In the Chappaqua woods

Wow this is some real journalism!

CHAPPAQUA, N.Y. — The other day, Carol Meyer and her friend Ellen went walking in the woods of Chappaqua. For all they knew, they might see a coyote or some rare mushrooms or Hillary Clinton.

“I just have a sense — ” said Ellen, putting on her gloves.

“You think so?” said Carol, adjusting her scarf.

A Clinton sighting was hardly unlikely. She and her husband were Chappaqua neighbors who enjoyed an invigorating, mind-clearing tromp in the local nature preserve as much as anyone else. And now, of course, she was back in town. Ellen had already seen her in the woods twice since she lost the presidency, and she wasn’t the only one. Two days after the election, a young woman had spotted Clinton and taken a photo with her that went viral, leading to fake news stories alleging that the whole thing was staged, which was said to prove once again that Hillary Clinton couldn’t do anything that did not strike a false note. But Chappaquaians knew better.

“I read this article by Michael Kinsley — he was saying Donald Trump is a fascist, but not in the usual sense,” Ellen began, and as they walked along, the words “corporate statism” and “Tillerson” and “democracy” drifted up into the maples and pines.

They huffed up a rocky hill and walked along a ridge. They eased down into a clearing by a half-frozen stream, which was where, two days after the election, Ellen had been walking her yellow lab Phoebe, distraught over the results and saying to herself, “If I see her, I see her” when she actually saw her, in the woods: Hillary Clinton coming around a bend.

“Bill was in front,” Ellen said. “And then here came Hillary with her poodle and then the agents. And I’m here, and then we were together, and I just said, ‘What happened?’ And she said, ‘I don’t know. I have no idea.’ And I said, ‘I really admire you. You look great. You’re wonderful.’ I stood there with my arms wide open and I’m not even a hugger and I gave her this big hug. She had on a beautiful sweater. She asked my dog’s name.”

Once, a Chappaquaian named Judy Fuhrer was driving along the road by the preserve, listening to an audio recording of Bill Clinton’s 1,008-page memoir. She said she was on the 13th CD when she realized that the tall white-haired man walking his dog up ahead was the former president of the United States.

“I stopped and got out of my car and said, ‘I’m listening to your autobiography right now!’ And he said, ‘You listened to the whole thing?! Whoa!’ And I said, ‘I listened to Hillary’s too.’ And he said, ‘Well, that’s more interesting.’ He asked me if I wanted him to sign [the CD] but I told him it was a library copy.”

LINK