July 2026
S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Jan

2014

Dire Wolf

That cold, sly, crescent sliver of the New Year’s first moon wore the mischievous grin of a city slicker peering down from the deep, twinkling, southern weekend sky. To me, the ominous message was clear: beware the Wolf Moon.

Who knew, the wind a howling, that developments were about to take a fiendish swirl around my frigid Upper Meadows home? I’d characterize what unfolded as interesting and eventful, all of it not necessarily favorable.

I guess the most fascinating occurrence took place out back on Hinsdale Brook, a Green River tributary that marks my property’s northern boundary, bubbles from a couple of muddy spring-hole marshes above and is fed by several other tiny East Shelburne and East Colrain spring creeks. First, the free-flowing, gravel-bed stream froze thick and hard, presenting a most enticing, near-florescent gray/green hue, small manhole-sized holes erupting in spots as the flow emitted a soft, soothing, muffled gurgle that could remind a man of the oozing emotional pain we sometimes hide under protective inner membranes.

By the time Sunday’s rains had rendered the roads sloppy indeed, covered with hydroplane puddles and salty, splashy slush, as adjacent meadows wore a precious-metal glitter, the backyard brook’s thick, bulbous ice sheet, still firmly in place despite a film of water overflowing the surface, seemed in the darkness to have risen some three or four feet. Upon closer inspection the next morning, sunlight confirmed my assessment while dogs Lily and Chubby ate breakfast on the cook-shed stoop. Not much had changed by the time I left for work Monday evening, though temperatures were in free fall, the roads and landscape growing increasingly treacherous. Upon returning to the scene just before midnight, steadied by a walking stick to prevent any icy spills, I immediately recognized change. From way out by the front of the barn I clearly heard that familiar, exhilarating springtime roar of rushing water signaling dramatic change. And, yes, as I approached the small barn-red cook-shed, the lawn dimly lit to the brook’s bank by a wide yellow V cast from a high floodlight attached to the peak of the barn’s gabled rear end, I noticed patches of disturbance along the glazed stream-side snow. Although I didn’t have the necessary light or energy to investigate thoroughly, even with the small flashlight in my wool vest’s left hand-warmer pocket, I knew something powerful had busted loose. What, I couldn’t be certain. I’d figure it out. Tomorrow was another day.

Sure enough, upon returning with the dogs to the scene under bright Tuesday-morning sunlight, I identified the snow-top debris I had identified the previous night: brown leaves driven asunder off the steep, solidly frozen stream bank. Accompanying the leaves and identifying the destructive path of a violent flood were many triangular, plate-sized ice shards grouped here, scattered there as far as 10 feet inland, most of them settled in icy, channel-like earthen depressions along a row of sugar maples. Wow! Nature had unleashed a powerful event. The water pressure under that thick, light-emerald ice must have first risen and then, aided by warming, ice-softening temps, busted through and smashing it open with a buckling fury only nature can muster. I could picture huge, temporary, vertical, pointed ice-dams capable of cutting you in half forcing the torrent to the side and over the eight-foot bank at along low spots. I have seen this phenomenon only one other time in 16 years at the old tavern nestled into Greenfield’s northwest corner. Luckily, my cook shed escaped damage by inches, the ice-shard trail disclosing all I needed to know.

Hail, hail, the brute force of nature, which you must respect, but gotta love. Well, most of the time, anyway. Yes, there are exceptions. Let me describe one.

As it turned out, the sub-zero deep-freeze delivered by that lovable old wench called Mother Nature wasn’t so forgiving to another occasional home-front trouble spot in the cabinet below my kitchen sink. Situated along a rear west wall where once a wooden trough awaited piped water from a strong hillside spring, the kitchen was renovated in the early 1980s, and whoever built it under-insulated the space behind the vertical copper pipes feeding the sink and dishwasher t’other side a cold, damp, shaded outdoor nook. Never an issue when temperatures stay in the positive realm, I have learned to take special precautions below zero by simply opening the cupboard doors and the one-armed-bandit faucet above, just enough to allow a steady lukewarm drip. Then, when I awake to feed the woodstove in the wee, chilly hours as I do nightly, I discipline myself to the sink, where I open the tap to run hot and cold water at full flow before turning it back down to a warm overnight drip and snuggling back into bed. Even then, in extreme cold, I have temporarily lost my hot- or cold-water feed by daybreak, a recurring problem that has always been easily remedied by applying direct heat from an electric hair dryer to the affected pipe. Less often, the thin copper dishwater line will freeze and clog in severe cold. But even then I’ve always been able to avoid serious damage with short hair-dryer therapy. Not this time. Uh-ah. These days, with the kids out of the house and the two of us eating much differently, the dishwasher is used less, which can tempt destructive cold-weather demons.

Sunday was such a day, absolutely no signs of trouble until around 3 p.m. Watching a football game with the start of a new work week quickly approaching, I had risen from my La-Z-Boy to feed the stove and heard what sounded like loud running water. I found in the kitchen that the noise was emanating from inside the dishwasher, not the kitchen sink. When I tried to turn the appliance off for closer inspection, it refused to cooperate. I opened the door, noticed few dishes, no soap in the reservoir, and I yelled to my wife two rooms away to determine when she had turned it on. Huh? She hadn’t. I knew we had problems.

