I remember sitting in the woods of New Hampshire when I was perhaps eight years old talking with my friend about the view from the Fort at Number Four. We were told by our teachers we could see Vermont from it’s highest perch and to our tiny preadolescent brains the idea of seeing another state from New Hampshire seemed so exciting and exotic, at least to our peers. We two didn’t quite comprehend what the hubbub was about. Maybe we were just jaded. I’d spent many long weekends hauling ass to Maine, a 4-6 hour journey in a hot car with my older brother and a little lap dog with breath so bad we practically hung her out the window to escape it. It was dreadful but my friend fared even worse. Her extended family lived in Pennsylvania which meant that she got to spend twelve hours in the car with her brother. Neither of us would ever quite grasp what small town life was like for the other children who rarely left town. Seeing Vermont over a river was so passé.
It was this and several other little memories that brought me back today as I found myself once again on the road. The Fort at Number Four is a reconstruction of a wooden fort that stood in the fourth plantation of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1735. It was the North Westernmost British settlement in the New World. By 1745 ten families lived within the confines of the fort behind big fortified walls. There were living quarters, a saw mill, gardens, a barn, a black smith shop all nested in the woods like some sort of antisocial wooden castle blockading itself from the rest of the world. Why was such a thing necessary? Well because diplomacy apparently wasn’t one of the settlers’ biggest skills and the “Indians” (which are still referred to as such in the pamphlets they were handing out today) were a little testy about the new neighbors claiming their land as their own. And from there it appears there were some dust ups involving the British, the French, the occasional Spaniard… to me this seems like lunacy. For ten families to live in what amount to the wilderness – thirty five miles from the closest settlement. But OK.
Oh today’s tour was going to be good if this is what I went in there thinking. I am happy to note it was a really easy place to find and on a Thursday pretty much no one was there except a woman taking admission fees ($12 per adult) and one melting tour guide in period garb who I found playing Hoops with some children. He offered everyone else guided tours but myself and the older couple who came in at the same time as me politely declined to go wander on our own. I like allowing myself time and space to take photos from odd angles and such.
First off I should remark that you shouldn’t revisit places form your childhood that you once thought were so grand because when you get there and realize just how tiny and insignificant they are your perceptions will be RUINED. I headed up the tower, which by the way is only three stories high, and looked out over the river. Yup. There was Vermont. Looking all green and sleepy as she usually does. The view was sooo…. unspectacular, but I guess it would be for someone who has flown in planes, peered down from the Penobscot Bridge Observatory, and nearly died of exhaustion dragging my sorry ass to the top of the Empire State Building. Life and experience had dampened my reaction.
I remembered literally nothing else of the fort from those sweet early days and I was actually happily surprised how expansive the place was. Plus it smelled like old barn wood which made me deliriously happy. Of course being unlit it was pretty dark in spots but that made it all the more fun. Coming into the kitchen I found a number of herbs hanging to dry. One of them brought me straight back to my childhood. It smelled SO FAMILIAR but I don’t know what it was… something from my days in the first house I lived in. I was grinning from ear to ear. The fort seemed to have a lot of personality even with very sparse furnishings. It was indeed the perfect space to play with my photography – the lighting, the architecture, the odd artifacts, all lent themselves beautifully to this task.
Then I got to looking around – and having a bit of fun with the artifacts. being as this was basically set up for children many of the exhibits were hands-on like the series of pelts that lined the walls of one of the buildings that made up a sort of macabre dead petting zoo of sorts. It wasn’t the most morbid thing by far, there were two child-size coffins in the workshop, and another plaque telling the history of the place said something about “murder holes” being needed to protect the families in their bedrooms. Murder holes. To protect the family. In their beds. Just let that sink in. But the weirdest thing I found was a diorama of the place. There were soldiers reenacting a battle all around it, which I get, but why they were wearing Scottish kilts and who they were fighting…. fuck if I know. Maybe there was a sale on figurines that day. Kilted ones. Or maybe there’s something the brochures aren’t telling me. Quite frankly I left a bit confused and only took one feeble shot of this weird scene because I didn’t feel like being that person taking photos of the diorama. Seriously. That guy. We all know that guy. I still have pride. I wandered off to fondle the zombie pets.
