Woodland Waltz

My fourth cord of wood was piled high in the shed, air cool, morning sun bright … off to my favorite Whately stomping grounds. Eli Terry, rhythmic heartbeat ticking from his dining-room shelf, read 11 a.m.

My only worry was bear season. I didn’t want to get me or my dogs shot. But who’s going to shoot a man making no effort to conceal himself while walking through woods on abandoned roads, whistling frequently to a pair of robust Springer Spaniels? I guess I had no fears. Still, I’d stay alert, sharpen my senses.

The impetus for my impromptu journey was two recent conversations — one written in a string of e-mails with an old acquaintance and North Hatfield reader, the other an oral discussion at home with a distant Sanderson relative and Whately octogenarian. I had been thinking about the Whately woods lately, anyway, with the air cooling. So, when both conversations were focused there, I had to go, see what was happening. The time was right Tuesday, my woodshed chores complete.

I broke into Whately at White Birch Campgrounds and soon took a right toward Conway through what used to be known as Sanderson’s Glen, a beautiful, shaded woodland road through classic southern Franklin County hardwoods, acorns popping under my tires, beech, hickory and walnuts plentiful, woods bone dry. Up high, past a popular party spot for local school kids, a few trucks were scattered, likely hunters working woods known to hold a dense black bear population, especially this year with nuts so plentiful, fruits and berries, too.

When I got to the first T in the road, in Conway, I took a left onto a more populated dirt road, passing an ancient cemetery and a summer camp before winding my way down to a hollow, across a feeder stream and up a steep hill to South Part and the Stone Castle. There, I took a right at the fork headed toward a paved road a couple of miles away. At the intersection, I turned left and followed a large reservoir, eventually dropping down to an older one, where I caught many squaretails as a sneaky boy. After passing a quaint 19th century chapel, I took a right, crossed a bridge over the lower pond’s outflow and followed what was once known as Sanderson Brook, also Harvey Brook, along another dirt road. A short distance west, I banged a right onto a woodland trail, once a major road to Conway, now reduced to a rutty path through private, posted land; stunning landscape with stately hardwoods sporting faint fall colors along both sides of the road. On the ground lay tidy stonewalls, barn foundations and cellar holes, many of them, some possibly inhabited by murmuring ghosts reminiscing about the good old days, before speed traps, roadblocks, breathalyzers, lie detectors, sirens and flashing blue lights. Up the road a piece once stood the home of Isaac “Cider” Marsh, quite a distiller in his day; an intemperate one, at that. Why else would fellow distillers have called their 30-barrel tanks “Marsh’s tumblers?” Sounds like the man had a powerful thirst, not to mention high tolerance for his still-house spirits.

Anyway, I parked my truck along what’s left of the old Morton Sawmill, later Warner’s, and set the dogs loose. They burst into the woods, bounding, noses high, searching for scent. My only concern was hedgehogs, those spiky critters that seem to prefer cool, damp depressions like ours. Nothing can ruin a good day quite like a porky backed up against the base of a large hollowed out tree; dogs pestering it before retreating, shaking their heads, strange gait, flicking at their snouts with their front paws. Chalk it up as $175 to $200 a dog, maybe more. Never a good day. But there were no hedgehogs this day, just squirrels and crows and turkeys, many of them.

We got into the turkeys right after crossing the snowmobile bridge near my truck and climbing the road toward a hardwood flat. The dogs had already visited the brook under the bridge, where as a boy I witnessed many squaretails schooled up during their fall spawning runs; I don’t think they come anymore. Both dogs had been in the water, drank and laid in it before shaking off and running back up to me, timidly crossing the open-plank bridge and bursting up the hill. About halfway up the trail, the dogs lit up. I knew something was near, saw a turkey fly, then several others burst through the dense hardwood canopy to a distant ridge. Buddy and Lily pursued them a short distance and watched them disappear in the trees before returning to the area they had flushed from, searching for stragglers. There were none. The dogs had been efficient during their first sweep, scattering maybe 10 or 12 big birds, probably a pair of mature hens and their poults.

It’s tough to differentiate between young and old turkeys this time of year, because the little ones have nearly caught up in size with their mothers. They don’t weigh as much but appear by sight to be the same height. I whistled the dogs back to me and moved on, having already reached the hilltop flat with a specific route in mind, one I have walked many times, always enjoy, alone or with someone, gun or no gun.

