Most days when I set out on an adventure I end up in Narnia, somewhere hidden and unexpected, somewhere full of whimsy and joy. I was expecting nothing short of this on Friday when I found myself once again crawling out of my own skin to get out. It’d been a week of bad insomnia and health issues so I didn’t get out until way later than I should have but I still had great hopes when I set off. I was going to go to Vermont, for what reason I wasn’t sure, and coming home from Vermont I was going to stop at a fabric store or two so I could purchase some cloth with which to start designing my own clothes. Little was I to know that day’s adventure would be more of a misadventure.
Somehow I came across Gifford Woods State Park as a destination. Another blogger had been around Kent Pond and took some lovely snaps when there was still snow on the ground. I figured this was a good starting place so ignoring the faintest pain behind my eye, a sure sign of a migraine to come, I hopped in the car, programmed the GPS, and set out on the two hour drive.
The leaves are just starting to turn color up here and I wanted to basically go on a foliage tour. We call this activity leaf peeping and people come from all over to drive aggravatingly slow and… peep. To be honest I’d never bothered. As much as I love fall and all it’s beauty I have always lived here and fully admit I’m absolutely jaded on the subject. That is until I found myself with a camera and almost two hundred Instagram followers. Now I didn’t feel silly indulging.
As usual the drive was gorgeous. I ended up winding down all sorts of country roads, through the mountains which where all starting to become flush with red, orange, and yellow. It made my heart beat just a little faster. I passed many places I wanted to check out but I knew I had to get to the trails soon because it gets dark in the woods several hours before it gets dark everywhere else and I was already trying to beat the clock.
I started entering the Killington area to find this was a community that seemed to be based on skiing. The mountains were striped with deforestation, the result of creating many ski paths down them, and the little businesses all seemed swanky and cute. I even passed a place called Cyco Bikes. Vermont has always been super fond of punderful business names.
I found my destination in one shot. That never happens. I drove in, parked at the information center, and then immediately became confused. There didn’t seem to be any trails or ponds here. Though there was a bulletin board it said something about $4 for adults and then went on to say something about camping and day passes and God knows what else. Huh? I walked up to the information center.
“Can I help you?”
“Suuuuure… Do I have to pay to hike on the trails around here?”
I think the answer was no but I was soon inundated with about eighty different things at once. This super friendly woman handed me not one but two maps and proceeded to point out about fifty different trails and why each was great as well as directions to them because none of the ones she was pointing out attached to the parking lot (I think that was the one trail she didn’t mention!) Some had old hardwood trees which I am sure are nice but if I remember right most of the trees that turn color are soft wood. Some had waterfalls. Some were a three hour hike and attached to other trails, some were fifteen minutes. Eventually she got to the pond. I asked politely about that one. Again she gave me two different answers. I could go out of the parking lot, take a left, and take it from there for a two to three hour trail or I could go some other farther away destination down several roads and have a fifteen minute hike and some waterfalls. I did the first as her second set of directions completely baffled me.
Sure enough just up the road there was a parking lot that had a big trail sign pointing at it. I drove in and was immediately greeted with a gorgeous lake sitting coyly underneath the mountains and cuddled up with clouds. Beautiful. Two women were on a bench just staring at it and enjoying the moment. There was a trail head bulletin here but I wasn’t seeing any trails… and the bulletin had no maps or mentions of trails. Errr…
I found a spot near where I parked the car that looked like it could be a trail, be it a horribly overgrown one. So I entered and found myself about five inches deep in mud. Whatever this was had all sorts of shoe prints going in two directions at a tiny fork. I went towards the lake and slogged through the muck about twenty feet before the foot prints dried up and I was hit with even deeper mud and a wall of forest. I tried the other side and came across the same issue. I left. Maybe it was on the other side of this little beach? There did seem to be some sort of path through the reeds behind the bulletin board… I was able to walk maybe thirty feet on that “path” where I could see a beaver lodge but unless I wanted to swim the rest of the way around the lake there was no way around that. Clearly based on the footprints I wasn’t the only one having this problem.
Annoyed I left. I figured I could find a trail, any trail, and find something good on it, so back to the car I went. The problem is I am still driving the borrowed Prius and this was not the area to be driving a Prius. It was a fifty mile an hour road where all the locals were going seventy and they were pissed if you wanted to stop at one of these trail heads or slow down in any way. I didn’t even have a chance because upon leaving the parking lot I was greeted with a steep hill and the Prius refused to pick up speed. I got to fourty, maybe forty five, and a pick up behind me was up my tail pipe from out of nowhere. He was driving so fast and aggressively I thought I’d be nice, pull over, and let him pass. That didn’t make him happy either as he blared his horn as he whooshed by. I don’t know what he expected me to do… I can only press the gas pedal so far. If the car refuses to go the car refuses to go and we are on a fucking mountain after all. This happened a couple times until I finally found another trailhead, the Sherbourne Trail. This time there was a huge sign aside the road and a very obvious parking lot. Granted I could not find this particular path on the map.
