Yesterday, for the first time, I actually walked around the park itself. And it completely changed how I see this place

Six years is a long time to forget something.

I didn’t realize how long until I stepped out of my car on a grey Friday afternoon in Albany and looked up-really looked up. The kind of looking you do when something catches you off guard and reminds you that the world is considerably larger than the radius of your everyday life.

Six years. And in that time Albany had not changed at all. I was the one who changed.

A Love Letter to Two Very Different Creatures

I took this photo back in January at what used to be one of Wilton Mall’s entrances, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

It started as a quiet February morning on Hadlock Pond.

A few friends, some fishing gear, ice beneath our feet, and the kind of cold upstate New York silence that makes you feel like you have the whole world to yourself. Ice fishing has a rhythm to it — slow, patient, focused. You drill your hole, drop your line, and wait.

Then we heard it.

That unmistakable growl of a high-performance engine cutting across the ice. And suddenly rounding the far end of Hadlock Pond came a blacked out electric blue Polaris RZR 1000 — custom wrapped, lifted, and absolutely sending it across a frozen pond in the middle of February.

The fishing rods went down. The cameras came up.

Most people drive past them without a second look. A large dark bird circling overhead, wings spread wide, riding thermals above the fields and tree lines of the Champlain Valley. Easy to dismiss. Hard to forget once you actually stop and look.

That bird is the Turkey Vulture — and they are more common in upstate New York than most people realize.