Month: June 2016

June 26, 2016, Downeast Maine

Different Ways of Identifying and Doing Things

 

Downeast

There are a few practices that seem to be unique to the region, starting with the term “Downeast” which refers to the upper portion of Maine and part of the Canadian maritime provinces. (It corresponds roughly to the French holdings of the 18^th century, one-time home of the Cajun people, their name being a corruption of the French name for the region, Acadiana.) Sailing was the only real means of connecting this region to the rest of the Atlantic coast, and the prevailing winds from Boston on up are from the southwest; to sail to the Acadian area was to sail downwind. So the region, relative to the hub of Boston, was the downwind portion of the east coast, or the “down east.” Apparently some locals still say “going up to Boston.”

Bean Suppers and Mattress Sales

A frequent church event, the community gathers to share a pot of baked beans (molasses and bacon are involved), sides and, importantly, pies. We have had the opportunity to attend several in our travels but declined for fear that we would not get enough to eat and be objects of curiosity.

“Mattress sales” show up with regularity. These are fundraisers, where people buy new mattresses with the profit going to the church or the school. I go a long time between mattresses, myself. I don’t see how this can be a profitable endeavor unless, for some reason, the people of Maine have reason to replace their mattresses with great frequency. This would interest me. A thought occurs to me regarding the bean suppers but I will let it pass.

 

Ice Cream

There are lots of little ice cream stands in Maine. You are never far from one. I like ice cream but they really like it.

Pickled Wrinkles

Stopped in a bar to try a local “delicacy” (“delicacy” having come to mean something for which a small group of people have acquired a taste that others have not had the courage or opportunity to try) called pickled wrinkle. The wrinkle in question is a type of whelk, a small sea snail. Most whelks live in tidal margins but this fellow is found attached to lobster traps in deep water. Watermen here save the wrinkles and pickle them in vinegar to have a protein-rich snack in winter. I bought four for $3.95. There are the size of a small mussel, and taste mostly like pickling brine with a conch-like chew on the good side of rubbery. A better source of protein than a Cliff bar for my money.

 

Crab

The local crab is Jonah crab, another lobster pot bycatch. It is close to blue crab but stringier, not unpleasantly, and slightly fishier, also not a turn-off. But I’ll take my crab blue, thanks. Better yet, pass me another lobster.

 

Fiddlehead Ferns

We’ve eaten these several times now. Like asparagus in taste, they are in season now, attractive  bright green things, the size of a silver dollar, coiled like the top of a fiddle. Probably good for you in some way.

 

Day and Night

This is meteorological, not cultural. Bushwood is at 38 degrees latitude, roughly, and we are at 44.5 now. First light (mostly a nautical term meaning when you can first see the horizon but it has a formal military meaning, i.e. the sun is 12 degrees below the horizon) is a little after 4am. Well before 5 it is bright enough to sort beans for the church dinner. And it stays light until well after 9. The stars don’t really start to come out until 10pm. When you get to 60 degrees latitude you are in the land of perpetual daylight (in summer. The shoe is on the other foot in winter, here—long, long nights.) So the vegetation and wildlife here sprint to life—profusions of wildflowers and warblers. We are asleep before the stars come out and up before you.

June 20 to 24, Spruce Head, Maine

Haven’t written much because, frankly, the settings and days have been kind of dreamy and I didn’t think I would be doing anyone any favor by talking about how nice we had it at Lobster Buoy Campground in Spruce Head (or South Thomaston, depending on your map.)

A small, unpretentious campground that has been owned by the same family since the 40s. It used to be a junkyard until WWII made it worthwhile to haul the metal out for the war effort. After the war the current owner’s grandparents converted the now-cleared land to a campground. Many people we talked to come here year after year and at least one person I encountered, an elderly woman, has been coming here since it was started as a campground when “we used to just drive right down to the beach and set up camp in the sand.”

We were on the waterfront of a bay or large cove that contained a dozen small and large islands, close and distant, a couple with houses, most covered with towering evergreens, some just piles of boulders. The Atlantic was maybe five miles out, beyond the furthest chain of islands. The tides were ten feet so the islands at various times look like they are hovering above the water. Boulders everywhere, mats of kelp (?), and long strands of thick underwater grass flowing like hair in the rushing tides. Several large-scale commercial lobstering operations and a couple of waterfront lobster shacks along a 2 mile walk down the coast. A local surname is “Waterman” (my preferred lobster joint is Waterman’s Beach Lobster) but the fisher-folk don’t call themselves watermen. We lucked out with this place—reasonably-priced, benignly neglected, nice folks, and just a magical setting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I almost forgot the nesting loon from our camp near Naples, ME on Long Lake.