I got out. There were numerous people, all accompanied by mountain bikes. One look at the path and I knew that’s what it was for, not for hikers, even though it wasn’t marked as such with any signage. Fuck it. It was a little over a mile long, claiming to be a “mountain pass.” I thought why not, mountain passes have summits, and that would be perfect for some foliage photos. Up I went zigzagging and stepping aside whenever I heard a bike coming up behind me. The cyclists were all super sweet and some were even laughing, all of them thanked me for stepping aside.
There wasn’t much to see here… a number of mossy rocks but not much else. A few times I came across a smell that was wonderful and sweet and brought me right back to my childhood but I couldn’t tell you what it was. Since the trail zigzagged and branched a few times I was trying to keep focused on the orange trail markers…. but I think whoever was putting them up was colorblind because they’d inadvertently turn pink from time to time for no reason. Usually when this happens it means two trails are converging. I saw no evidence of this.
I reached the top in no time at all and was annoyed because there was no summit. I had merely found myself near the top of the mountain but not quite, just behind a bunch of houses. Ugh. I tried to find my way back down… that’s where things got hairy. I figured, rather naively, that this was a loop path. I continued following the orange markers but the sounds of the highway below were getting more muffled as I went. I got the distinct feeling I was going the wrong way. I decided to back track. Things got hairier. I found myself going past things I knew I already passed. This trail was looping alright. I saw no divergences so I had no idea how this was happening. I went back up towards the top thinking I could find my way from there. It was starting to get dark now and all the other cyclists and people were gone. Fuck. This park attached to three or four other parks. In the past I have found this to mean it’s easy to wander onto a path that connects all of them together. The woman at the information center said one of the paths around the pond connected to the Appalachian Trail. I knew I sure as hell didn’t want to end up there… that thing is literally hundreds of miles long.
I ended up where there was some sort of construction. Two twenty something year old men were putting down a bridge. I hadn’t passed that before… did I? How the hell did I get here? And more importantly did I have the courage to fess up and admit I was lost? Not at first. I passed them, knowing immediately that was the wrong decision when my poor little converses sank in the mud. I hadn’t passed mud…. this was the wrong way… but I still had my pride. I walked a little ways but this time the sound of cars was so distant I could barely hear them at all. My back up plan was to find a road and hitchhike back to the car if, God forbid, I ended up truly and utterly lost. I headed back, sheepishly, and asked where the fuck I was. I had a nice little chat with these two very friendly guys, and one of them said, “Go out to the intersection and take a left. Keep taking lefts. You’ll end up back at the parking lot.” Thank God I knew which trail head I had come or they wouldn’t have known where to send me either. They sheepishly admitted this trail was brand new and as of yet poorly marked. I didn’t even see the intersection coming up… but I saw it going back and kept going, and going, and going, until as promised, about a mile and a half away, sat the Prius, also looking sheepish, it somehow found itself cuddled up to another Prius (with a bike rack??) and a horse trailer. The horse trailer made me laugh. Clearly someone else didn’t know this was a bike path so I’m not that numb after all.
By now I was overheated, dehydrated, exhausted, and my migraine was starting to kick in full force. That’s never a good thing when you’ve got nausea and have to navigate down curving mountain roads and psychotic 180 degree loop-de-loop styled New England exits. By now it was five in the evening. I’d been on that trail for more than two hours. There’d be no extra foliage shots on the way home for me and I wouldn’t be stopping at any fabric stores either with my head pounding like this. About fifty minutes from home I started getting super sick and started to look for places to pull off the road and take a nap but by then all the picnic areas and rest stops seemed to have disappeared. As I entered Keene, thirty five minutes from home, I debated stopping in the city somewhere but by then it was only thirty five minutes. I could handle it, couldn’t I? Driving by was a decision I soon regretted as I stared at the clock every five minutes, watching it tick down, desperately wanting to be home. By the time I pulled in the driveway it took all my strength not to open the car door and just barf all over the ground. I was crazy dizzy as I tottled back to the house and collapsed immediately into bed. Better luck next time? I sure hope so!
If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!
It’s been a hellish week for so many here in the US. I have spent much of it watching in horror as people I know, and many thousands I do not, are evacuated from their homes in Texas and Florida and sent north to flee a succession of powerful hurricanes which are pounding everything they touch. I’ve seen people turned down by the airlines because they have brought their pets without a shipping proof carrier with themto escape, I have seen others having to leave beloved animals like horses behind because there was just no transport, no where to bring them, and no time. Hotels for hundreds of miles out are all booked solid leaving those traveling by car at the mercy of their vehicles should they need sleep or a break. The scene is of utter chaos and my heart continues to go out to anyone working their way through it.
