The first Indian trails I ever walked are carved into the Sugarloafs, north and south, one snaking its way up the south face of Wequamps to King Philip’s Seat, the other meandering through the cliffs on the west face of North Sugarloaf to another shelf-cave we were told had Native significance. How I found them I can’t recall. It must have been word-of-mouth on Graves Street and Eastern Avenue. But does it really matter? All I know is that we walked those trails often during the pleasant months, getting away from adult supervision, never a bad thing then or now, free play, even a little mischief now and then. Big deal. Out of sight, out of mind; no harm, no foul. Can you think of any other cliches to raise the ire of devoted AP stylists, if there are any left?

I’m sure I could still find those ancient trails with little effort, the more difficult of the two being the one on North Sugarloaf. To get there, you had to go to the end of Graves Street near a little electrical sub-station, then angle southeast to the base of the cliffs and follow it to pick up the trail, an obvious footpath sunken deep into the hard red clay. I don’t even know if kids still walk it. I hope so. But one never knows in these paranoid times. Could be that those footpaths haven’t been used for years. We always called them Indians trails. That’s what I believe they are. Who else could have made them prehistoric deep?

Since those youthful days of explorative bliss, I have read much about our indigenous trails, honing my knowledge and fine-tuning my eye for historic landscapes and their traversing trails. The trodden paths that greeted Bradford and Alden, Winthrop and Saltonstall during New England’s contract period later became their highways to manifest destiny, widened and diverted here and there over time to become Boston Post Road or Bay Path, suitable for wheeled vehicles after improvements and corduroy roads through troublesome depressions. Over time, the secondary roads were discontinued and abandoned, but they still exist in our wooded highlands, many lined with stone-clad depressions and above-ground foundations that provide clues of what used to be.

When you ponder it without getting carried away, it’s really quite simple. Do you really think Rev. Thomas Hooker and his Puritan flock cut their own path to Hartford in 1636? Of course not. They followed existing trails to the Connecticut Valley, then used waterways and other paths northward to places like Northampton, Hadley, Deerfield and Northfield. Once those towns started to fill up with pre-birth-control congestion, settlers looking for space branched out into what became our hilltowns by following existing trails and staking their claims along them. They’re still there under a dense forest canopy, a lost world with fascinating historic relevance.

I continue to learn more about these long-lost hilltown roads and farms. Soon, I will start putting to use a new tool — my DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 hand-held GPS unit — to mark the roads, cellar holes and landmarks along the way. I think it’ll enhance my perspective, snuggle me closer to the land stained with my ancestors’ sweat and blood.

It’s great. Here I am 56 years old and still enjoying free play in the woods. Hopefully my grandsons will follow my footsteps long after I’m gone. Better still, maybe they’ll even use the intuitive computer skills I’ll never have to help me master the new toy.

That would be fun indeed.