I called South Deerfield plumber Mal Cichy and got no answer, just an emergency number I promptly dialed. The phone rang. Cichy’s wife answered. She and her husband was in Myrtle Beach, S.C. She gave me his cell-phone number. I called. He answered, we spoke and he quickly diagnosed the problem before informing me that trusty, longtime repairman Fritz from B&J Appliance, also in South Deerfield, had retired. Uh-oh! Facing emergency when many other had one, I needed a new repairman.

My wheels spun and I remembered first the pleasant fella who’s repaired my washing machine on Home Depot warranty a couple of times. I went to the Internet, found him, called, got no answer, and left a message. The call was returned when I was at work. My wife answered and called me at work to inform me he’d be at our house the next day, would call first. She didn’t think he was who I thought he was, but I could see for myself when he arrived. The next day, before noon, I didn’t recognize my visitor, discovered he was the son of the man I was seeking. They own separate businesses headquartered in same West County town. No problem. Proceed, I told him.

The ordeal is now behind me, sort of. This new repairman, probably in his 40s, replaced a frozen valve before discovering by turning the water on that the thin copper pipe feeding it was split. He could handle the job but didn’t have the parts with him, thus had to return in a day or two. Through Wednesday, he hadn’t shown. I trust he’ll be back.

As for the job performed, the replacement valve cost $42, about a quarter of the $201 bill. Ouch! I wonder if these people know that a good job in this county takes home about $150 a day? So how can a man working in that market whack you 160 bucks for a half-hour? It just doesn’t add up. But hey, what are you going to do? It’s America, land of the free, home of the brave and indebted. Repairmen have overhead, too. Oh well. I’ll get through it. The man assured me that he’ll only charge for parts and labor on his return visit. Oh boy! I can’t wait. But what can a man do? You win some, lose some.

In retrospect, I immediately suspected that new sliver of a cold Wolf Moon was some sort of ominous portent. Then, lo, my backyard brook exploded, and I took a backhander upside the head, with yet another wallop looming.

I suppose some would blame the rare polar vortex. Not me. I’ll call it Dire Wolf.

posted in Columns, Tavern Tidbits | No Comments

Jan

2014

Myth Debunking

by Gary Sanderson

OK, time to correct the record. Uhm … well … let’s just say set it straight as can be expected, because, you know how hypothese can change.

I’m not here to apologize, and, frankly, have no regrets. It’s just that, having read and pondered and listened and spoken to scholars and authors and experts of all stripes in recent years, and watched archaeologists uncover before my fascinated eyes 12,000-year-old artifacts, well, my outlook on some bedrock concepts have changed dramatically. We’re talking about notions nourished in youth that take root and die hard. Like everyone else, I’m guilty of accepting at that young age what from some Houghton Mifflin textbook said and was reinforced by some misled, unimaginative grammar-school teacher who accepted it as gospel. I’m guilty only of listening like a good boy, accepting what I was taught and at times actually reciting these common misconceptions instilled in all kids by institutional logic and star-spangled history written to fill the loyal flock with chauvinistic valor. So let’s call today’s lesson a simple case of elderly reassessment, with me 60 and embarking on my 35^th year at the newspaper of record in the county where I was born and my roots lie deep, yet shallow indeed compared to Native Americans.

I’ll begin by defining my goal in any intellectual endeavor as a search for truth, one unencumbered by ideology and knee-jerk opinion, prevailing wisdom be damned. Because, you know, what I’ve discovered through years of open-minded probes and ponderings is that such diluted types of pseudo-wisdom are often ignorant of the facts, often even intentionally so. It’s doctrine driven home by the rounded end of a ball-peen hammer, the finish nail a sturdy concoction of deceptive half-truths and outright lies crafted by clever spin-doctors employed to shape public opinion in support of political agenda. All I can say is thank the heavens rhetoric classes were still chic when I attended college, way back when defiant Sixties dissent and defiance were still palpable in the air we breathed. Without those Liberal Arts lessons taught in the dark, dingy bowels of Bartlett Hall, I would not harbor the cynicism and skepticism I in adulthood have so learned to value. Maybe innate curiosity and suspicion was in my blood all along; that and a hereditary anti-Federalist Yankee bent. Thus I was different, questioning conventional wisdom and refusing to embrace those crew-cut guardians of freedom, liberty and justice attempting to build legions of flag-waving Boy Scouts, polite alter boys and the truest of true believers. Somehow, I was able to see through and reject their empty slogans and pledges, their tidy dress codes and Christian ethics aimed at building conservative views framed by purposely planted misconceptions.

