Cobbs Hill diaries

I hit the snooze button on an early spring morning, prop
myself up on one elbow, and dial 974-1616 on the bedside phone: “The time
is… five… forty… nine… A…. M. The local temperature is… forty…
five… degrees.”

            As I rise, it’s still dark. I’m on
my way to keep an appointment with Rochester’s hilltop oasis: Cobbs Hill
reservoir.

            The
reservoir is a man-made lake atop a hill on the city’s eastern edge. A service
road climbs from the surrounding neighborhood and undulates through mature
pines as it makes its way around the water. It’s a perfect three-quarter-mile
trail for walking out of traffic’s way.

            Cobbs
Hill is the highest point in Rochester accessible to the general public,
outshone in altitude only by nearby, privatized Pinnacle Hill. The view is
never a disappointment.

            On a
clear day, the entire northern horizon is a striking blue ribbon — Lake
Ontario. Surely the Iroquois stood here two centuries ago and beheld this
panorama in its natural state. These days, two smoke stacks jut into the blue
ribbon, their pure white output indicating the wind direction like a giant
weathervane.

            Below the
horizon, cutting distinctive silhouettes against a sea of green foliage, stand
recognizable Rochester landmarks: to the north, miles away, Rochester General
Hospital; and closer, the distinctive steeple of Asbury Methodist Church; to
the northwest, the neo-fortress architecture of the former East Main Street
Armory; and further west, downtown itself and the midtown cluster: the Xerox,
Chase, and HSBC towers. They dwarf the Kodak Office Building, which seems
smaller as it peeks from behind, downhill and downstream on the Genesee. In
seven years of walking up here, I’ve seen this cityscape used as a backdrop for
newscasts, television commercials, political campaign ads, and wedding photos.

            To the west, the view is all trees:
the maples, locusts, and evergreens of the Park and Monroe neighborhoods, and
the southwest neighborhoods beyond the river.

            To the
south, the 590 expressway merges with 390. The cars are tiny sparkling dots
reflecting the sun. To the southeast, Winton Road rises over the Erie Canal by
Winton Place. Thirty miles beyond, the mountains of Bristol form the horizon.

            Not
visible from Cobbs Hill, but essential to the reservoir’s existence, is the
Canadice and Hemlock Lake watershed, 25 miles to the south. Canadice and
Hemlock are uninhabited, pristine lakes. The hills around them are filled with
evergreens and mature hardwoods. A pair of eagles has nested and fished there
for decades. In the late 19th century, Rochester city planners anticipated the
need for a greater municipal water supply and acquired these two lakes and
thousands of acres around them.

            From
Canadice and Hemlock travel two pipes — each big enough for a child to walk
through — side-by-side, underground, toward Rochester. They pass beneath the
towns of Hemlock, Livonia, West Bloomfield, Lima, Honeoye Falls, Mendon, Rush,
Henrietta, and Brighton, then, finally, under Monroe Avenue, and up into the
reservoir at Cobbs Hill. Since the lakes sit higher than the reservoir, the
water is carried all that way by gravity alone.

The Cobbs Hill reservoir is hardly my discovery. Hundreds of regulars from the city and suburbs come
here to run, rollerblade, cycle, push their babies in strollers, ski, walk
their dogs, or, like me, simply walk. They come alone, or as couples, families,
or groups. They practice Tai Chi, play hacky sack, bird watch, and engage in
impromptu jam sessions with guitars and an ever-increasing assortment of Third
World percussion and woodwind instruments.

            Ben’s
from the Ukraine. He walks here religiously, wearing headphones. His heavy
Eastern European accent and his squirrel-tail eyebrows render his simplest
utterance profound.

            Here he
comes on a beautiful day, smiling. Sweeping his hand, he says, “Zees sky.
I order eet for you. Zat vill be feeefty centz, pleez!”

            I wonder
what he listens to day after day. Russian classics?

            There’s
Mary, a mom from Webster who works in one of the big automotive-parts plants in
the city. She keeps surviving the layoffs, but she’s gone back to graduate
school.

            Jesse, a
retired businessman, still worries — at 88 — about the social services
agency that bought his office building. “That’s an 1880s building. That
second-floor loft was never meant to hold all those offices and people. I’m
afraid it’s all going to fall through the floor.”

            Georgianna, too, has gone back to
college. She lives in Corn Hill and makes time to come here between her job as
a teacher’s aide, her own schoolwork, and singing in a gospel choir.

            There’s Ralph, the retired Rochester
City School District vice principal, who helped me free a trapped raccoon from
one of the trashcans up here.

            I recognize and nod hello to dozens
more: the stockbroker who conducts his business by cell phone from a lawn chair
while his car radio plays sports updates. There’s the ex-Marine who waxes his
car up here five days a week; it’s a wonder there’s still paint on it.

