The Tournmore Set

I should’ve realized as I pulled into the parking lot of Cold Spring Harbor State Park on a bright February afternoon the people I saw there wearing exercise gear and carrying ski poles were walking clues I was in for less of a walk in the park, and more of a hike in the park.  Its website describes the terrain as “hilly.”  I’m here to tell you, that’s an accurate statement.  (See the video linked below.)

The mile-long path within the 40-acre park forms the northernmost stretch of the Nassau Suffolk Greenbelt Trail, which extends to Long Island’s south shore.  The Cold Spring Harbor section is never flat and never boring.  My jeans and soft shoes weren’t the wisest kit for a turn through the grounds though.  Next time: proper boots and looser trousers.

After a two-mile round-trip in the park, I meandered through the wee hamlet of Cold Spring Harbor itself, which felt like it lowered my blood pressure.  Cold Spring Harbor, New York grew up as a whaling port in the 1800s.  It’s now a bedroom community with a whaling museum, a range of shops along its narrow Main Street, and the New York state park that bears its name.

I played three Irish polkas on fiddle for this video’s soundtrack.  The polka, of Bohemian provenance, has become an organic part of modern traditional Irish music.  Remember the blockbuster flick, The Titanic?  The band Gaelic Storm played John Ryan’s Polka for the below-decks Irish-party scene, at a breakneck tempo indeed.

Polkas are known to be brisk.  Like the trail at the Cold Spring Harbor State Park, they characteristically make for more than a casual stroll.  The best polka players out there, of which I am not one, to my ear are the ones who can maintain a fluid swing even at warp speed.  It’s dance music after all, and with polkas, speed and grace coalesce.