As I sit here in this familiar, comfortable seat for the first time in more than a month, coming off extended vacation time selfishly used to read, explore and reflect on subjects dear to me, I find myself — go figure — thinking back to the walk I just showered off from; it was a ramble that took me and dear four-legged companions Lily and Chubby through icy, crunchy Sunken Meadow, down by the free-flowing Picomegan. As I followed the narrow four-season path I’ve carved into the circumference of two adjoining bottomland fields bordered by a dense collar of naked rosebushes framing slim frozen marshland, it occurred to me how tempting it is, even for animals, to follow beaten paths. After heavy rains and frigid overnight temps, the snow was compacted and more than solid enough for the dogs to run comfortably atop without breaking through. Yet most often they ran ahead of me right on the trail, meandering in and out of the thorny rosebush border to investigate random swamp scents but always returning to our daily path. I remember thinking how then interesting it is that even animals prefer established ways?

Actually, I have noticed this many times in my daily rambles, snow or no snow, the path always discernible, me, almost always, and the dogs, for the most part, following it. For that matter, even the deer that stay in the margins to avoid us daily when we’re there walk our trail when we’re not. I see their tracks all the time. So don’t believe those who say deer vacate an area ripe with human scent. It’s fiction. I’ve many times witnessed deer following my trail right past a hunting stand in season.

As I pondered why my dogs seem to prefer returning to the beaten path, my cranial wheels started to spin to a shrill hum not unlike the sound of a mosquito homing in for a landing behind your right ear. One thought led to another, all of them relevant to where we’re going with this narrative. As so often happens when I observe animal behavior, I realize we too are animals, no matter what Sunday School teachers and PTA moms tell you. I believe that those of us who admit we’re animals and learn to accept and savor basic, primitive, wild impulses and cravings, are ultimately happier, psychologically healthier and overall better grounded, even more open-minded than those who spend their entire lives fighting such urges, fearing evil. Which brings us back to trodden trails; that and setting the record straight on any propaganda I may have passed reflexively along right here in this space over the years before I discovered reality, saw through the dense institutional, red, white and blue fog, which is never easy under constant bombardment by doctrine and patriotic idolatry along conformist trails. I learned as an inquisitive lad that it’s often enlightening to wander off such trails and cut your own, aware that it’s seldom difficult to find your way back if necessary.

Think of it. Didn’t caribou trails lead humans to areas they eventually settled along rivers left behind by melted glaciers? Was it not those same game trails, beaten into the ground by large ancient beasts and followed by primitive hunter/gatherers, that later led more advanced man from south to north as the climate warmed suitable for habitation? And as those migrating, evolving Paleos became Archaic, settled, multiplied and assimilated with other people from other places, were they not eventually led, perhaps also by animals, to nutritious berry patches growing on otherwise barren upland tundra. And wasn’t it they who learned to annually burn off these vast tangled berry patches, improving the annual bounty on fruitful, scenic ridges they kept open for seasonal camp and ceremonial sites where food was gathered and celebrated? And, while we’re at it, didn’t the berries attract deer, moose and bears that humans killed for meat? And weren’t those same ridge tops and the slopes falling from them later invaded by hickory and oak groves, which Indians learned to manage for protein-rich nuts, not to mention the foraging meat animals nuts attracted in the fall, all the while maintaining open berry patches where they worked best in natural gardens?

Yes, I’m now convinced that the story with which we’re all familiar, the one about our Bunyanesque colonial forebears carving their hilltown farms out of primeval forest by felling massive timbers with primitive axes is romantic myth, because the first lands settled here were already cleared by the Natives here for thousands of years before them. The wholesale rape of our forests came a generation or three later, propelled by greed that ignored ecological balance.

When the French explorer Samuel Champlain toured the New England coast from southern Maine to Cape Cod 15 years before the Mayflower’s arrival, he marveled at large populations of physically impressive people who had cleared vast acreage for their maize fields within sight of his ship and up the major river valleys. Behind these fertile, agricultural landscapes stood open, park-like forests adorned with massive spaced trees on a barren understory cleared by seasonal fires that removed brush, vermin and poisonous serpents. A decade later, English explorer John Smith of Jamestown fame visited the same region traveling in the opposite direction and described a veritable slice of paradise he feared to be off-limits due to the large populations of physically imposing, healthy Indian tribes permanently settled in impressive coastal villages. At the same time Smith was exploring our New England coast, Dutchmen were sailing from Long Island Sound up the Connecticut River to just above Hartford. They too reported a populous agricultural valley, which, even though it wasn’t then known, extended all the way to busy Pocumtuck villages in Deerfield/Greenfield, where four rivers flowed into the Connecticut River near sacred fishing and ceremonial falls called Peskoumskut, taking a sharp left turn below an ancient village site called Wissitinnewag. But then came disease epidemics from overseas that ravaged the Native population and wiped out more than 90 percent of many villages, leaving prime, open, cultivated land ready to be claimed and settled.

The first PioneerValley towns incorporated by colonials were Springfield, Northampton, Hadley, Hatfield, Deerfield and Northfield, all of which presented cleared riverside acreage that was rich and ready for settlement between 1636 and 1675. Then, by the time outlying areas in the eastern and western hills opened up in the early 18^th century, even though much of it had become thickly overgrown with infant forest brought about by Indian exodus and demise, it would not have been as daunting a task to clear as patriotic historians would lead you to believe. In fact, had the frontiersmen been willing to take a lesson from their Native predecessors and put a torch to the dense, young, reforested openings, the clearing process would have been fast indeed.

