The snow just fell… and fell… and fell.  It started around 6:00 at night, snowed all night, all the next day and again into the night.  I had somehow gotten myself up to a friend’s apartment for a work session in the middle of that day and we had holed ourselves up, working through the blizzard.  It finally stopped around 2:00 in the morning and it was then that I realized that I had to get home.

I left my friend’s apartment and walked out into the canyons of New York City that were now, literally, valleys of snow drifts.  Not a cab to be had.  Not a soul on the streets.  Even the subways were closed.  It was one of those blizzards back in the 70s that made the Blizzard of 2010 look like a light snowfall.

I knew I’d have to walk.  I headed over to 57^th Street because it was a two-way street and wider.  It might be easier negotiating the drifts.  I had to cross Manhattan island from the East side to the West.  Besides, I lived on West 57^th Street.  When I turned the corner from Third Avenue on to 57^th, the scene was the most surrealistic I have ever seen.  I had no idea that that was just the beginning.

57^th Street was now totally unrecognizable.  The drifts now started at the middle of the second floor of the buildings on each side of the street and swooped down in a curve totally obliterating the sidewalks, the cars and most of the street itself.  What was left was just a narrow rut right down the middle of the street.  57^th Street was now 57^th Canyon stretching out before me.

Again, there was not a soul in sight.  Everyone and every thing were snowed in.  I could have been in a canyon in Montana as I began to trudge the narrow path across town.  On top of that, the streetlights glowed a soft pink and these canyons of new fallen snow were turned into a pink wonderland.  I was jogging and sometimes trudging through a pink dream.  Across Lexington, Park, Madison, Fifth I jogged on in silence.  Even my breath turned pink as it came faster and faster.

I was just coming up on 6^th Avenue, a little more than halfway home, when I saw him.  The sight of him made me slow to a walk and the shock and surprise elicited just one word from my lips.  “Moondog!”

His response was simply, “Huh?!”

There he stood, on the corner of 6^th Avenue and 57^th Canyon, bathed in pink, but dressed in full Viking regalia – helmet of horns, scraggly white/grey/pink beard, those hollow red eyeholes, long red cape, red leg bindings laced with leather straps which held on his Viking sandals.

It was Moondog, New York’s most famous blind beggar and fascinating street character.  He was alone.  Usually he was led through the streets by a couple of hippie girls like some dirty, forsaken god, but tonight he was alone, somehow finding his way through his black dream in the middle of my pink one.

There he stood, quietly, under a street lamp, waiting for who knows what.  Probably wondering what was happening in the world, where had all the sound gone to, why his world had changed so.

He was an imposing figure.  He was probably 6’4” and 280 lbs.  But with his helmet on he grew another half foot.

Several years before, as I stood and waited for the bus, I witnessed an elderly tourist lady loaded down with packages, in broad daylight, turn and see him as he bore down on her with his two hippie girls in tow.  Most New Yorkers stepped out of the way of this famous Norseman and left the sidewalk to him and his companions, but our tourist, not knowing that he was blind and figuring that he would logically walk around her, suddenly screamed and threw her packages into the air and ran for her life as he came nearer and nearer.

I had to laugh.  I’m sure she had a most perplexing story to tell the people back in Iowa.

So back to my pink world…  This was clearly not a moment to stop and chat.  It was far too far out (in the words of my favorite 70s expression).

I ran on.  You know the sum total of our conversation.  For Moondog it was, I’m sure, a moment he never thought of again.  For me, it was a moment I shall never forget.  This red Viking standing in the pink canyons of NYC alone on that surrealistic moment is a movie scene that no one would ever believe.  But it happened, and it happened to me.

There’s not much else to the story.  I got home.  I hope Moondog did as well that night.

Years later I did see that Columbia Records did release an album of Moondog poetry set to music.  I remember the album cover was of Moondog, still in full Viking regalia, conducting the orchestra.  It never sold.

I also heard a fascinating story from a friend whose summerhouse was in upper NY State somewhere on a quiet country road.  One day Moondog came strolling by, again alone, introduced himself to my friend and explained that he lived in the summers on down the road apiece.  My friend would see him on occasion passing by and they would exchange pleasantries, but that’s about all.

One day in the winter, curiosity getting the best of my friend, he walked down that same road and came to the place where Moondog had described that he lived.  There was no house – just a string leading back into the woods that our blind man could follow taking him back well off the road.

My friend followed this string back to an ancient cave of sorts with burned out campfire, rustic stools and far too much garbage.  In the cave were some blankets and a hollowed out bed of sorts.

A strange man visited our planet and left a lot of memories for a lot of people.  I was one of them.

For the inside story on Moondog: http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/1999/07/11/1999-07-11_moondog_viking_about_town.html

Also:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jan/05/classicalmusicandopera.poetry