June 20, 2016, western Maine

 

I thought I was a little fool for sitting in the Annomoosuc River for hours tweezering out little flecks of gold but now realize I was a big fool. Twernt gold at all but gold-colored mica. Spent an hour yesterday with a real gold-panner, a friendly smart guy, IT professional (spends months of his working year in Oman and Kuwait) that owned the land on the far bank of the river meaning only he had prospecting rights on that side. He had an elaborate, time-consuming  five step process (“Water and time are your friends.”) that had yielded him, in two days work, a minute amount of what was, unmistakably, gold. It’s like Ray Raley told me about the bald eagle, “When you see it you know you’ve seen it.” Prospector said his haul for the weekend was probably $100 worth as just gold but worth twice that as “specimen gold,” that is, gold specifically from that river which real collectors value as items for their collection along with Klondike gold and Sutter Mill gold, etc., this river being quite famous among collectors.

Today pushed over the Kangamagus Highway over the White Mountains. I’ve never suspected the Appalachians could be so formidable. I’ve always thought of them as respectably ancient but washed out hills. No, they are something to be reckoned with. Hauling a trailer over frost-heaved roads on steep 7% decline with a swarm of Harley riders on your tail can tire you out.

In Naples, Maine, private campground by Lake Sebago. Went into town and had a proper restaurant meal for the first time since leaving, a groovy Annapolis-like setting at a marina on the lake. Too much money, too much food—went to my head.

 

He rode out of Old Vermont and crossed the Connecticut River and stepped for the first time into the New Hampshire Territory. First time for him and his horse, Old Scamp. “The Connecticut ain’t much of a river,” he thought to his self; “maybe the folks in Connecticut think it is…or maybe it is by the time it gets there.”  He rode a few miles upstream to the junction with the Ammonoosuc River, noted that the sun was starting to reach the tops of the mountains and would soon disappear behind them and decided to make camp on the banks of the Ammonoosuc. He unloaded his gear and unsaddled the horse, took off his leather boots and he and the horse cooled their hooves in the shallow, stony river. He sat on a rock and rolled some ‘bacca and was savoring his smoke when a bright glint of something in the water caught his eye. He leaned over, picked it up between thumb and forefinger, and snorted, ‘Well I’ll  be damned.’ Back in Old Vermont he’d heard some fellers sayin’ they found gold along the Ammonoosuc. Always struck him as a tiresome and a fool way to chase after riches but he respected men with ambition, not possessing much of it himself. Now danged if he hadn’t found himself a flake right off. Weren’t much of a thing, small enough to balance on the point of a 22 caliber bullet if there was no wind, small enough to pass through the eyelet of his boot, but gold just the same. “I’ll be damned,” he said again. He went back to his campsite, built a fire, and sat on a flat rock to eat some warmed-up beans, the fleck of gold next to him, and he stared at it the whole time he was eating. “Gold,” he said aloud.

Next morning he brewed up a cup of  chicory and walked back into the gold-bearing river. He looked around to see if there were any more shiny flakes. After a time he saw them—much smaller than the first one, too small to trifle with, but plentiful. He started moving rocks around to see what was under them. The swift flow of the river carried away the silt and after a period of looking he found another little flake of gold he could pick up. He sat down on a rock in the shallows and started sifting through the sandy river bottom. Pretty soon he found another little flake. He could see the tiniest particles of gold swirl in the water as he moved it around, impossible to capture by hand. He devised different methods of searching—digging little depressions in the river bottom and combing the sides, creating little whirlpools with his hand. He got a stick and excavated trenches and overturned rocks. The miniscule flashes of gold tantalized and seem to taunt him, “You can’t catch me!”

Finger-size fishes came to feed in the areas he disturbed. At first he thought this was a good omen, but then he began to think that maybe gold was their food and he started shooing them away and building dams around the little sites he was working.

