the woods. Me being So fed up with the whole situation, I lit my next Joint and followed where the park wanted to lead me. As the weed was hitting me, I stumbled on to a small graveyard, with these creepy ornate black gates with a plaque dedicated to the Van Cortlandt family for which the park was named. They owned the property from the mid 1600s till about 1890 when it was known to New York as Park Land, with a stipulation that they’d have land to bury their relatives. Now normally I would try to get a closer look inside of something so odd and creepy, but I think I did enough fence hopping for one day, plus I was within eyesight of the highest point in the park so I rushed off to it.

As I got to the top, I saw some rocks leading up to a vantage point, so I instantly jumped to the top and I was blessed with a crystal clear view of the entire park. I took a second to really soak up this view, after all that twist and turns that lead me here. It took only a second of admiring the view before another gale of wind punctuated the moment with its brisk push. With that I ran off the rocks, almost busting my ass in the process, and made my way back to the huge clearing. By mid afternoon the clearing was a bit busier with masked up kids playing games of tag on the frozen grass and sand. I said to hell with it and cut right through their game to get straight to the train station. And once there my fingers were halfway between frostbite and becoming full on icicles, from holding on to joints this long. So I stuffed one hand in the deepest part of my jacket for warmth as the other searched for my metrocard to get me on my steel chariot, the 1 train, to thaw out for my next adventure into the tundra.