laH coyote walk for Hal the Coyote.

Returning the Spirit of Hal to the Wilderness
Monuments (1-6) (7-12) (13-17) (18-23)

Monument #13 Poem
location: littered water bottle, Kensico Cemetery

This was a good setting for a memorial poem. I left it as a message in a bottle- a gatorade bottle that had been tossed out the window of a passing car. This cemetery, or complex of cemeteries was huge and hilly. It took me forever to get across, and I got way behind schedule.

I got to camp the second night. It was an under cover spot, I didn't want to get told to leave. This was the first time I'd camped by myself. I kind of wanted coyotes to walk around my tent, and I kind of didn't. I put the mummified lizard in a tree that had been hammered with a nails. These pics were taken before sunrise the third day. I knew if I was to make the goal of Peekskill, I had to get an early start.

Coyotes don't just eat meat. "A diversified diet of mice, hares, birds and plants in the summer may change to one dominated by berries in the fall, snowshoe hare in the early winter, and white-taled deer in late winter." source: Eastern Coyote: The Story of It's Success. G Parker, 1995.

Cool birds I saw on the trip included a couple of Wood ducks!, hooded mergansers doing a mating dance, millions and millions of robins, a pied billed grebe

killdeers, a number of hawks. I didn't have time to get too into the bird watching though.

This is a pretty good one. Here I left a "Redbone Potlatch" record under someone's bush in their front yard. I hope they keep the record and don't throw it out, or think its some sort of death threat. Anyway, before I left on the trip I was able to quickly record the first two tracks from the record. I put the the second track under some footage I shot of coyotes at the Queens zoo (one of which- Otis- went through an experience like Hal, being caught in Central Park, but then surviving and being placed in the zoo.) The track is called Alcatraz and it matches the footage of the coyote's uncannily. Listen to the words- the music starts a few seconds into the video. Finally I love that the Potlatch concept was referenced by one of the gifts. The LAH project was a type of potlatch.

I went through a number of people's yards on the journey, in cases where it would make getting from one street to another significantly faster. I did this in the spirit of the trickster coyote. Luckily I was never caught. I did see a dog house once, but nothing jumped out.


	click here to hear the poem read