I spent maybe an hour or so poking around. It was a sweet little way to spend an afternoon. After this I allowed the GPS to try and kill me leading me through increasingly narrow dirt roads on the search for my next destination – the scene of Phineas Gage’s fateful railway accident.
Fort Popham is just a half a mile up the road from 
My Haunted New England Tour this month could do with a few more ruins and I do love a good fort. When I drove up the sun was starting the set and the place was besieged by other photographers. They all had fine equipment and severe introversion. This was the first time I found myself flung into a whole group of other photo hounds. I found the experience fascinating. Everyone was polite and weary of each other. The only conversation I could hear was something to the effect of, “Let me know if I am in your way!” “Likewise!” Also people don’t know how to respond when you say likewise or ditto. Lessons learned. Ah well, if they wanted to be left alone I was happy to do so. I wasn’t looking for coffee or conversation anyway.
The fort was bigger than I remembered and had gorgeous stone archways. You could crawl around almost the whole perimeter and see how grandly it was perched there on the rocks overlooking the ocean. I was struck by its majesty. And the beach next to it had some very interesting piles of driftwood. More whimsy photos! But I think the best part of all of this was when I stopped a few hundred feet up the road and found an old battery (?) which I could walk into. When I came out I decided I really should visit the out house before going home so I walked the beach back up towards the fort. That’s when I noticed the moon had come out early and was huge and looming in the sky as if it was just waiting to be plucked like a flower. It had caught the attention of a number of the other photographers and I revealed in this new opportunity. I love the moon but I’ve never taken serious photos of it, especially not wistfully floating above a drop dead gorgeous bay and a tiny New England town. It was a perfect end to a perfect day.
I needed to escape the Love Canal house for my own health so I started to plan a trip to Maine. Two days later than planned my stomach pains finally let up enough for me to make a midnight trek and I landed softly and quietly in the wee morning hours after spending four hours cranking up the classic rock and caterwauling at the top of my lungs. I don’t know why people seem to despise driving long distances alone so much. I find it… liberating.
I really wanted to make the most of this week. I have a bunch of stops all planned out but today? Up, still got that alcohol-free hangover, and once again didn’t make it out by noon. No matter. I was on my way! I had decided after reading a series of glowing reviews to check out Rangeley Lake State Park, a two hour drive, in the hopes of catching some great foliage snaps. I planned on making September my Leaf Peeping month but the weather has been absolute whack this year and the trees are terribly confused. “Do I turn color now or…? Well I see a third of your leaves are colored buuut….” Lakes are great for foliage photos because if it’s a calm day you can get all those gorgeous colors reflected on the water.
There wasn’t much for foliage when I started out but heading into the mountains I was soon awash with bright reds, oranges, and a few yellows. Perfect. There was however quite a bit of road work, numerous flashing moose signs, and by the time I got to park I don’t think I had seen another car in twenty minutes. That always makes me a smidge hesitant. Lately I have had a lot of concerned citizens tell me I should be loaded up on mace, heavily armed, and walking a large dog wherever I go. Bears! Moose! Serial killers! Oh my! But I probably should take heed. Central Maine is the Bermuda Triangle of weird disappearances and murder mysteries. I always felt this was because, as comedian Bob Marley put it, “There’s four cops in Maine and they’re all busy following the one black guy that lives there.” Dark humor cuts deep. Also it’s rutting season which means there are horny roving bucks who can be quite dangerous… SIGH.
The drive to the park was drop dead gorgeous. Just imagine being surrounded on all sides by coral colored trees fluttering in the breeze as your car zooms at light speed through them. (The speed of light is the general consensus of locals on how fast cars should go on their roads… Speed limit signs aren’t even symbolic anymore. They’re more like a snarky backhanded “joke” about your inadequacies.) The park was however… rather dull!
