Author: Bob Elwood

June 8 to 13— Schodack Island (NY) State Park, in the Hudson River below Albany

 

The campground here has only been open two months. On the plus side it means the bath house up-to-date and clean, the picnic tables unscarred, the fire ring unrusted. On the other hand the park managers have some work to do cleaning up their trail map. The basic qualities one values in a map—distance, direction, course—have not yet found their way into the park’s current offering. It’s not like you can get dangerously lost but you can start off on what you think is a nice little stroll and have it turn into a major slog.

Still, it is a decent place. It is one of the only habitats of the cerulean warbler, a tiny blue bird which I definitely heard and will claim to have seen—they are arboreal birds like Orioles and it is hard to distinguish color way up there against a blue sky. Let’s just say I saw one.

We took a trip into Albany, walked the downtown area for a couple of hours. I was disappointed that I could not get into the State House—it is supposed to be something of an architectural masterpiece, plus, who could pass up the opportunity to walk the hall of one of the country’s most corrupt legislatures—but the guards said that I could either dispose of my tiny pocket knife or take it back to my car which they didn’t know was a mile away but could not enter with it. I understand, I guess, tho my pen is just as lethal, but frankly, I thought their manner was rude, kind of the way people imagine New York City residents act but don’t, really; after the one guard gave me my options regarding my lethal weapon the other guard piped up, as if he were auditioning for The Sopranos, “You’re choice.” Like that added anything to my understanding of the situation. I left there with a bad attitude toward Albany that stayed with me until we had a nice lunch and a pint in a very nice English pub-sort-of-place.

Today it was raining so we took a tour of Martin Van Buren’s house in Kinderhook, NY. He was yclept as “Old Kinderhook” during his presidential campaign, which some people believe is the origin of the word/phrase “OK.” My friend Chris Brown has a more plausible explanation based on a Dutch phrase he encountered (“och doch”) evolving into “okey dokey” and then “okay.” I bought a book on the subject of, and entitled, “OK” at the Van Buren gift shop and hope to come to an informed opinion on the matter.

Fun fact: Van Buren was the first president born a U.S. citizen.

After Van Buren it stopped raining so we found a wildlife area along the Hudson (Papascanee) and walked the broken slate along the shore for a good ways. The Hudson, surprisingly, is tidal all the way up here, 150 miles from its mouth. If you throw a stick in the river at Troy, NY it will drift upstream and down, two steps forward and one back, and take four months to flow to the ocean, according to one authority. Because of the alternating influence of tide and flow the Mohican name for the Hudson was “river that flows in two directions.”

Albany has an impressive skyline, dominated by a set of of tall matching buildings that are simple and elegant, giving it a sort of future-city, Brasilia-like appearance. “Visit if you can, but leave your pen knife at home” is the city slogan.

 

I forgot to report that I toured the Remington Arms Museum in Ilion, NY while in Cooperstown. Brenda wasn’t interested because it was mostly, well, entirely, about GUNS. The museum is on the grounds of the original, still-operating Remington Factory. (The company is poised to relocate and using the same ploy that Beretta used in Charles County, Maryland, claiming that they will leave the state to protest the restrictive gun laws but really are moving to a place where the workers “work almost for nothin’.”) The Remington creation myth is interesting—Eliphalet Remington had a worn-out fowling piece and thought he could build one as good. His father was a blacksmith and they made a roll-welded or coil-welded barrel and a wood stock and Eliphalet walked fifteen miles to Utica to have the barrel rifled, came in second place in a local shooting match and took scores of orders for new rifles. That was 1816 and before long he had the largest gun manufactury in the US. He attracted innovators to his factory and Remington rifles have dominated the market since. Of course this whole region is really the industrial birthplace of the nation in the 19^th century, thanks to the Erie Canal. In Cooperstown area the Singer sewing machine and the Clark thread companies were the economic engines, and still are.

 

Today we went to Saratoga National Park and took the walking tour over the sprawling battlefield where the British General Burgoyne ultimately surrendered and turned the tide of the Revolutionary War. The trail roams the significant sites of the battle over four+ miles through imposing forests and old fields with views of mountains receding into the distance. Interesting that the victory here led the French to lend support to the American cause, while a hundred years later Lincoln needed the win at Antietam to keep the French out of the Civil War.

The Americans captured something like 3,000 German mercenaries here and after the battle marched them toward Virginia to be held as prisoners of war. Tom Allen told me a while ago that along the way as the column passed through the German settlements all through lower New York and Pennsylvania the Hessians slipped away and hid among the population, becoming American farmers, and by the time the column got to Virginia there were hardly any prisoners left.

