Black and white photograph of NYC skyline, pre-2001.

If someone told you Camel’s Hump mountain had disappeared, would you believe them? That’s sort of the way I felt on that day.

Bram Towbin

If someone told you Camel’s Hump mountain had disappeared, would you believe them? That’s sort of the way I felt on that day. I boarded the E Train on 14th Street and saw a young woman in a business suit crying and covered in ash. She was headed uptown and I knew her starting point…the World Trade Center Station. It was Sept. 11, 2001 and I had seen the plane strikes on TV a couple of hours before in a midtown office.  I left the office for a doctor’s appointment and saw the Twin Towers burning while looking downtown. It was an exceptionally bright sunny day. Above the buildings, all blue except the trail of smoke. People were going about their business but things changed when I arrived at the hospital. There were reports of more planes in DC. The receptionist said “All the doctors are getting ready.”   Ready? I wasn’t following. I was still under the impression the crashes were some sort of accident with casualties that wouldn’t extend beyond the hospital in that neighborhood. Someone else started saying that the news said “D.C. has been hit.” Hit? I went back to the subway. I looked downtown…but this time I couldn’t see the buildings…just the trail of black smoke cutting the deep blue sky. When I got back to the office they told me the buildings were gone. Gone? I didn’t understand.  The days after are what I remember most. There was the ever-present smoke. Would that fire ever stop spitting out that smell of death? The news of the missing and dead. The fighter jets flying as a constant reminder. The handmade posters still bring me to tears. Every lamppost on every city block was filled with photocopied images of loved ones taped-up by friends and family. There was this one black and white image of a young woman…Have you seen…I walked from 14th street to 96th street in the days that followed and her loved ones had not missed a single lamppost.  Those memories traveled to the Green Mountains. A change of scenery never erases a life lesson about the impermanence of everything familiar. That day was a precursor to standing six feet apart in masks. The sylvan Vermont landscape can take on a threatening hue in light of west burning in drought. The challenge is finding a path that acknowledges the mutability without caving into fear and paranoia.

Bram Towbin