Super 8 Motel, West Haven CT

Lots of Greenway today as I followed the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail to its endpoint on the Yale Campus in New Haven /Hamden CT   I think it will be the last corridor of "forest" I will walk during this trip. 

{vsig}walkingnow/Terzano/sep20{/vsig} The trail began to change character as I entered the city and became a series of small parks linked together by this path.  Posts with emergency lights and call buttons in each of these parks made me suspect I was in a troubled part of town. 

I had to leave the greenway a bit before its end as another construction project on the Yale campus closed it off to foot traffic.  Took me a little bit to get my bearings, but when I got oriented, I had a short but delightful walk through part of the Yale campus.  I must have hit the area just as classes were letting out for that hour and was engulfed by young people talking about friends, boyfriends, clothes, parties and homework, to which I shamlessly eavesdropped  :)  Then, suddenly, I was on the other side of town looking for the Vision Trail. This took me through an interesting older section of town where I found the Smoothie Foundation Garment Factory in an old red brick building which seemd to still be in operation.  I don't really know why it caught my fancy, maybe It was remembering ads for this company in my Mom's old McCall's magazine.  Anyway, right after the factory I found the Vision Trail.  Poor old thing!  First bit of it makes one think they are entering onto a set for a movie being made about a longtime abandoned city, some post apocalyptic tale  :)  However, it pops one out behind a new IKEA store and takes you down by the waterside where there is a beautiful park which has several war memorials at one end and many, many food vendors. 

I didn't buy anything from the vendors, but I did take some time to have a snack, enjoy the water and fall sunshine, and check my maps for the last leg of today's journey.  Once again the GPS maps and the paper ECG maps were not jiving.  I noticed there was a police officer at the end of the park, in the direction I was heading, so I would ask him for clarification, verification and a vote of confidence on my way out :)  I stopped by his car, asked my question about street names and direction, and bless his heart, before he answered me, he asked me one of his own.  "Do you know  what kind of area you are walking through?"   *sigh*   I had noticed the decreasing wealth as I had left Yale.   Had seen how areas had become less well taken care of.  How dress styles, languages heard and races visiable had become much more varied.  I knew where I was, but hadn't thought about it much except to note the change and be aware.  But to the officer I said, "No, not really." 

The rest of the conversation went pretty much as you would expect as he told me how dangerous this area was, how he wouldn't allow his wife or daughter to walk here, etc. etc.  I know he was seeing my differentness from those around me and how that might make me a potential victim.  It made him what?  come across exasperated? almost angry?  I told him I was a Zen Buddhist monastic and he only shrugged his shoulders, but when I told him I was heading for the Super 8 motel of West Haven, just over the river, his manner changed, becoming very helpful and he answered my original question by giving me the shortest route to the bridge I was looking for.  Unfortunately, he had stirred my mind in a fear direction and the last bit of walk through New Haven carried an unnecessary burden of increased anxiety.  Made me grumpy!  And even after getting to the motel, eating a great dinner at a closeby cafe and having a long hot soak, I'm still a little out of sorts, mostly at myself for letting other peoples belief's and attitudes color my own.  Oh well  :p  

The experience today has had me thinking about how what we see is colored by our experience and I have been wondering if police officers, being exposed so much to the darker side of human nature, tend to view the world in a much more suspicious manner than folks who don't have that job and responsibility. They are trained to look for and deal with illegal activities and violence. Does that cause a "screen out" of neutral and "good" acts that happen in much greater numbers in any area as well?  Its an interesting question with interesting ramifications about training that reinforces the evolutionary mandate to pay more attention to potentially dangerous pars of our environment.

It also has me wondering about my own reactions.  Just a few days ago I had run into an Animal Control officer who was afraid of bears, bobcats and coyotes and who told me how dangerous the night was in a WMA.  Why did this "warning" not stir up any reaction in me?  And why did the police officer's "warning" cause my alertness to become tinged with anxiety?  Got me thinking about a woman I ran into on the AT who carried a "jug" of  hand sanitizer to kill bacteria.  Okay, 'nuf of this  lol.

I decided today to bite the bullet and find motels for each night on this last bit of walking.  This should give me the time/ability to walk further each day and arrive in NYC within the next 5 - 7 days.  While on the trail I have become aware of a friend's grave illness and will use the extra free time before the sesshin (meditation retreat) to visit them in Pittsburgh (I will take a bus there and back).  The only question is, will my feet and legs tolerate all the extra concrete?  We shall have to see.

Be well All