TARRYTOWN, New York – The legend hails from Sleepy Hollow. Tarrytown is where the author Washington Irving was inspired to write the horrific story. It has undertones of the unseen, the unheard, and the unknown. Stroll from the nearest train stop to the author’s dwelling, called Sunnyside, and you will find yourself gaining the honorific title of a visitor to Sleepy Hollow.
The ivy vines creep up the side of the author’s house. The train goes by it, largely an unstoppable force of modernity. The tour guide is dressed in garb that she may well have worn back in the author’s day. The floorboards creak as one is witness to the author’s dwellings. Nearby, the river flows past, the Hudson that hails from the mountain forces.
As one walks through the neighboring suburbs, stone henges line the old mansions from the sleepy roadside. It is brisk, yet the sun supplants any cold. The shortened daylight hours hail visitors to Irving’s house with greater alacrity than otherwise. Crisp leaves lie fallen on vast grasses.
The vines are the same as many of the Ivies crawling up the church sides of English countrysides. Irving and Scott were friends, and this was a gift.
It is not a Halloween that has passed that I am not transplanted back to those woods. In the daylight, the crisp air let through sunlight that amplified the autumnal colors of the trees. In the night time, it is no wonder where Irving was inspired to create the shadowy mysteriousness of Sleepy Hollow. What is scary is not the seen, but the unseen, a far cry from the busy city streets of New York City.
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