The sun rose higher in the sky and he kept looking. He tried to capture smaller and smaller flecks of metal, most being forced away by the action of squeezing his fingers together. It frustrated him to see so much of it drifting away, ungraspable. He piled his treasures in a cavity in a rock and kept looking as the sun rose higher. He looked around occasionally to see if anyone was watching that might jump his claim when he left. He was determined to work it dry before he would let that happen, or sit watch all night. Occasionally he got excited by a big piece flashing in the bottom only to find it was a piece of mica. “All that glitters…” he was reminded of the old chestnut, but rather than striking him as wise insight he found it annoying. A long time passed, of which he was unaware. Finally hunger and the ache of bending over reminded him. He gathered his collection and was disappointed to find that it hadn’t amounted to much more than enough than would cover his little fingernail. “I’ll be damned,” he said aloud. “Tain’t much. How long I been out here?”

 

When he got back to camp Old Scamp had run off from hunger and chipmunks had broken into his saddlebags and eaten all his stores and a squirrel was gnawing a hole in his leather boots. He admitted that having gold was likely a good situation to be sittin’ in but collecting it this way was a fine waste of time. “Sure is pretty, though,” he allowed and he stared at it while he rolled a cigarette and the sun disappeared behind the White Mountains.

Sort of a true story. I did find a noteworthy fleck of gold within minutes of arriving, and I did get a small case of gold fever. We did not know, coming here, that the Annomoosuc River, just above its union with the Connecticut River, is the goldpanning destination of NH if not all of New England. There was a goldrush here in the 1840s. The source of the gold is upriver a good ways and worked out, but bits of gold are bound dup in the granite and other rocks and get washed downstream.  There were several teams of guys digging up the river bed and the banks over the past couple days, running the sediments through various contraptions (nothing mechanized, all hand), slowly accumulating their reward. Disturb the sediments of the river in bright sunshine and the water is aswarm with gold pinpoints. Brenda found a nice piece of green quartz. After many hours poking around in the shallows for a couple days I realize I’m more of a nugget man, myself. You can keep your placer gold.

Today is sunday and the other campers at this family campground have mostly left. We have the pool (a saltwater-system versus chlorine) to ourselves on this blazing hot New Hampshire afternoon. Not much to report–we’ve been lounging.

June 15-17, 2016, Groton State Forest, Vermont, Ricker Pond

 

This is what I was imagining—a site on the little lake, birch trees swaying in the breeze. Arrived late yesterday, the 15^th, without a reservation. The park manager made a big show of doubting whether he could squeeze us in but in fact he was a kidder and the place is nearly deserted. Still early in the season I guess, but what a fine place. We were a little concerned at first because the site is amidst the forest and Soulie kept darting off and getting misplaced but she seems to have settled down. Pheniobelle has been content to stay in the trailer throughout the trip and I am content that she is. When we took the Scamp and the cats on a shakedown cruise in February Pheenie took off the first opportunity “like  a shot off a shovel” and it took me two hours and close to a half-mile of walking in the woods of the Northern Neck to track her down. But the cats are being well-behaved and I don’t have any complaints.

Hiked around a neighboring lake and walked the last few hundred feet up Owl Head Mountain to 2100 feet and a spectacular view.

 

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps had built a neat little castle-like shelter at the top of Owl Head in the 1930s. I can’t count the times I’ve had occasion to use and enjoy the labors of the CCC in my life—Camp Misty Mount above Thurmont, trails and overlooks in Monongahela and George Washington Forests, many places.

We wanted to walk around Kettle Pond but the trail was closed because a nesting goshawk has been attacking hikers, taking one guys hat off and up into a tree and sinking a talon into a ranger’s shoulder. I thought, “Let’s risk it—how often do you get a chance to get attacked by a goshawk?” but a wound from such a bird requires aggressive antibiotic treatment ‘cause who knows where those talons have been.

 

Brenda saw a moose, thank god. She’s been talking about nothing else since we got here then we came around a corner, driving back from a trailhead, and lo, there it was, like an upright piano on spindly legs.

There are loons on the lake by our camp at night. The normal cry of the loon is a plaintive note like a lonesome train whistle, but the other cry is a maniacal yodeling that lets you know why their name is associated with madness. Which came first, the moon, the loon, or the madman? Lunacy comes from luna, the moon, but loony comes from the loon. Another latin joke lurking in there somewhere.