Don’t let anyone kid you — the settlement pattern in what are now our western hilltowns of Conway, Ashfield, Buckland, Heath, Charlemont and beyond began around habitation sites left open by a noble race that occupied the territory for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years prior. Take it to the bank that Conway’s first settler, Cyrus Rice, was led to his farm by a prominent Indian trail and staked his claim at a pretty promontory clear and lived upon for centuries before he discovered it. Remember, the Norwottucks who occupied the sandy terraces on Mt. Sugarloaf’s southern skirt claimed as their last refuge following the French & Indian War a place called Indian Hill, now Whately Glen. The site of Rice’s farmstead sits on an extension of that wooded upland terrace, which was likely maintained as a nut grove and fall hunting ground by contact-period Indians, who would have moved their wigwams a mile or two to set up temporary annual campsites used over and over again for fall hunting chores. No problem. That’s when men were men, and women were in many ways their equal as physical laborers.

Unlike European Christians who viewed life as a linear journey, Indians’ world view worked in circles. When Indians met in council, they sat in a circle, which had no starting and ending point, no seat more powerful than another, a sphere where everyone’s observations and opinions were received without interruption, anger or insubordination accusations. Find a business or organization that works like that today in our ranked corporate world and you’re very likely viewing a successful operation, one receptive to open and honest discussion aimed at improvement. Which reminds me that I myself have come full circle, right back to those days of the old Bartlett Hall rhetoric lectures. We’d study news accounts of the same incidents and events from different political perspectives, as presented in various newspapers, magazines and television sources, comparing the spin, analyzing the motives. Time and again the professor reminded us with a wry grin that you can’t believe everything you read in newspapers and magazines, or see on nightly TV news. We were taught to dissect stories, read many accounts and explore what really happened, why various accounts and official government statements were often contradictory. Well, never has “news” been more suspect than it is in today’s Orwellian America ruled by intentional, invisible TV manipulation aimed at consumerism and patriotic loyalty. But, if diligent and open-minded, you can still find a route to the truth.

A case in point is the enduring controversy surrounding certain local Indian issues pertaining to long-lost villages, sacred fishing sites and sandbank burial grounds, all of which have endured heavy-handed misinformation campaigns reaching deep into local and state government, institutions of higher learning and, yes, the media. But the truth is out there for the taking with a little legwork. No! Strike that. A little legwork won’t cut it. There are way too many clever obstacles constructed by powerful people with political and economic agendas, and vociferous rabble support. Yes, it can be a toil to uncover the unvarnished truth, cut through the media fog. To get there, you must cut your own path through a dense, foreboding swamp, uninviting indeed but still among Mother Earth’s most fertile ground, in places rich moist soup that’s capable of swallowing a man with one pornographic gulp from deep. oily-black mud.

It’s a treacherous morass worth braving. The alternative is to believe your grammar-school textbooks, punch your time card, salute patriotic symbols, genuflect to alters glittering gold and, most important of all, shut the fuck up.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, Musings | No Comments

Nov

2013

Lucifer’s Loop

by Gary Sanderson

I’m coming down the homestretch toward my annual December vacation, scurrying to tie up loose ends and button down fall chores on the home front before Thanksgiving while joyously following the dogs daily through alders, cattails and thorny clumps that’ll put a careless man flat on his face before he knows what hit him. Only the cautious escape unscathed … most of the time.

I can be thankful indeed that six of the annual seven cords of hardwood I burn in my soapstone stove are under cover in the bloated woodshed— the majority of it high-BTU black locust — and that most of the yard work’s behind me, the cellar sealed tight against howling winter winds. Hopefully, once Turkey Day passes, I’ll be able to just sit back for a restful month, reading a writing and continuing to study the prehistory of Franklin County, focused, as always, on the center of it all, the falls called Peskeomskut and the hill overlooking it from the west, called Canada Hill by some and identified by the archaeological firm hired to explore it in 1996 as a continual multi-village and ceremonial site for more than 10,000 years. Yes, one must dig deep to find a copy of that buried 1996 draft, but it’s out there and represents a radically different story from the “official word” of the Penrick pro-growth gang. But, really, I’m getting a little ahead of myself here; more reading and probing required. I’m getting there, have key sources lined up. There’ll be time after vacation to delve in. It could get radioactive.

But, first, the subject that’s overwhelmed my thoughts the past week is a bizarre occurrence that unfolded before my own eyes last Thursday afternoon along the southwestern border of a dense Hadley swamp I frequent during pheasant season. There, for the second straight season, I encountered a most unfortunate and troubling development that just doesn’t sit right with me. Everyone with whom I have shared this sorry tale has implored me to inform the authorities. So, yes, I will report it in my own way, right here in this the space, where I have often aired grievances for more than 30 years.