It rained all week here and I found myself alone for the duration of this. Normally I enjoy a little time to indulge my inner introvert but this week? I think I just ached to know everyone in my inner circle was OK. There seems to be a lot of personal dramas and deaths swirling around as well, completely unrelated to the hurricanes. This leaves a traveling empath such as myself exhausted beyond measure.
Still I woke up feeling a lot more energetic today which is great because I had a few things planned… basically helping someone I knew without a car do a few errands – I am always the one to call for an emergency tampon run. And when I had finished I had decided it was time to go see what I could find with the limited daylight I had left.
I ended up in Townsend Massachusetts, I think where an old town common used to be. There was a large turn off here and I wasn’t sure if this meant anything but on a hunch I decided to check it out. There was indeed an old abandoned road turned into a trail here. It looked like at one point someone was intent on making this a very nice place to be – not too far up it there was a little clearing filled with picnic tables and a camping grill, all overlooking a river. It was quiet as could be. This was the sort of serene and calm place I needed to ease my frazzled mind. It was easy to sit here in the forest and just forget about everything and let the gentle breeze take away all negative thoughts. Overhead a hawk flew by too fast for me on catch on camera but with his elegant wings shimmering through the last rays the sun had to offer today. For a second I was humbled. Normally I hate hawks (have lost many a chicken to those little SOB’s) but today it almost felt like he was a spirit animal there to tell me something. It was very odd and inspiring all at the same time.
I continued to walk after taking a brief respite at the river to snap photos. The road path continued onward but didn’t go very far. I got to see a few different views of the river but other than that there wasn’t much here and at the end there was a little turn around loop as it just stopped dead in the woods. I wondered what this road had been put here for and why it had been abandoned and turned into a park of sorts. I have been finding so many of these places lately… and they always deepen the mystery.
In the coming weeks the trees will continue to turn color here in New England and I hope to take abundant fall foliage photos as I travel from place to place. September is always a month of great whimsy and beauty. It’s always been my favorite time of year and not just because I was born in September. Perhaps having entered the world when it was awash with such vibrant foliage is the reason my favorite color has always been orange…
Sunday evening Katherine and I chilled for a while after our adventures earlier that day and said hello to my brother and his girlfriend before eating what was left of our deep fried s’mores and attempting an early bedtime so we could get up and head into Boston, a little more than three hours away, in the morning.
I can’t say my history with Boston has been the best… I mean it’s a tough city, big, full of rude people and aggressive drivers, statistically the worst in the country, but maybe it’s not their fault. As my brother said, “Those roads aren’t meant for cars.” He’s right. Boston is filled with impossibly narrow roads and streets, many of which sport one sharp curve after another, and none of which make any logical sense. To add insult to injury half the roads are underground where the GPS no longer works and when you finally get where you’re 
going there’s no parking anywhere. And if that’s not bad enough the drivers… wow. They’re called Mass-Holes by the rest of New England. They’re real peaches. I felt like I was playing Russian Roulette at every intersection. But here too is proof of my personal growth in the past year. I only started driving myself to unfamiliar places less than a year ago and Boston was on my “uh-ah, not going to do it” list. But this time around I barely took notice, volunteered to head into the bowels of Hell without a second thought, I think shocking my brother and everyone whom I told. I used to spend my life constantly engulfed by panic and anxiety. These days I wake up and have to check my pulse because I wonder if my heart is still beating when I can’t feel it slam against my chest walls. It’s really odd but so peaceful and wonderful. Even babies don’t thwart me anymore. They used to make me super nervous but just recently I realized they’re not really made of glass. Now instead of being like, “Shit don’t get that thing near me, I may break it.” I actually find them kinda cute. Except infants. They’ll always look like raisins to me.
Back to the story… Katherine asked if we could take an adventure on the way and I said sure, why not. She chose Walden Pond because she wanted to see where Thoreau wrote 
Katherine put it. It was $15 admission and seemed to be… A swimming hole for Bostoners. There were paths around the lake, none marked very well but it didn’t much matter as there were roads and civilization everywhere. No one was going to die out here. A replica of Thoreau’s cabin stood near the visitor center where there was both information and oddly, a gift shop. We discussed how morally strange it was to have a gift shop honoring a man who was all about simplifying one’s life and cutting out materialism… Though this spirit did seem present when we found the sight of his original cabin. Here was a large pile of rocks (just like the rest of New England…) where people had made some sort of weird piled rock memorial to the man. Some used Sharpies to doodle messages and pictures on the stones they left behind.