We have pretty much been going on two meals a day. A good breakfast (buckwheat pancakes last two mornings) and a late dinner. A few nights ago we had some vegetables (asparagus, sweet peppers, green onions, arugula) mixed with thai curry paste, a couple of eggs and some flour, fried up like fritters. The same mix of veggies and flavoring sautéed the next night with rice noodles. We brought a toaster oven and have toast and peanut butter many mornings.

This campsite, Ricker Pond in Groton State Forest VT, was the first time we relied solely on battery power and  I was disappointed to discover that our battery electric supply only lasted a little over 24 hours. I was hoping to get at least two day’s worth. The refrigerator is the heavy user so next time we are off-grid for a while I will get a bag of ice. But  I also have a suspicion that something is sapping juice in a passive mode. I suspect the electric pump that brings water into the sink and to the toilet. Next time we’ll turn off the water pump when not in use and see if the batteries last longer. Hope so.

Yester evening, our last in Vermont, I drove to the little country store outside the state forest to get some necessaries. A local man was telling the others that he saw a catamount in his yard, the first one he’d seen in the thirty-some years he’d lived “on the mountain.” Catamount is a term I thought had disappeared in the 19^th century but I have seen it used occasionally from upstate New York, where it was the mascot of a HS team in Hosmer Valley, to here. We would say mountain lion. Go, Catamounts, Go! ‘Course this guy said he immediately went inside to get his deer rifle; fortunately the panther had gone back into the woods. He knew killing the cat would be a crime and said, “I’d rather have my three year old boy than my hunting license.” I think he would have lost more than his hunting license. I would hope so.

June 13-15, Rutland, Vermont

Staying in a private campground that we have all to ourselves. An open field in the middle of the Green Mountains. No mistaking how they got that name. Arrived yesterday late, ate some salted pecans, dug some winter clothes out of the truck because it was rather cold. Today though is bright and warm and we went to the Vermont Marble Museum. Brenda thought it was going to be a museum about little round marbles. She was glad it was not but wasn’t particularly elated about its real subject matter. The fortunes of the marble industry of Vermont, of which the Rutland area is the center, have risen and fallen since 1840. They rose spectacularly under the ownership of a man named Proctor. Among other accomplishments he was US Senator and during his tenure much of imperial Washington was built, and much of it was built with, coincidentally, Vermont marble. In 1900 the Vermont Marble Company was the largest commercial enterprise in the US, with quarries and operations across the country. Now the quarries are owned by a Japanese firm Omya that grinds up the marble into powder which is calcium carbonate and used in everything. We were stopped at two railroad crossings for the same long train hauling limestone slurry which is their product.

Vermont Marble supplied the block that is the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery. It is solid marble, in case you were wondering–I always wondered. At the museum we watched a short film just about the creation of that memorial. Having run out of anything else to say the film went on at length about the exceptional qualities of the soldiers who are given the privilege to stand guard at the monument 24/7. I mean it laid it on thick about the guards, at one point claiming they were “bearing the eternal flame of American manhood.” It really was convincing that these members of the Old Guard are a special breed, but there must have been an old stonemasons trowel laying around when they wrote the script.

 

Also stopped at the New England Maple Syrup museum which is daft—some dummies that move almost imperceptibly while they tell you nothing of interest, some artifacts of syrup making, a short film. It is possible to leave the museum knowing nothing about maple syrup that you didn’t already know or suspect. They did have a little tasting room that I was taking advantage of until Brenda said, “They didn’t advertise lunch.” Mostly it is a shop, and out of politeness we bought  smallest quantities of the product available, packaged in miniature liquor bottles.

When we got back from the museums we were sitting outside the Scamp when an unexpected  gust of wind lifted our awning completely off the ground and over the camper. Took a while to wrestle it back to normal position and the ends of a couple of the aluminum struts were bent or broken. I went into town and bought some bits of bracket metal and screws and might have cobbled it back together; won’t know until we unfurl it again which might be next week. Our first real mishap.

 

We have crossed the Appalachian Trail, or the Long Trail as the locals here call it, probably a half-dozen times on our trip. This morning from our campsite on a near mountainside where the trail goes I saw a little column of smoke rise from the forest that I imagine was from a hiker making a hearty breakfast. What a brilliant contribution to our nation, the Long Trail.

 

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.