With renewed interest sparked by a recent trip to Portland, Maine, for an annual archaeological conference, I had spent last Thursday morning reading an old book about French explorer Samuel Champlain, whose astute observations and detailed maps of the New World, and especially our Northeast, are still quite important to scholars trying to understand North America prior to the great European epidemics that wiped out much of the indigenous population before the Mayflower. I knew I was going to hunt later that day, but because it would be solo, I was in no hurry to fulfill my commitment to the dogs, who get only six weeks to perform the chore they were bred to master: that is pursuing, flushing and retrieving game birds for wing-shooters. I had already decided upon the Hadley site, a vast wetland I hadn’t hunted for about a week, thus figured it could be productive with a little leg work.

Finally, about noontime, I was ready to mobilize. I bookmarked the new chapter I had reached, laid the faded, red-cloth hardcover atop a stack of magazines under the lamp on an adjacent candlestand, and rose to put on my hunting garb, it warm and supple, draped over chairs next to the woodstove, the morning application of silicon dry on my boots, my knee brace pungent when near.

With my gun case and vest packed in the truck, I backed it around the barn’s southwest corner and Lily and Chubby were standing eager at the kennel door, wagging their tails enthusiastically. When I hopped out to drop the tailgate and open the porta-kennel doors, impatient Lily started barking like only a scolding menopausal lady can (the poor gal, I had to spay her after a final difficult litter). I swear the dogs recognize my Tin-Cloth bibs, because when I’m wearing them, Lily barks louder and Chubby wags harder, like they’re both saying,”Come on, Dude, what are you waitin’ for?”

First, though, I went into the cook shed, dropped a scoopful of high-protein nuggets into both of the dogs’ cast-iron skillets, placed the pans on each side of an old, centered millstone set flush in the concrete floor, walked to the kennel and opened the door. The dogs know the drill. They sprinted to their food, Chubby taking the pan on the right, Lilly the one on the left, and inhaled the food before racing to the truck and leaping into their port-kennels for a ride. It never takes any coaxing when they know we’re going hunting.

In a half-hour or less, I arrived at the familiar covert only to discover someone else hunting there, rare indeed at this particular spot. “Oh well,” I thought, “I’ve been meaning to hunt the other side, anyway. Today’s as good a day as any.”

Complicating matters a bit was the memory still fresh in my mind of my last unforgettable trip through that swamp on the final day of the 2012 season. Hunting that day with old softball buddy Cooker from Northampton, Chubby mysteriously disappeared, didn’t come when called and, when I went looking for him, his whines identified his location and told me he was in distress. When I found him, he was acting peculiar, as though he was restrained and unable to escape. Upon closer inspection, I found him snared in a leg-hold trap chained to a small nearby tree. When the dog wouldn’t let me open the trap, Cooker assisted, holding the dog and petting him as I released the tension with my hands. Free at last, young Chub-Chub was off and running like he had upon exiting the truck, showing no apparent injuries.

I knew the trap was illegal but didn’t want to press the issue and figured I’d just let it go, although the image of that dog trapped around the front left paw irritated me for weeks, maybe months, and I was still thinking about it last week. Let’s just say I had formed a new kind of “respect” for the site and leave it at that. Yet who would have ever guessed it could, and indeed was about to, get worse?

Yes, last Thursday, bulling my way through the absolute worst tangles of a particularly tangly season on a cool, sunny day, I realized I had lost track of Lily after struggling to get past a small deadfall buried deep in head-high swamp grass laced with dagger-like briars that already had me bleeding from the right cheek. Finally, after stomping down hard on the dead, dry trunk with my right boot and breaking it clean through, I reached down and pulled it enough to the side to get through without tripping. Then I immediately noticed Chubby all jacked up and willed myself forward through dense brush anticipating a quick flush along a gnarly fencerow that has been productive over the years. The dog kept quartering back to the same spot, tail wagging furiously, bounding and snorting, what we who have learned to read gun dogs call “indicating.”

Anyway, focused on Chubby, I again lost track of Lily for a few minutes, then wondered where she was because I hadn’t seen or heard her thrashing through the brush for a while. I whistled and waited, whistled and waited, and waited some more. No Lily. I reached for my Tri-Tronics remote-control and buzzed her collar with a sound that almost always brings her back promptly. Still, no Lily. Then I heard her barking. Not frantic, panicked barking, but a tone that got my attention nonetheless. Let’s just say barking isn’t part of Lily’s normal hunting repertoire, unless maybe she’s treed a flush. Plus, I knew the sound was coming from the area where Chubby had been trapped on the final day of the season last year.

Sure enough, when I arrived within sight of my 9-year-old, liver-and-white spaniel, there she sat in an unusual manner licking at her belly. I knew something was wrong. When I looped around though a tight opening and squatted down to her side, I could see she was caught in a wire-cable body snare fastened to the same small tree to which the leg-hold trap had been attached. When I tried to investigate the loop lassoed tightly around her waist, just behind her hips, Lily would have none of it, biting softly at my hands and forearms to keep me at bay. When I tried but was unable to detach the cable from the tree, I knew I had problems and must seek help. Only some kind of wire cutters would set her free, and I wanted to get such a tool quickly, fearing she may struggle and injure herself trying to follow me.

