The remains of a little fire on the Dave Clark Path on Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 30, 2022.
On Albany’s Dave Clark Riverfront Path you routinely encounter walkers, with or without dogs, and the occasional person on a scooter or bike. And now and then you see something of which you don’t know what to make.
This past Tuesday, I was surprised to find the ashes of a small fire in the middle of the concrete pathway. On Thursday night the ashes were still there.
I don’t know what would possess someone to build a fire on a public path. Warming a can of beans? Cooking some other kind of substance? Destroying something by burning it up?
Or maybe it was to ward off the chill of temperatures in the 50s during the early hours, around 5 or 6 in the morning. But that would have meant someone was cold while sleeping on concrete. Surely there are spots nearby that are not so hard.
Also on the Clark path this week, I watched a guy climb down the concrete steps at the government’s river gauge station near the Lyon Street Bridge. He was carrying something.
Wondering what he was up to, I looked over the railing of the wooden boardwalk there just in time to see him hurl a head-size chunk of broken concrete down into the river, making a splash and just missing a woman standing in the water there.
“Hey,” I yelled, hoping to dissuade him from throwing something else and hitting her this time. Just then another character pushed into view below the riverbank.
“I know them,” the rock thrower shouted back.
“Try not to kill them then,” I said.
And went on my way. (hh)
It also appears someone is setting up camp under the 12th Avenue foot bridge on the Periwinkle MULTIPLE USE path.
Hasso, your descriptive narration could serve as underpinning for a new docu-mockumentary film series titled, “The Path,” or perhaps, “The Road to Dave.” Given the shifting cast of characters you continually run across, the story lines are nearly limitless, the pathos evocative, the tale’s arc sweeping.