I am wondering about The Path Man as I go. I never know what will come to mind on a long run, but The Path Man often does. Before Brooklyn became SoHo on the Gowanus, The Path Man took up residence along a dirt trail in Prospect Park. I don’t know his given name. He had a washbasin on a stump, shirt and trousers that slung from a rangy bush, a clutch of whittled spears he’d carved from the branches of fallen oaks. In those days just a handful of people would venture deep into the park, and at night only fools because what lamp standards there were had been smashed by vandals, and under trees and weedy bushes crack users nested, rapists and robbers for a score, or so our apartment super said at the time and he was born near the park so he would know. But I never saw a needle or a syringe, or even as much as a cigarette butt near The Path Man’s home. I’m thinking I was his first runner on his path; every other day for years, a