I unloaded my double-barrelled shotgun, broke open the breech, put it over my shoulder and walked with Chubby to a residential neighborhood a couple of hundred yards to the east. There, I walked though a backyard garden, around a garage and noticed through the living-room window a lady reading in a La-Z-Boy recliner. I knocked timidly on the window. She saw me, rose sheepishly and came to the porch door, where I apologized for the intrusion and explained my predicament. My dog was trapped in a body-snare and I needed something that would cut through metal cable. Concerned, the woman called to her husband (luckily a hunter); he appeared, we walked to the tool shed and eventually the three of us walked to the scene with a pair of tin snips. Because the couple owned a French Brittany Spaniel gun dog themselves and were concerned for its safety, they wanted to see exactly what they were dealing with in their own backyard. Can you blame them? Well, this I can say with confidence: they came away disturbed, didn’t think it was OK.

When we got to Lily, she was standing on all fours, not looking particularly distressed. But her disposition quickly changed when we reached her. Then she was nervous and wouldn’t let us near the tight wire loop around her waist. It was a good thing I had help, because I could not have freed that dog alone. I had to hold her down by the collar with my left hand and extend my right arm back to the cable to pull up as much slack as I could with my forefinger, clearing enough space for the man to squeeze the bottom blade of the snips underneath. It was not easy an easy task — the woman holding and soothing Chubby as his mother at times wailed like we were tearing out her liver — but after 15 or 20 minutes, she was cut loose. Lily stood and didn’t hesitate to bound through the dense grass like she had before getting snagged. Undaunted and unharmed, she was ready to resume the hunt. Not me. I was ready to call it a day.

When I got home, I immediately called a friend who years ago trapped for supplemental income. I had to tell him what had happened, figuring he’d have a little insight. When I praised whoever it was that set that trap for being clever, he chuckled to correct me. “It’s not like he made the thing up by himself,” he informed me. “You can buy those things all made up, cheap, by the dozen. Google it if you don’t believe me.”

I think in the future I’ll avoid that spot that’s been so good to me over the years. Talk about weird. Can you imagine running into such a thing? And who knows what other dangers are lurking at this peaceful spot recommended by a former Connecticut Valley Wildlife District game manager and fellow Frontier alum?

My guess is that a man of his ilk would react to such an incident different than me, turning it over to law enforcement.

Traps like that are illegal, and cruel. What if it had wrapped around Lily’s neck and killed her? Well, that would have enraged me.

posted in Columns, The Dogs | No Comments

Nov

2013

Adjustments

by Gary Sanderson

The grandsons were in town over the weekend, bringing with them a nasty, contagious, Vermont elementary school virus my immune system couldn’t fight off. Thus I’m a little under the weather yet maintaining my regular routine, sort of, with the help of Alka-Seltzer Plus.

It’s Wednesday. I just left the dogs out in the kennel, and they’re all fired, anticipating a hunt. Oh, how they love cold, clear November air and bright, sunny fall skies; better still, damp, gray and cold, low pressure, scent clinging low to the ground. When I assured them I’d be back for a swamp romp, their tell-tails told me they understood. First, though, it’s column day.

Yesterday, Tuesday, after a few days picking away at homestead chores — I seldom hunt Saturdays or holidays anymore because of the crowds — I went out briefly in the morning and never got a flush in an area I in the past hunted two or three times a week but hadn’t visited in 20 years before last week. Then an insider’s tip drew me back to the familiar site. That day, my buddy had called to chat about another subject and during our rambling conversation told me he had walked his dogs there that morning and they flushed four pheasants from the eastern border of a dense swamp and marshy ponds I know well. A hunting buddy called a few minutes after we hung up, I told him to meet me there, and, yes, we killed two rapid-fire cock birds in a half-hour, one of them sporting an elusive Hatfield Fish & Game Club tag to add to my historic field-lanyard collection. It’s the only blue tag among many silver ones, so it sticks out and, no, it’s not gonna make it back to Hatfield for the annual raffle drawing of submitted numbered tags.

Upon awakening Tuesday, I felt like maybe I should stay home and rest but knew the dogs must be getting itchy, so I hoped to take them out if I could get my feet under me. Unsure of where to go, I figured why not return to that big, dense swamp and probe it a little deeper to see what came flying out? Figuring it’d be as good a place as any to hunt, I loaded the dogs into the truck for a noontime romp that had potential but ultimately bore no fruit; well, no birds, at least, which in no way implies that the meandering, mile-long maneuver through swampy, thorny, vine-tangled terrain dotted with thick cattail clumps I skirted on a cool, damp day wasn’t pleasing indeed.

When we returned to my truck with an empty gamebag, I didn’t know if I had another hunt in me but left the option open, figuring I’d take a circuitous route home to Greenfield through old, trusted pheasant country, aimed particularly at one covert I still hunt when vacant. Once there, not a hunter to be seen, so I slowed down and, not up to par, figured multiple hunters had already been through the spot and accelerated homeward, where sat a pile of exciting, nearly completed archaeological reading that could well develop into something quite radioactive to write about. But more on that another day. Let’s stay focused on hunting today.