Looking forward to Vermont and New Hampshire in the coming weeks.

 

 

June 5 to 8—Walker Farm, Cooperstown, NY

Nothing has made me aware of how long I have been kicking around as returning to this place where I spent part of my 15^th summer, my cousin (my mother’s sister’s daughter) Carol’s dairy farm. I had a great time as a kid working (hard) for Merk and exploring the area. It is a 280 acre spread at the top of a mountain, 2,000 feet in elevation. Hidden in the valley below is Lake Otsego and just a few miles north is the upper edge of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Strange, though, for me, to come to a place where almost half-a-century has passed since I last visited. Whole buildings have been built and demolished in the intervening period. A neighboring farmer that I helped with a hay harvest (hardest worker I ever did) has passed away as has his son.

We had a fantastic stay here—a beautiful site and every minute with Carol and Merk was a pleasure. They don’t raise cows anymore but farm hay. For every house being restored between here in Cooperstown there is one for sale. For every barn that is in use as a barn there are three in disprepair. But it is idyllic country—plentiful wildflowers and wildlife along rolling roads that go through fields greener even than those of southern Maryland and perfectly-formed trees like larch and birch. During my summer internship here in 1969 Merk and I had strong differences of opinion about the state of the nation—vietnam war, civil rights, etc. We are still at opposite ends of the political spectrum but manage to enjoy our differences and find some common ground. I had spent time en-route to the farm crafting a gag line for him and couldn’t wait to deliver it: “You know, Merk, they say people grow more conservative as they grow older and I guess it’s true cause I find myself starting to like Bernie Sanders.”

Sad to leave. We had visited the Fenimore House art museum during our stay, hiked the roads and fields, brunched at the luxurious Hotel Otesaga. Our future campsites will have a hard time meeting the standard set by my dear cousins.

June 2 to June 5—Westcott (NY) State Park

Drove a couple hours to Corning, NY to tour the glass museum. Quite the place—technical demonstrations on various properties of glass, vast collection of historical glass going back 3,000BC, and fine art exhibits. We were afraid that since it was owned by Corning that they would make us sit for a sales session on Correlware or Pyrex but there was no real sales pitch and they gave credit to Libby and Owens where due. I give it a high rating.

Drove a few more hours, mostly in the rain, through the Finger Lakes district of NY, Seneca Lake, specifically (Watkins Glenn, Geneva, etc.) Seneca lake is about fifty miles long and two miles wide and is lined with wineries, at least on the west shore, one after another. The feel of a beach resort in many places, just gearing up for the season, umbrellas being unfurled over picnic tables, the smell of fresh grease in the air.

Arrived at Westcott Beach state park, on Lake Ontario, near the source of the St. Lawrence river (in a couple weeks we will be at the terminus of the St. Lawrence in Gaspe, Canada). The park was quite empty when we arrived, on Thursday, but has filled up as I write this on Saturday evening. We hiked all the trails the park has to offer; can’t say much good about them, kind of scroungy-looking woods, and the flora limited. We did see, up close, a grouse taking a stroll, which was a first. We went into the nearest city, Watertown, to do laundry. You know Watertown, of course, as the home of the Little Tree Air Freshener Company which has been making those little pine trees that hang from rearview mirrors. (Beastie Boys: “Got my little trees in the mirror/so my car don’t smell.”) since the 1930s when a local entrepreneur heard a milk delivery man say he liked his job except for the smell of spilled rancid milk in his truck. Watertown is also the home of the oldest continually-operated covered shopping mall.

These are Watertown’s gifts to our culture. Also John Foster Dulles and his brother, and Viggo Mortenson.

Lots of quaint walkable coastal villages nearby that we toured—Sackett’s Harbor, Cape Vincent.

We have had many brief, pleasant interactions with locals here and all along our travels. It is one of the greatest pleasures to have a funny or interesting exchange with a friendly person, and we have had many such encounters—the wry guy in the little store up the road who tried to sell me his business, the fellow camper who just stopped by to ask where we went today, the two Canadian bicyclists who work as clerks in the federal government nearing the end of their 1,000 vacation trip. We talked to them quite a while and gave me the chance to start practicing my response to the question from our northern neighbors that is sure to come too often when we get there, i.e. “So what about this Trump, eh?” I am working on a combination of a shrug and a pained expression. I thought I would most miss the 30 minutes or so I spent each morning for the past 40 years reading the Washington Post. I don’t. In fact I care less each day about things that used to consume me. We are moving in a stress-free bubble. Altho the serious rain that is supposed to come tomorrow morning while we are preparing to leave causes me a little concern.