It seems as if almost the entirety of the lake had been made into one big sandy beach. The one at the front had the shallow bits cordoned off like keeping a mass of people in a big fish net! Further out there was more nature-friendly bits, kayakers seemed to be enjoying the day on the water, and other people had found more isolated spots to swim. Katherine and I were not dressed for this, having no idea there might be swimming involved, but we decided it was a nice hot day and the water did seem rather nice. I pulled off my trusty Chuck Taylors and knee high nerd socks, rolled up my pants, and waded in. Katherine followed suit. OH! The water was so shallow it was warm and clear as the day is bright. Fish immediately came to my shockingly white calves and tried to nibble on them. These fish were weird though…. as they appeared to be a school of African Cichlids. Perhaps this lake was the “farm up North” fish disappear to when they’re no longer wanted. All I knew is these things did not look natural with their bulky silver bodies and fluorescent blue tails.
We stayed in the lake enjoying the day for quite a while, neither one of us really wanting to leave. We had found the site of the original cabin and stared at it’s sad foundation earlier on and now we were watching people stare up at the sky to witness today’s solar eclipse. A little girl near by reminded us about this and although it was slightly darker than usual neither one of us really noticed what was going on behind a large swath of fluffy clouds. Ah well, no eclipse for us, we wandered back to the car and continued on to Malden where a friend was waiting for us.
Surprisingly there was enough time after 
It was another hot day but luckily I was in a car with air conditioning, which was a nice change. We had been together now for long enough that our happy burbling had gone from the usual pleasantries to discussing in depth only the most fucked up subjects we could think of – like what we thought was normal when we were kids that really wasn’t, what left the deepest psychological scars, and what was rotting behind each white picket fence in the small towns we grew up in. It was all in good fun and I think we were both enjoying it – though I have to wonder if my company is extreme when I keep eliciting gasps of horror. Perhaps next time I will keep nail clippers in the car so that when I flip a nail inside out and get it bleeding I have something a little more appropriate to remedy the situation that a rusty set of needle nose pliers… maybe. 
Anyway, we got stuck in traffic for a bit where I got into a fight with another Prius who would not let me move over into the exit lane I actually needed… but we survived and no one was shot so it’s all good. When we drove up to the fort the tiny parking lot was almost filled to capacity with cars. People were here with their kids and dogs and we could already see a few pieces of the fort and the boat filled harbor it guarded. Unlike 
It was a small property but so lovely to wander I enjoyed snapping photos and Katherine relaxed with the smell of the ocean wafting in. We picked a couple locations to just stand and watch the waters as we talked, not really wanting to leave until it got dark. We outlasted almost everyone there and when there was only one other guy wandering about we managed to scare him off with our frank discussion of birth control. Always nice.
Screw Auger Falls was another one of the waterfalls listed on the
But with that all said and done Screw Auger Falls was an awesome little spot. Besides having two waterfalls within easy walking distance the smaller of the two allowed for a local swimming hole where children splashed about in the shallow water. Adults mostly loitered around the edges because this place was made of natural granite which had been worn very slick and smooth by the erosive nature of water and perhaps by retreating glaciers before that. On top of that algae grew over many bits which made for an intensely slick surface. None-the-less I had been driving all day and it was in the 80’s. Despite my lack of swimwear I decided to roll up my jeans, lop off my trusty Converses, and wade right in! The water was just above where I had rolled up my jeans at the deepest point across the river where I had started. It had taken me a good ten minutes to get this few feet because of the slick nature of the rocks. Children here knew how to navigate this danger as they slid around on their bellies like joyful seals. It was a sight to see! When I managed to get into this somewhat deep spot I bent down and splashed in the water letting it whoosh over my face and arms, essentially bathing in the river with my clothes still on.
The ice cold water felt almost baptismal in a way. I’ve been playing in a lot of rivers these past few months and every time it’s the same – the healing properties of the waters come from the psychological boost you get when you can almost feel all the negativity in your life just washing over your skin and tumbling down stream never to be seen again. At long last I was encouraging my true hippie nature to come out and play. How joyful I have been getting back in touch with the beauty of New England, and cranking up the radio as I go – singing along loudly and badly to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and all the music I had stopped listening to over the years when I never should have. The raucous screaming guitars and belted out rhythmus soothing my soul. At night I escape into another long forgotten guilty pleasure – beatnik literature, now with far more bite and meaning with my age and life experience. It’s interesting to almost reach back in time and touch another generation with such a powerful wanderlust. In addition to this seeing all these new beautiful places and meeting so many wonderful people had relit something powerful and intense in my heart – such a strong feeling of connection and wonder. In remembering who I am I learned who I need to be.