For some reason, on that pleasant Tuesday drive, passing one site after another that once got stocked but does no longer, I quite out of the blue got to thinking about a conversation I had more than 30 years ago with then MassWildlife Game Manager Bill Pollack. When I told him where I worked, he immediately warmed up, said he knew the area well, having graduated from UMass/Amherst and hunted birds in the Amherst/Hadley/Sunderland area for decades. Then this fond reminiscence plummeted into somber lament for the coverts lost to development and highways over the years. He called it sad that the area no longer looked like it did during his school days, circa 1950, when there were more farms and fields and fence-rows and swales, and less sprawl.

“Trust me,” he cautioned, “It won’t get better.”

Well, no truer words could have been spoken, and those prophetic words have never left me, echoing through my consciousness now and again.

Which brings us to the present. How could I not think of Dave Vachula, the big Hatfield right-hander, and neighboring farmer Bob Thayer as I drove through Bradstreet, the site of many productive hunts 30 years ago, accompanied by friends like Timmy Dash, Bruce Van Boeckel and Tommy Valiton, all dead and gone. Yes, back in those days, privately owned acreage along what I call Hopewell Swamp was generously stocked by the state at many locations between Hatfield Pond and the base of Mt. Sugarloaf. Not only that but so was Hopewell Plain above and the Connecticut River floodplain below, right to the riverbank, spreading out the birds and hunting pressure, which makes hunter-conflicts far less likely. Nowadays, the stocking routine has changed dramatically, due mostly, I guess, to all the land gobbled up during MassWildlife’s aggressive land-acquisition program over the past three decades. Although I can’t say I view the current program negatively, it has definitely changed the Pioneer Valley pheasant-stocking philosophy and where I most often hunt.

Today, state Wildlife Management Areas get the lion’s share of birds, receiving two stockings per week, while many of the private coverts that used to get weekly birds get none. This 21st-century routine creates crowded state coverts, where parking can be a challenge and hunting has become strictly put-and-take, leaving little chance for stocked birds to survive more than a day or two. Still, I have not forgotten what it was like years ago at places like the vast fields between the Pilgrim Airport and Hatfield Pond, or between the airport and Straits Road, all of it open to hunting and holding birds if willing to bleed a little in thorny, foreboding swamps to find them These days, none of that dense, wet cover is stocked unless the local club throws a few birds in for the fellas who kill them soon after release. Also, that whole plain between Little Egypt and Christian Lane, once stocked at several points along the way, is now totally neglected along with the big open piece between Christian Lane and Route 116 in South Deerfield. Years ago, you could take a walk with your dog anywhere out there and expect to flush pheasants, with partridge and woodcock an added bonus on the right day. Today, sad but true, you feel fortunate to find a random stray pheasant anywhere within that vast acreage, and and the same can be said of the brushy railroad-track edges along the western perimeter, once productive, now barren.

Yes, all I can say is that on that slow, winding ride home early Tuesday afternoon, I looped through North Hatfield, Whately and the Mill River, Stillwater and Wisdom sections of Deerfield, passing one covert after another that was once stocked and is no longer. Sure, some of that change was brought by development, but not all of it; in fact, not as much as the folks making decisions would have you believe. The fact is that there’s been a policy change focused on stocking state-owned coverts that draw crowds, diminishing the quality of the hunt.

I’m not belly-aching, just thinking back to the good old days and that friendly, visionary warning from a man nearing retirement as head of the state’s pheasant-stocking program, circa 1982. He said it wouldn’t get better and was right. So, now, here I sit, close in age to Pollack that day we spoke, wondering what I should tell my grandsons about the future of wing-shooting?

I fear the worst.

posted in Columns, Grandkids, Local history | No Comments

Nov

2013

Deer Friend

by Gary Sanderson

Old friend Tom White of Northfield says the time is now for deer hunters to get in the woods, and the man has meat in the freezer to prove it.

He took care of the familiar butchering chores Tuesday, intending when I spoke to him on the phone that morning to skin out the 8-point, 187-pound buck hanging in his friend’s barn since he killed it on Halloween morning near his home.

“It was nice that the weather cooperated and I could leave it hanging for a while,” said White, likely supporting the tradition that it’s best to season venison before packaging it. The problem is that, if it turns warm, the meat can quickly spoil, and that would be an unpardonable sin.

White, a sociable potter/artist with unbridled energy and spirit, is a devoted hunter who raises, breeds and trains German Shorthair Pointers owned and loved throughout the Pioneer Valley and beyond. I am often reminded of my friend by drinking from his signature earth-tone coffee mugs, lighting his lamps and placing drinks on the glazed, table-top coasters I’ve bought from him over the years. The last time I actually saw him to talk to was in late August when he stopped by with a gift, a game and a devilish grin. You see, he had called on the phone earlier and, knowing I collect Whately stoneware, reported digging up something of interest he wanted to share with me on his way through Greenfield. When he arrived at my home around 5 p.m., he came in and we chatted awhile before walking out to his truck to inspect his treasure: a small, handled ovoid jug covered with in a gray, pasty opaque film. He wanted me to wash it off at the nearby garden hose and see what appeared.