This place would be AWSOME if it happened to be in the dead of summer and I had a carload of children I wanted to dump in the woods somewhere so I could force them to socialize with other Lord of the Flies styled foundlings. This had everything for that – camp sites, picnic tables galore, well beaten paths with no parking directly adjoining the camping spots, a beach, two outhouses, even a drinking fountain! Granted by now it was filled with leaves and the beach and camp sites were so empty that all you could hear was an apocalyptic wind blow by. But I was here and going to make the best of it.
I parked my car at the boat launching dock, as one does in a Prius to confuse people, and hopped out of the car with my camera. A middle aged guy on a motorcycle drove up, claimed one of the docking ports, and spent an awfully lot of time avoiding eye contact with me as I strode by. HI. I’m Typhani. I have bright orange hair, a purple plaid shirt, and sometimes I bite. Usually only on Fridays though so don’t worry. So went the imaginary conversation in my head.
I took a few photos of the mountains beyond the boat docks before heading into the woods where I found a trail leading to the beach. Goodie! This was a well worn path. So many tiny traipsing feet had gone by here that the path was more of a gaping maw in the ground where tree roots clung to a tenuous existence above ground.
Today I needed to drive – desperately. So I made an excuse to go out and somehow ended up three hours away in Montepelier Vermont just as the sun was starting to go down. My aim was to find a castle in the woods. Instead I found a sweet little dog park, a lot of aging hippies, and a gorgeous cemetery. Green Mount Cemetery is actually famous. The stones there are clearly for rich people and are exquisite. Nestled between the green mountains the view from the cemetery is breathtaking. It’s a popular fall destination spot because it’s even more beautiful when the trees turn color. I was a couple weeks early for that but this didn’t stop me from ambling in and checking the place out. The sign at the gate said it closes at dusk but in true Vermont fashion the only thing making sure this happened was those tiny forgettable little signs. This place didn’t even have a gate anymore, just five separate open entrances. Suffice to say I took my time.
I may not have found the castle I was looking for but I did find a castle-like structure at the entrance of the cemetery! That was close enough and besides the drive up there was all I needed to settle my frazzled mind. I find I am needing more and more intellectual stimulation these days and it’s driven me in some odd directions. Driving for three hours into the mountains seemed to ease this need. Just between you and me I caterwauled a great deal of the way until I nearly lost my voice. That’s what the open road is all about – freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom of intellectual curiosity, freedom to butcher your favorite classic rock songs as loudly as you can muster.
Portland is a sweet little port city, not nearly as much of a tourist town as Old Orchard Beach. I had enjoyed walking its streets before but now it was nice to return to a different portion of the city. My GPS led me to where the International Cryptozoology Museum used to be, but not knowing this I placed the Prius in a nearby parking garage and we started to walk. Portland is a city of very mixed architecture – some which appeared very Dutch, some which looked like Lego bricks, and others which seemed more relevant to Maine. I took a few snaps here and there. Katherine kept herself entertained finding ninja’d stickers posted throughout the city reading fiercely
critical liberal sentiments. The graffiti seemed almost sweet and added another layer of entertainment but where was this bigfoot museum?? Nowhere to be seen. We stopped in a used bookstore instead and oddly it had a map to the new location of the cryptozoology museum which was a seven minute car ride. So off we went to reclaim the car… only to find the parking garage would not let us out. I tried paying for my ticket but the machine kept spitting out my card, not telling me why, and asking me to re-insert the ticket. I was at a loss but with no one behind me I backed out of the toll lane, parked again, and found a machine inside to pay. With this new pre-paid ticket the toll gate actually worked. FWEW!
We spent way longer than we should have continuing to walk around all these unmarked buildings to find nothing. It was getting annoying so we circled back to the food truck and finally found Bigfoot standing around the side of that building, guarding a chicken shack and a brewery. It was a scene that was just so Maine.
We both went in and it’s a two level (but still two room) museum filled with just the most goddamn bizarre things… The bottom floor was for sea monsters and various beasts which was capped off with a five foot tall plastic ninja turtle for no reason I could see. In the display cases there were Fiji mermaids, labelled as hoaxes, but smattered aside things like a GI Joe standing next to a stuffed beaver with a plate reading, “Do giant beavers still exist?” It was completely mental. We were both getting quite a kick out of this place and I was so happy to experience it with a friend instead of going alone as I had planned a few months back.