We dropped into a hollow, climbed a little hill between stone walls and took a right turn around a fence and down a road that ends at the reservoir’s edge. That road likely once ran east to Whately Center but is now forever submerged under a city water supply, the impoundment as low as I’ve ever seen it. Well, not really. I do remember construction crews stripping that valley between two ridges. Remember it well. Viewed it as destruction of healthy woodland. But that’s just me. Many people today enjoy the clear spring water it provides, water I’ve heard and seen at the source, trickling out of a ledge on the north face of the forest’s highest peak, where few venture. I have been there many times, drank from nature’s dripping faucet while hunting big-woods whitetails.

Along the road dead-ending at the reservoir, I passed some deer droppings and also noticed tracks, old and new, along the shoreline. Last year on the same road, I found two or three buck scrapes and backtracked them west all the way to a brook and beyond. I never returned with a gun in my hand, but didn’t forget what I had seen, either. If no one shot that animal last year, it’ll likely scrape the same line again. I’ll check later, just out of curiosity. Never need much of an excuse to walk those woods.

I walked back up to the road I had started on and followed it a short distance north to a T, where we turned left toward the brook. The small, square cellar hole of Cider Marsh was on my left, the larger remains of the old Waite farm to my right. Down the road a bit, on the other side of a long, thick blackberry patch blocking the path, I noticed Lily rolling in something. Sure enough, fruity bear scat, light brown, slimy streaks of it smeared over her ear, neck and shoulder. Damn dog. Thank God she was riding home in the porta-kennel.

I shooed her off and walked past an old, broken stoneware jug and rusted metal gas can below a bow stand before arriving at a shaded brook pool slightly upstream from a decrepit wooden bridge swept aside many years ago by a spring flood. I sat on a large, moss-covered, brookside boulder, sandaled feet dangling in the water, beam of warm sunlight penetrating a small canopy window to comfort my mangled left knee. The dogs romped up the steep hill across from me, looking for something, anything, to chase. I soon whistled them back to avoid any “issues.” They responded by sprinting down the steep hill to me. When they entered the water to drink, lay down, I stood and grabbed Lily firmly by her filthy, stinking neck. There, I held her firmly in shin-high water while splashing off the scat. It would have been easier with a leash and companion, but the dog didn’t fight me and I cleaned her OK. Buddy stood nearby, watching inquisitively, wondering if he was next. White and clean, he was spared.

Chore complete, I washed my hands, wiped them off on the mossy stone and quick-stepped it back toward the truck, carefully skirting the bear scat by looping through the woods. When we finally got back onto the road, t’other side the berry patch, we again walked between the two stone-clad cellar holes, when my mind wandered off into vivid forest fantasy. I tried to picture what would have been happening had I passed 200 years ago. It probably would have been bustling with activity, and I surely would have stopped to chat with old Cider Marsh, cranking him up a bit, maybe Jones’n some of his finest brandy before savaging licensing agents or other authority figures, discussing neighborhood mischief, maybe even illicit neighborhood affairs. Yes, even then they happened. No doubt, Old Cider would have thrown in his two cents worth, too: the world according to Cider Marsh, scary thought these days.

The likes of Cider Marsh — hardy uplanders who vanished from these parts long ago, never to return — are now reduced to lingering woodland sprits, friendly souls who cleared, tamed and finally abandoned their farms after erosion washed away what little rich topsoil they had. Now a thin topsoil layer has returned to the forest floor after a century or more of leave decomposition. But Cider Marsh will not be back, nor will his neighbors. They’re history, their woods protected, never again to be inhabited by bipeds.

I descended the hill to the snowmobile bridge and arrived back at my truck, coaxing the dogs into their kennels, fastening them shut and re-entering the vehicle for the ride home. It had been a great day; short, sweet, solitary meandering. I will be back. Can’t help it. Those woods often beckon with seductive whispers in cool, southern, autumn winds. Call them ghost whispers, maybe even from Cider Marsh himself, who likely whet the whistle of more than one ancestor flowing through my veins.

It’s difficult for me to understand those who don’t know or care who they are or where they came from. I guess I’m fortunate in that respect; that and determined to discover more. Hopefully, my descendants, a great-grandson or granddaughter, will someday try to figure me out for posterity. What a twisted riddle that could turn out to be, even with a body of published work to follow. In the end, they may interpret it all wrong, or maybe right. One never knows. But who cares? The research is what matters most. Always alluring.

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