“Considered by many to be the Stonehenge of North America, Opus 40 hosts more than 15,000 visitors from the Hudson Valley, New York City, and throughout the state, country and world, each and every year”
It’s Saturday morning, and we’ve finally arrived in the parking lot. My spouse Janyce pulls up her mask and rolls down the window.
“Do you have tickets?” says the young man with a clipboard in his hand. I’m looking around from my side of the car, scoping the area. People in pairs and foursomes, some holding a map in their hands, are milling about over an open expanse of ground covered over with curling leaves. The view is breathtaking, and this alone is worth the three-hour drive, I think: clear blue skies, sunlight shining on the maroon tops of the tall oaks, a vista of grey blue mountains in the distance.
Acorns crunch beneath the tires. Janyce pulls up beside a dozen or so cars and stops the engine in front of a small artificial pond with a bubbling fountain. I get out, take in a deep breath of the cold air, and walk ahead, stopping to snap a photo with my phone of the outside of the worn and tilting building decorated with gears and iron pulleys.
“Have you ever been here before?” says the woman behind the folding table.
“No, first time,” I say, smiling behind my mask. She hands me a piece of paper. She looks bored, and a little tired.
“We’re from Massachusetts, we love this area. I’m really looking forward to the exhibit,” I say. She stares back at me blankly. No smile.
“Have a nice day,” she says.
A few weeks back, on Sunday morning while sitting in bed drinking coffee and reading the paper, Janyce pointed her laptop screen in my direction.
“Let’s go see some art and get away for a couple days,” she said. “Look, this one has tickets still for a two-hour window in the day.”
The Opus 40 website read: “a world-famous nonprofit sculpture park and museum with more than 60 acres of meadows, forested paths and bluestone quarries — including 6.5 acres of earthwork sculpture — in the heart of the Hudson Valley in Saugerties, NY.”
“Let’s do it!” I said. “I’ll find us an Airbnb.”
Janyce rounds the corner of the building now and I’m perusing the wares in the open window that houses a small makeshift gift store. Jewelry, soap, a basket filled with local honey and beeswax candles. As we start walking, I notice the parking attendant is now hauling out metal fire pits and setting them out around the grounds near the picnic tables.
We walk down the leaf-strewn driveway and linger before the two outdoor sculptures (and the only two) that precede the main attraction. I’m not all that impressed with the bent metal and hastily erected sculpture that Janyce is looking at and I move ahead to stand before the stone one, two figures in some sort of embrace.
I look around. People are wandering about and climbing on the vast and odd stone structure that reminds me of a bluestone patio and miles of retaining wall gone haywire. We keep walking, passing by the signs that point to walking trails, and a section of the stone structure with loose stones where guests are invited to “make your own sculpture!” One man is rapidly scooping up stones to add to dozens of those tiny pyramid rock structures you sometimes see standing alone in the middle of the woods.
“Something is off here,” I think to myself.
Not too long ago, before the pandemic, an old friend from high school visited me and hung out for awhile in my living room on my couch. We used to be close. I remember missing the bus as a 9th grader on the first day of high school, me standing in the kitchen in my new school clothes, trying not to cry as her mom said, “She’s already gone, hon. The bus was here about fifteen minutes ago.” Both my parents were already at work and my new school was a town away. “I’ll give you a ride to school,” she said, “Don’t you worry.”
“I miss your parents,” I said to my old friend as we talked, catching up about our grown kids and the state of the world.
“I have to say something,” said my friend. “And I hope you won’t hate me. I’m a Trump supporter. I think he’s a genius.”
“You do?!” I said. And then I did what I normally do when I’m at a loss for words and not wanting to be confrontational. I listened. She went on and on about socialism, debunking various things that the President has said throughout the last four years, explaining why they didn’t really mean what they sounded like they meant.
At the end of our visit, my friend, standing by my front door with her handbag looped over her shoulder, looked over at my counter at the stopped-up bottle of wine and said, “Oh, I see we drink the same kind of wine. We have to get together sometime.”
Janyce and I keep walking in silence. A drone is flying overhead taking pictures on this crisp fall day, no doubt for the website. We walk the paths in the woods surrounding the main sculpture, passing by the same bewildered people many times. It’s beginning to dawn on us both, although nobody is admitting it out loud, that this weird bluestone construction is it. It’s the whole thing.
“Do you want to go back and try the walking paths?” says Janyce, breaking the silence.
Covid has closed the entrance to the museum, which I now realize is that same small building with the gears on the outside. We pass the main house of the artist and Janyce reads from the history page on her phone. “A former Bard professor, Harvey Fite, a sculptor, died after a fall into a quarry he had been converting into a sprawling sculpture garden. He was 72 years old.”
“Do you want to go back and walk through the tunnels,” she says.
“I don’t,” I say. “I’ve seen all there is to see.”
“Well, I still think it’s kind of cool,” says Janyce.
“Clearly, one man’s art is another man’s nervous breakdown,” I say.
“Oh look, it also says they have concerts here in the summer and they’re looking to use it as a wedding venue,” says Janyce.
“I guess I’ve got to give the family credit,” I say. “They inherited this land with a stunning view and this weird sculpture on it, and now they are just trying to make it mean something.”
Making our way back to the car an hour later, it strikes me just how much “Opus 40” owes to it’s brilliantly executed marketing. It worked to get us here once. But I’m pretty sure this is not a place we will return to again.
It’s Saturday morning, several days since the election, and we’re still waiting for the official announcement. I’ve just now finished reading one of Heather Cox Richardson’s recent posts out loud to Janyce while we drink our coffee.
“The president has been flailing. His legal team has been filing lawsuits to challenge ballot counting, but the suits are frivolous and keep getting thrown out. They are designed not to win legal points, but rather to do what Trump has always done politically: create a narrative that makes his supporters believe something that is not true.” HCR
Outside the sun is shining and the leaf blowers are all out in my suburban neighborhood. It’s beginning to show signs of a mild and hopeful November day.