People often ask why I write about locations I’m unwilling to pinpoint. The answer is simple: Maps draw crowds that compromise special places, which soon lose their sacred status, be they fishing holes, deer stands, strut zones or historic sites buried under a forest canopy.

I found such a site just this week, one I had been trying to locate for weeks and would rather not share with grave-robbers. I guess how it came to me is most interesting, an example of how a persistent sleuth finds things once he puts his mind to it, reading, writing, ”asking around.” I call it discovery, a process that’s fascinated me since a boy, although, for some reason, I never found it in the classroom. Maybe that was my fault. But when you think of it, once you have the basics — the innate curiosity, the perseverance — who needs advanced classroom instruction and professorial scrutiny? Like the wise old man of a Dartmouth/Harvard pedigree once told me to conclude a short discussion about the philosophies of education: ”If all you learn in school is how to find information, that’s all you need.” That comment from an accomplished gent of a classical education hit me like a 10-pound sledgehammer to the kisser, a bull’s-eye. So, take heed class clowns: there is hope for all, with or without fancy academic degrees that are all too often earned by bootlicking and a, b, c, d, or all-of-the-above testing. I have met many with impressive credentials who couldn’t find their way home without a compass, eggheads who can dazzle you with facts, figures and Shakespearean verse but have no clue, no peripheral vision, no needle to meld their knowledge into something meaningful.

My latest local-history discovery occurred in Conway, along the so-called Seven-Mile Line, in woods I first explored before puberty, fishing, then in my teens, hunting partridge and deer, then horsing around in my friend’s 1972 Toyota Landcruiser, dubbed the ”Toyotski,” then shortened to ”Yotski,” a vehicle that produced incredible off-road adventure. Give us that Yotski, a come-along, 40 feet of heavy chain, and a chain saw, and we were unstoppable … believe me. But let’s not digress. I feel like I’m looking out the window on a bright spring day during expository-writing class.

The fact is that I had often danced around the periphery of the historical landmark I discovered this week. I probably even passed right through it but had no clue the cellar hole of Conway’s first settler was there. Cyrus Rice, a Barre man, built his home there in 1762 or ’63, on a western elevation looking back toward Old Deerfield, in the so-called South East District of Deerfield, overlooking Sawmill Plain and Mill River, both part of the Long Hill Division West, if any of that makes sense. It does to me, and I suppose that’s all that matters. But it can be confusing, especially to an outsider reading Sheldon or other local 19th century historians for the first time. Even I — a native who’s explored the local woods for nearly two generations — had difficulty deciphering the location of this site from written description. In fact, had it not been for an impromptu stop at Hatfield’s Bradstreet Cemetery, Memorial Day, on an asparagus run, looking for the grave of a relative, I’d probably still be trying to figure it out. My sense from what I had read was that the Rice site was situated on the south side of Hoosac Road, overlooking Stillwater. I was wrong. It’s south of there, that’s all I’m saying. Sorry, fellas.

But back to Bradstreet, the cemetery, my wife relaxing in the car, me searching for the grave of Martha (Almira Sanderson) Field, sister of my great-grandfather, Willis Chapman Sanderson. I vaguely remember Ant Mattie as old, Hatfield’s oldest citizen, holder of its golden cane, still taking care of herself after passing the century mark on May 27, 1976, a rare bird. I probably would have found her grave had I not bumped into three cyclists stopped for a break at the graveyard, but I got gabbing and didn’t want to leave my wife in the car too long.

I recognized the pretty blonde lady in the group. She was from Conway and we had met somewhere. I couldn’t remember where. We spoke. She refreshed my memory. At a friend of mine’s memorial service. Of course. How nice to see her again, happenstance on a gorgeous spring afternoon. A man and woman, presumably spouses, accompanied her, they too from Conway. They happened to live along a road I’d been traveling recently while researching its earliest residents. I knew who they were once they introduced themselves, both behind me at Frontier Regional School, but I knew their older siblings. The three friends knew each other from their days as neighbors along my road of interest. They were familiar with the old trails from hiking and biking, horseback, snowmobile and dirt-bike riding. No, I couldn’t have found three better resources had I been searching. So I picked their brains about the discontinued roads I’d been studying on old maps when the man chimed in about the site of the early Rice farmstead. Bingo! I had what I’d been searching for without even asking. Not where I expected it, either. A wooden sign on a tree, to boot. I would find it. Sooner the better

The next day on the phone I delivered the good news to a friend who’s recently been exploring Conway with me. He also had some new information to chase down in my 4-wheel-drive truck, and the day was ideal for him. Me, too. So off I went, three dogs porta-kenneled on the truck’s bed, all of us eager for a little safari.

I picked up my friend and took a ride, circling a couple of hills, stopping to examine the outflow of a few abandoned roads, their paths back into the woods, and even found the gate to a road we’ve wanted to explore open, inviting us in. We drove all the way to a dead-end snowmobile bridge crossing a bog. We got out, both of us, three dogs, crossed the bridge, followed the road a short distance to a fork, got acclimated and turned back. Then off to a driveway the cyclists told me about, one that will bring you to the Rice homestead. We drove in but weren’t certain it was cool, so I decided to turn around and travel farther down the road to see if the male cyclist was home. He wasn’t. His son was. Said his dad was having lunch, would be right back. Soon Dad appeared, told us the easiest route to the marker, through private property. Said the landowner wouldn’t mind historical-research trespassers. Off we went to give it a shot.

We arrived at the driveway to the landowner’s home and drove in, perhaps a quarter-mile to a dwelling I had no clue was there, on that road I traveled many years ago. I got out and knocked, yellow labs barking, no answer from inside. We continued up the narrow road and came upon a bearded man wearing head gear and earphones, mowing grass down the side of the road toward us. I got out of the truck, explained our reason for being there, and he was friendly, accommodating, leading us right to the site a short distance up the gradual hill. The small wooden sign was there, head-high, behind it a small L-shaped cellar hole. According to Conway historian Rev. Charles B. Rice, the marked site was a later Rice home, the original stood 25 rods southeast. When my friend broke the news to our guide, he said there was another ancient cellar hole down the hill a bit. We went to it and, after a brief hunt, found a small, stone-clad depression, about 30 feet long, maybe 12 feet wide, sitting on a gentle elevation, sheltered in a hollow, spring brook nearby, loam black and fertile; a peaceful upland alcove in which to build an early home.

And to think it all began on a whim, a spontaneous graveyard visit.

Spooky, huh?

Next time, I’ll find Ant Mattie.

Promise.