            Hundreds
come here as tourists to see the Rochester cityscape. Busloads of women —
almost always women — come from Canada.

            Lovers
meet here. One couple has come here for two years, she in a white Pontiac, he
in a burgundy Honda. Now he has a brand new black Honda. They’re here every
morning; when the days are shorter, they have their headlights on. This late
May morning, they — and I — are already wearing sunglasses.

A man pulls up in an Acura. He’s well-tanned for mid-June, in his 50s, with perfectly trimmed
hair. He looks like someone accustomed to giving orders, eating prime rib, and
playing golf. He seems surprised at the number of people here.

            The reservoir is buzzing with
activity. It’s Saturday. The regulars are here in force, walking, jogging, and
playing African and Caribbean music on the grass. There is also a crowd of
spectators. The morning paper said jets from an air show would circle the city,
so close to 300 people have walked or driven here and are standing by the
sledding hill, facing the direction of the airport, hoping to catch a glimpse.

            The jets
come screaming right past the hill once, then again, leaving a pronounced
silence in their final wake. The crowd slowly leaves. The well-tanned man goes
over to his Acura, opens the trunk, looks around, then pulls out a big bongo
drum and goes over to the grass, where he sits down and joins the young,
jamming musicians.

I sit in my pickup finishing my coffee, listening to Sammy Hagar doing a live version of “There’s
Only One Way to Rock.” My senses are focused on the guitar solo and the
chemistry of the fresh coffee. I’m barely cognizant of the people walking
around the reservoir.

            Overhead,
an anonymous flock of pigeons fills a portion of my view. I would not have
noticed the pigeons — now directly over the heads of three women walking and
talking — if it weren’t for a sudden, incongruous movement among the birds.

            A peregrine falcon flashes among the
pigeons like an out-of-control model airplane. Fast as he strikes, the targeted
pigeon veers out of harm’s way.

            The
falcon arches up in the air doing a tight loop-de-loop, then down again, taking
another swipe into the flock, missing a second time.

            By this time the pigeons are well
past the feathered predator who, at the peak of his second loop-de-loop,
pauses, as if stomping his foot in anger. He turns his back on the flock —
fuming, I imagine — and coasts over to the radio tower, where he perches.

            I relate to that falcon through the
whole drama; I know what it’s like to recognize an opportunity too late. I
empathize with his futile attempt, his disappointment. He must have known he
was too late. But he made a dash for it anyway. It’s in his blood.

            I do not share the pigeons’ relief.

Crows don’t have to move fast because they eat garbage. They’re survivors. I’ve noticed
that the crows around the reservoir have been getting closer to the people here
with the passage of time. When I first started coming here, they were in the
background, scavenging for food. Now there are more of them, and they get
closer and more aggressive in their foraging. By last year, I could walk right
under a crow perched on a lamppost and he’d remain there, six feet above me,
flying away only if I stopped. This year, I can stop under the lamp and the
crow will stay put.

            The crows ferret out edibles from
the trashcans. If they can’t get to the food because it’s buried too deep, they
wait for the squirrels to dig it out, then dive-bomb the squirrels and take it.

            One morning, I saw an empty
french-fries container, and next to it, several ketchup packets, each with a
hole poked through it by a crow’s beak.

            I can
imagine crows outlasting us as a species — thriving on the garbage of their
human competitors. Crows are the Keith Richards of avifauna.

Today is September 22 — Autumn Eve. Along the row of trees overlooking downtown, every variation of
green can be seen: the bluish-green of the silver maples, whitish-green of the
Russian olives, yellowish-green of the Norway maples, reddish-green of the
sumac, the deep shining green of a mulberry tree, and the soft bluish-green of
the pines. A slight breeze comes and exposes the lighter undersides of each
leaf, revealing yet another dimension of color.

It’s October and they’re draining the oasis. Public workers do this about once every 10
years. They transform the sparkling lake into an empty concrete canyon, then,
using a big crane, plunk two pickup trucks with snowplows onto the reservoir’s
muddy floor.

            The
pickups slide through the mud as they plow the sludge toward the center of the
reservoir. The drivers are going 40 damned miles an hour. The plow on the first
truck is throwing mud 20 feet in the air, up over its roof, and down onto the
truck following right behind it.

            The daily paper publishes the
results of the draining and cleaning. There’s a list of items the workers
pulled from the mud, including 40-some dollars in change and a gym bag full of
pornographic videos.

As another October
day breaks, a perfect cigar-shaped cloud hangs over Lake Ontario; the air
temperature must have dropped below the water temperature last night. Gulls
come in from the lake to take their positions on the fountain in the middle of
the reservoir. They sail over the fence, their white underbellies glowing
orange from the rising sun low in the east.

