by Courtney George
People are friendlier up there. I chatted with a shop owner; I petted a frisky dog; I enjoyed a homemade donut on a quiet street. The pace is slower. There was no rush to jump on the subway or push through a crowd; in fact, the bus was late, and the streets were uncrowded (although we did have to run to catch the train back to the city). It’s quieter. While I noticed the occasional booming car stereo, that was just it: it was so quiet that I noticed the music. The landscape is like home. That is, my childhood home of Greenville, SC, in the piedmont on a tiny river. While, in Nyack, the hills are more mountains and the tiny river is the Hudson, I was still reminded of Greenville and the surrounding western North Carolina mountains. True, the cityscape of Manhattan is beautiful in its way, but it was refreshing to look out and see green and blue.
I’m arguing that the South is friendly, slow, quiet, and green, while New York City is disaffected, fast-paced, noisy, and concrete. But Nyack stands out as special to me maybe because Carson chose to spend most of her life there but also because it lets me see that ‘the North’ and New York City cannot be collapsed; the North is as diverse as any other region as NYC itself. Spending time in Nyack also made me realize that I uphold some of the stereotypes about my home region as positive and as true.
Courtney George is the former director of the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA. This article was previously published in June, 2012.
The center offers an annual NY Comparative Arts summer study program to provide students with “an intense, varied, and extended arts experience in the arts capital of the world, New York City.” Because Columbus-born author Carson McCullers traveled to New York City and then settled in Nyack, students traditionally visit Nyack as part of the program.
As Others See Us is an occasional feature that publishes what writers outside of Nyack say about the people and places in the Lower Hudson Valley.
See also:
- As Others See Us: Carson McCullers Home in Nyack, 8/27/2015
- Nyack Sketch Log: Carson McCullers, 9/25/2012
Illustration by Bill Batson, ©2015