 

MAY 27-30, Outside Chambersburg, PA

Forgot it was Memorial Day weekend and so had trouble locating a camp site. Wound up yesterday at Twin Bridge campground outside of Chambersburg PA. Not the kind of place we favor (most of our fellow campers show up in 30 and 40-foot trailers and motor homes and as soon as they plug into the electric they turn on the AC and you never see them again) but we were grateful to have found a site, and it’s a nice place, has a lot to like. Great for kids—a fast flowing shallow stream that they play in and lots of little amusements for them. Nice to see kids outside all day whooping and hollering.

Had our first visitor last night, a guy from the area in his big trailer, a real character full of stories. “I was at Homestead air force base for two years and I tell you it’s nothing but sawgrass, snakes, hot rats and sweat. The army only let us have one shower a week but it didn’t matter as soon as you came out of the shower it was like you never went into one. They mashed down that sawgrass with a big-wheeled army truck and said ‘Set up your tent there’ and I thought I’m not sleeping on that with all those snakes and hot rats and whatever the hell is in there.” Guy’s name was Don and he and my cousin Debbie, both 65, remember taking baths in zinc tubs with water heated on a wood stove.

Brenda and I took a three+ mile walk this morning along the local roads while the mist was still coming off the land. Clear to see where the piedmont ends and the Appalachians begin to the west a couple miles away, mist rising from some unseen river.

Big dairy farms, two old graveyards, an unusual roadside flower later identified as Bladder Campion. Nice here now, 2:30, under the shade of the canopy attached to our trailer; very hot but a nice breeze. Old high school chum and his wife, who live nearby, are coming over. There is a gospel bluegrass concert here at the campground tonight—we’ll listen to a bit and then go out to dinner.

We have been eating well but simply—a vegetable curry last night, chili one night, fire-baked potatoes and local fresh spinach another. PB&J sandwiches, apples. Part of the purpose of this trip is to get away from our (my) preoccupation with food. At home I start thinking about dinner as soon as I finish lunch and the meals were getting more elaborate, exotic and calorie-laden. Now I am grateful for a crust of bread with a little butter.

Took a short drive to visit Franklin Furnace, a National Register site, at the very base of the Appachians. Saw a guy gardening inside the ruins of an old stone structure. We got out thinking this was the remains of the Franklin Furnace. It was instead an 18^th century building built to store charcoal and supplies for the furnace which was nearby. But he told us that the furnace was on private property down the road a little bit and the owner didn’t appreciate people coming onto his property; he insinuated that the property owner really didn’t like people visiting the furnace and that he was about to bulldoze the whole site to avoid liability for people clambering around the furnace ruins. So a lesson learned—sites on the National Registry of Historic Places are not necessarily public spaces. We talked to the guy for a long while, a gentle friendly native of the area. He told us where to see a Timber Rattlesnake that had just been run over. Close as I want to get.

 

May 30-June 2, Hill’s Creek State Park, Pennsylania (Wellsboro)

Left Twin Bridge early Memorial Day. Last night there was an insipid “gospel bluegrass concert” at the camp which was really just a guy singing modern religious songs to a karaoke tape. Introducing a song he said, “You know, tomorrow is Memorial Day, and we often forget the sacrifice of our soldiers.” Seems to me like every day is Armed Forces Day.

Drove three hours to Wellsboro, PA over back roads, up mountain and down. The truck revved pretty high getting up one stretch but overall has been running cool.

Mennonites have been a constant presence since we entered PA. I don’t think I’ve seen anything but Mennonite and United Methodist churches. Twice we have been walking on country roads and waved to families of Mennonites driving by in their minivans—role reversal.

Hill’s Creek State Park is built around one of PA’s man-made lakes. Very nice place—good trailer sites by the lake, great bathhouses. I guess one becomes a connoisseur of trailer facilities after a time. We drove to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania in Leonard Harrison State Park. More impressive than you might think, altho I haven’t seen the Grand Canyon. 1,800 feet deep, 4,000 feet across.