            The reservoir is high this morning.
It’s been filling all night.

            The
October morning air is so invigorating I’m seduced into doing 12 laps instead
of my usual eight. This takes two hours and 45 minutes, during which the
reservoir drops two feet. That’s a lot of showers, flushes, and toothbrushing.
The gulls think this is a real lake, but I know the truth.

It’s November. The sun has gone down, but the sky is still faintly light. I walk the circle
around the reservoir, surrounded by an outer circle of treetops. Hundreds of
crows are flying from the trees, dark against the sky. They’re headed for the
city, where they’ll converge with thousands of other crows from around town and
roost in the beech and oak trees in Mt. Hope Cemetery and Washington Square
Park.

            Large snowflakes are falling —
white dots against the dark trees. Dark crows against the light sky, light
snowflakes against the dark flora: a living, breathing Escher drawing
suggesting the connection and continuity of all things.

I roll out of bed this December morning and call time-temperature to see how I should dress.

            “Fifty…
three… degrees,” the monotone male voice tells me. We’re close personal friends
by now, so I’m a little hurt when I find out, a few minutes later, that he
didn’t give me a hint of what’s to come.

            I dress
lightly and walk outside. By the time I reach the Hill, the wind has picked up.
Within one lap, it’s blowing a horizontal sleet storm. At the crest of the hill,
where the stately granite, pillared pump house sits, the wind is blowing so
hard I can lean into it and not even fall.

            The sleet turns to snow. Thirty
minutes ago it was mild and calm. Now I am not only leaving footprints in the
snow, but they are filled up as I come around again.

Looking back

When I was a biology
major at SUNY Geneseo, I found a state wildlife report published in the early
20th century that included a naturalist’s journal of a day spent at Cobbs Hill
before the reservoir was built. It read like a Disney dreamland script, listing
animal and bird species. Some, like the bald eagle and passenger pigeon, are
now rare or extinct.

            Remembering this report, and
thinking I’d write a piece on “The Cobbs Hill of 100 Years Ago,” I
contacted the school, miraculously finding someone in the biology department
who remembered that storeroom full of old books. I was informed the books had
all been given away or thrown out. I felt bad about this, as though the
wildlife of the Cobbs Hill of 1900 was now doubly gone. Then something happened
that significantly improved my outlook.

            It was Sunday afternoon, October 6.
The wind was brisk, the sun was bright, the sky was deep blue, and the clouds
were splattered across it without pattern, like samplings on an artist’s
palette. A pair of red-tailed hawks hung almost motionless, like kites, over
the north face of Cobbs Hill, catching the updrafts. Gulls flew in and out of
the reservoir in every direction. An out-of-season dragonfly careened past me.
In the lower tree branches, the tiny cheep-cheeps of the chipping sparrows were
now mixed with those of the slate-colored juncos, recently arrived from the
north. I felt the bigness of nature and an almost fluid connection to it.

            I was walking up the service road
toward the sledding hill that faces Monroe Avenue when I first spotted it, to
the south: a large raptor coming toward me, moving with strong, deep wing
beats. The raptor pushed steadily into the headwind and passed over my head
toward the reservoir. I scrambled up the steep hillside, slipping on loose pine
needles, grabbing tufts of grass. When I reached the top, panting, I saw him
circling the reservoir. He gave it a cursory inspection, and, recognizing there
were no fish here, allowed the wind to carry him upward, where he was joined by
a second mysterious raptor.

            They continued rising, circling each
other, then playfully charged each other with talons out, striking each other
feet-first and bouncing away like clashing cymbals. They were a quarter-mile up
now and moving eastward. They rolled in somersaults between their soaring and
flapping, as if there were no gravity, no up or down.

            The raptors were half a mile up now
and half a mile east. With a gracefulness that belied their power and speed,
they disappeared into the firmament, which they owned.

            This all took perhaps 90 seconds. I
stood there turning in circles, looking around me for someone — those
birdwatchers — anyone, to tell. But the path and the road were deserted.

            I don’t
know if I saw mottled immature bald eagles or a light phase of some large hawk
species. Whatever they were, hopes of seeing them again will keep me coming
back here, walking above the city in quiet solitude, with a view of the horizon
in three directions, of water, trees, and mountains.

Oh, and I found out about Ben. I recently passed him and finally asked, “What are you
listening to?”

            “Legends,” he said. His
heavy accent lent an air of profundity to that word. He saw I didn’t understand
and held up the CD player/radio. I took off my sunglasses to read the LED
display: “990 AM.”

            “Legends
of rock and roll.”

This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2002.