2010
prologue day1 day2 day3 *Listen to the myth*

Prologue

Lah 2010, a 45 mile walk between NYC's Central Park and Riverdale CT, took place on the 4th anniversary of Hal’s death- April 2, 2010, and coincidentally at the end of week of coyote-mania in NYC. After just two records of the animals in Manhattan- Otis in 1999 and Hal in 2006- at least 4 coyotes had been spotted in 2010. One captured in Harlem in February, three seen on Columbia's campus, an unsuccessful police chase near the Chelsea piers, and finally one that took up residence in the Hallett Sanctuary, like Hal (probably the same coyote that was later captured in Tribeca).




Local news and blogs published quite a few stories. A couple tropes of public reaction established themselves among users in the comment sections of the articles. Alignment of human and animal traits:

"Looks like the Coyotes are coming to roost with the rest of the Jackals and Hyenas who infest Manhattan Liberal Academia!!" -DeadLIBSociety

"If they eat rats then that is a good thing, as long as they don't come to one of my cabinet meetings." -B.Obama

The coyote lovers:

"I can then tell my kids about how I had a brief glimpse of greatness when I was running in the park on Monday." -DIGNELL

And less frequently but just as passionate, haters:

"joke all you want, but these are not comic book characters, and they are definitely not dogs. yes, they will start off on feral cats and rodents, but they breed exponentially, and within a year leashed dogs will become a target, after that small children. where I live, coyote season is 24/7/365, the county pays a bounty and sheep farmers double it. considering that Manhattan is an island, they came in through train tunnels and over bridges. good luck controlling them." -hwk


The parks department even sponsored a kind of informational meeting that I went to. Present were coyote lovers of all kinds, one or two people doing actual scientific studies on the animal, a lot more of what you might call “citizen naturalists”, press, and bloggers, including Melissa Cooper who writes Out Walking the Dog and later walked with us for the first leg of our journey. The tone of the meeting was one of unanimous love for the animal. Beyond the general atmosphere of nature appreciation there were little hints of the deeper ambiguities the phenomenon posed for our conception of life in this city.

It is now April and it seems that all the coyotes in the city are gone or deported. With an established population believed to be breeding in the Bronx we may be seeing more of them, but I will always consider Hal to be have a special place as a trailblazer, dying for his cause.

LAH 2010 participants
Jenni
Ramsay
Blake
Myself
Seth
Tassy
also present were Melissa and Kerry





Our project with Lah is not necessarily to lend a hand in any future policy decisions regarding coyotes in NYC, but to build on what might be seen as the almost mythological significance of Hal, and by extension examine our relationship to the elements of nature he seemed to represent. The walk is in some ways a simple reply that isn’t directly based in language.

That being said, the monument this year is the oral transmission of myth that we heard on the journey. What follows is a loose journal of the trip, but if you would like to more accurately experience something from Lah 2010 you can arrange for this myth to be told to you. To do that please click here.



Continue to journal of the trip