The Air We Breathe

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IMAGINE A HILL shaped like a dog’s head, its nose pointed south and resting on crossed front paws. The main buildings of Tamarack State Sanatorium for the Treatment of Tuberculosis, including the two long brick wings where we used to cure, are set where the eyes would be. There’s a siding at the base of the hill — four posts, a metal roof, space for a cart and the portable steps — where the train makes a special stop and where, on arrival day, we’d each looked up to see the sanatorium windows staring back at us. We all remember looking down for the first time, after getting settled in one of those wings, to see the new arrivals sagging down the steps or being passed on stretchers through the windows of the train.

Back then we lay on our porches in orderly rows, the two chairs assigned to each room still separated by shoulder-high panels and sheltered by canvas awnings. Fields surrounded us — they still do — and also a river, three ponds, and the road curving down toward the village. After the cities from which we’d come, this looked to us like wilderness. Rivers, mountains, wild geese honking. The air meant to cure us pouring antiseptically through the woods. The Adirondacks were new to us, and we were shocked to learn that Canada was so near. The snow shocked us too, along with the dark winter days and the heavy mist that sometimes blanketed the fields. A fox, hunting, would brush his tail through the surface, leaving a track we followed with our eyes. Ducks escaping the fox would burst into the air as if they’d been shot. The sight made us think that our own lives, hidden similarly, might still be launched on their proper paths.

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