The first bridge I came to was the Carlton Bridge on Carlton Road. Super easy find! I drove right to it! It was nestled between a lot of farmland and some houses, a really pretty area and there was a turn off to park. It’s a one-lane two-way bridge which isn’t unusual, luckily there was no traffic and better still there was a delightful little path that went down to the bottom of it where I could splash in the water and play with the camera. It was quiet here and quite beautiful. I was delighted by this. You go to one covered bridge and you sort of feel like you’ve seen them all but this one was just so sweet, so serene, that it really made me instantly fond of it. Other people were too. I got a few people slowing down to check out Daisy’s lovely new tatts and just as I drove away an old man pulled in, smiling.
The next bridge was on Sawyer’s Crossing. My GPS didn’t seem to know which road was Sawyer’s Crossing and this area was super confusing, filled with all sorts of winding roads all connecting to each other in what I can only say is the most disorienting rat’s nest of turns I have seen in a long long time. I did eventually find the bridge by looking for a river on the GPS map and going towards it. However by this time there was a sports car behind me, nudging Daisy’s poor ass, so I had to go over the bridge instead of stopping. As it turns out there’s no place to park, AT ALL. There’s no parking lot, no turn offs, you could barely pull over aside the road far enough to let another car go coming form the other direction. It was weird. I found three trails down a nearby road but not their beginning, just their middle which went across the road. My curiosity was peaked but I didn’t really know how to explore that further. Instead I wound over that damn bridge two more times, both times a car appearing out of the middle of nowhere to ride my bumper. I got annoyed, never did manage to snap a photo, though it looks much like the other bridge, just lacking in the quiet charm.
The third bridge is called Thomson Bridge and it is right on Main Street, has a pedestrian walkway right over it, and ample parking! I couldn’t have asked for better! Instantly I liked this bridge too. It was bigger but still only one lane for cars and one for pedestrians. It spanned a lovely river and a dam which apparently doesn’t exist anymore. It was such a drop dead gorgeous day I loitered and took marble photos for quite a while. Some cars passed but not many and going back to the car I was struck by how beautiful the decaying wool mill behind it was. I wanted to explore that further so I hopped in my car, turned it on, drove over the bridge, and turned down a nearby street to see the ruins better.
On my list of destinations I had several “castles” and estates that have been turned into public spaces for whatever reason. This was one of them and was situated at the end of a trail. There was supposed to be a trail head behind a local restaurant but there was also another entrance down a nearby dirt road – again a hard find. It was a set of steps aside the aforementioned road with a tiny cut off on the other side. Though it was poorly marked it was marked so we headed into the woods not really knowing what we’d find. Turns out hills. We found one steep hill after another that went deeper into the forest before dumping us out into a pasture and then at the top of the last hill a phenomenal view of everything below – a beautiful pastoral scene sprawled out ahead of us framed in the distance by the blue ridges of a mountain. A tractor plowed back and forth and a field of lilacs added additional color. I was already happy and we hadn’t even found the castle yet!
The weather was perfect today, sunny but not too hot, and I was getting itchy feet to go somewhere so I decided on Benson Park which was once a popular zoo that closed, I think in the 1980’s, and then rotted for a good long time before the town decided to make it into a lovely park. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I’d been promised I could play in empty zoo enclosures so I was in.
I wandered where I pleased. Although there were trails here with names they were insanely poorly marked, and by that I mean pretty much not marked at all except for one wooded section that might make city dwellers think they’d die if they wandered off too far… That was the best though, as it was in the far corner and super quiet. The vegetation had grown so out of control it grew around and over the paths making this sort of whimsical lush green tunnel. Swamp lands abounded, as did vague signs about being on the moose path. I had a weird moment of realization that this once could have been the home of tigers and wildebeest, things that should have never lived in this part of the world, things that could easily kill. Were their ghosts still lingering?