In the 1800s every tree in this region was felled and sent downriver ( Pine Creek to the West Branch of the Susquehanna)—white pine for ships’ masts and hemlock bark for tanning leather. At one time this area had the largest tannery operations in the world. There are late 18^th c. pictures of these hills completely devoid of vegetation as far as the camera could see

We are at about 1,400 feet elevation. The forests here have shifted to evergreens, and the understory is ferns and solomonseal (at least I think it is solomonseal; Brenda thinks it is something else.) Brenda spotted a wild red columbine yesterday. In the early morning the edges of the lake are churning with fish, white and common carp mating in the shallows. We had seen this once before in a creek near our house in late spring; they almost turned our canoe over with their carrying-on. Here, in the morning, they are thrashing around in the watersprite and lilypads exchanging pleasantries–carp seizing the day (ha! a Latin joke).

My pocket knife has entered the contest for most valuable tool. My fingernails are chronically dirty, what with setting up and breaking camp, starting cook fires, etc. What this park needs is a good manicurist. And a liquor store.

MAY 26

Left Greenbrier after 3 nights, drove to Fort Frederick, built in 1752 when this part of Maryland was frontier, a defense against the Indians incited by the French to attack British settlers. Because there was a special school group in attendance there was a costumed guide on site, a history major who was a great font of information. He was reluctant to admit that George Washington was responsible for starting the French & Indian War; in fact, he was at pains not to say anything negative about any historical figure or world power, but I could tell he harbored his doubts about some of the founding fathers. (Talkin’ ‘bout you, Hamilton.)

There was a nice trail at the park along the Potomac and the C&O canal at a spot called Big Pool. The Potomac was flowing as fast as I’ve ever seen it, after weeks of rain. Great Falls, one hundred miles downstream, was probably fantastic.

Went to my cousin Deb’s house on the National Pike in Clear Spring. She is my father’s brother Jack’s daughter and lives in the house that her mother’s family, Shirks, Anabaptists from Pennsylvania, built in 1820. Deb has restored the place, exposing the hand cut timbers and wide chinking of the original house walls and the six-inch wide heart-of-pine flooring. There is a state historical marker in front of Deb’s house noting that J. E. B. Stuart and his cavalry crossed the road here en route from one place to another to kill somebody or another. My family visited here when I was a kid, going “to the farm” or “up to the country”—a watermelon in a bucket down the well to keep cool, the men shooting crows off the telephone line, my uncle telling me to “watch out for Indians” when I went out for walks in the woods. I’m sure I made a face like “yeah right” but when I got into the woods a ways I began to think that maybe it wasn’t farfetched that some Indians could still be hiding up in the hills. I date my interest in the natural world to these trips. Thanks Uncle Jack and Aunt Jeanette! And thanks Deb for a great dinner and letting us stay.

There is a competition going within our kit of supplies as to which is the most useful tool. Second place so far goes to the Leatherman multi-purpose tool my father gave me (took the place of the forgotten can opener and a pot holder). But the most valuable item to date has been the gardener’s kneeling pad I brought along. I’ve had to get on my knees in the cap-covered pickup truck, on the gravel to inspect something under the trailer, and to blow on the kindling for my fire. Thanks gardener’s kneeling pad, you have been most helpful. But the competition has a long way to go.

 

MAY 23-26, 2016

Had to pack truck in the drizzle and rain. A farewell to Donald and Lucy in our driveway and a last look at the homestead. Lucy had put signs on the mill for us, Burma Shave style, sending us on our way.

Every cubic inch of truck bed was filled and there wouldn’t have been room anyway for the things we soon realized we had forgotten—can opener and little green scrubby pads for washing dishes, for example.

One hundred miles to Greenbrier State Park. A nice park built around one of Maryland’s lakes. All lakes in Maryland are man-made which makes one think a little less of them, but lovely still. Elevation one-thousand feet on South Mountain. Slate and granite outcroppings, mature mixed hardwood forests with ferns and flowering mountain laurel understory We’ve taken a number of five+ mile hikes around the park, around the lake and up the mountains. Also took a hike around Antietam battlefield in nearby Sharpsburg. Antietam’s doleful distinction–the bloodiest single day battle in America military history, twenty-three thousand dead and wounded. A nice mountain view landscape to walk is Antietam battlefield, paths through fields of green winter wheat, and then you come upon some site like the notorious ‘Sunken Road” where the bodies piled up like cordwood in 1862.

No excitement, no downside so far. Unpacked and repacked the truck a couple of times to gain access to the  more in-demand items; this will probably happen a couple times more as warm weather clothes and exotic kitchen gadgets migrate to the rear and everyday items are put within reach . Where is that potato peeler, anyway?