I must say I had immediate suspicions and, lo, the pretty little jug was no ancient artifact but a brand-new piece he had made me as a special gift, with Old Tavern Farm impressed on its shoulder under a streak of cobalt blue, the same color as the bird he had an artist friend paint on its face. I was moved by the thoughtful gesture, a personal gift from a friend and reader that I will treasure for the rest of my days; it currently standing atop a one-drawer Sheraton stand in the study between a sofa and my bookcases. It’s heartfelt offerings like that which a man like me finds most special; yes, a genuine token of friendship that will always have a story attached and a storyteller to spin it.

But enough of that, back to the man’s big buck, which, in his own words, had “just an ordinary rack” but, in my words, was no ordinary deer. No, 187-pound bucks in these parts qualify as large no matter how you frame it. Perhaps its ordinary head gear left it a step below a trophy buck, but, hey, like the fellas sitting at the Conway Taproom bar say: you can’t eat the horns. And get this. White says there’s a larger buck sporting a trophy rack that’s been showing up on his trail camera since August or early September. So now that critter is patrolling the same area minus his No. 1 competitor vying for the affection of four of five does White has seen up close and personal, not to mention on his camera.

“One time those does were right under my stand and I tried my best to put horns on them,” he laughed. “You know how that goes: low light and you start trying to grow horns on them before coming back to reality and admitting they’re baldies.”

Yeah, any deer hunter knows that creative little mind game of internal deception; and to be honest, I’d venture a guess that a game warden or two has heard excuses from violators who shoot does without a permit and try to defend themselves by saying it was an honest mistake. You know, something like, “Honestly, Officer, I thought it had horns or I wouldn’t have shot;” followed by the ruse that there must have been deceptive branches behind it, because the hunter was certain it had spikes when he squeezed the trigger; then the tear-jerker of all tear-jerkers that his eyes just ain’t what they used to be. Well, it’s doubtful such excuses get a man far with the stern, expressionless officers of the law patrolling the region nowadays, especially the new, rigid breed wearing their military high and tights, rarely fitting the profile of the kid next door’s dad that applied when I was young.

White predicts that bucks are now most vulnerable to hunters, because in the pre-rut stage they’re anxious to breed does playing hard to get. “The does aren’t in heat or receptive yet,” reported White, “but the bucks are all revved up, their hormones cooking, and they’re scraping and grunting and growing their fat rut necks.”

White grunted his handsome buck in after daybreak and says the beast came at him quickly from out of sight. He knew the deer he’d been monitoring were bedding in slash above his stand and was careful to walk in quietly to conceal his presence in a tree stand overlooking his man-made scrape doused with doe-in-heat and rutting-buck urines in a jar. As soon as he settled into his stand, he started working his grunt call softly, just in case a buck was close, then when nothing happened, started grunting louder and more aggressively while alternating between aggressive- and more subtle tending-grunt sequences.

“Finally, I heard something and saw the buck running right at me,” he said. “Like turkeys, they have an uncanny ability to pinpoint a faraway sound they’re interested in, and he came right to it, stopping right below my tree, freezing briefly and turning to walk away.”

It was during that alert departure that the deer, still looking for the rival beast making all the noise, made its fatal mistake by stopping briefly at a spot where White had a clear shot, no pesky hemlock branches obstructing his arrow’s path. He let fly from 26 yards at just before 7 a.m. and was able to follow the bright streak of his lighted-nock fly at the deer, clear through it and into the ground on the other side. The shot passed right through the animal’s vitals for what proved to be a quick, humane kill. The 3½-year-old deer never knew what hit him; he flinched, ran off some 50 yards into the hardwoods, staggered, fell and quickly expired from profuse internal bleeding.

So now White can focus on the big boy. Maybe it too will make a fatal mistake. Maybe not. White is hoping for the former.

“Yeah,” he said. “I’d be good with filling both my tags before shotgun season.”

posted in Columns | No Comments

Oct

2013

Another Fine Covert Bites The Dust

by Gary Sanderson

It’s pheasant season, the ringnecks are cackling and flying and life is good; yet, sadly, some of my favorite coverts — thick, thorny, productive tangles I’ve plowed through regularly for 40 years — have become inundated with unfamiliar hunters, many from far away, a relatively new development.

It’s perfectly alright that “outsiders” find their way to the public, state-owned coverts on which all are not only welcome but directed by online maps that can be printed and stored in glove boxes or console compartments. But when new hunters and strange vehicles start spilling over into adjacent private land owned by folks who have always permitted their friends, classmates, teammates and neighbors to hunt — often stopping on fine fall days for warm conversation — well, let’s just say the owners are not always so welcoming to folks they’re meeting for the first time, strangers taking the liberties they’ve seen from afar other folks with personal connections take.

Hunters should know it’s never safe to assume that just because you see a vehicle parked out at the back of someone’s hayfield that everyone has the same privileges. Upon discovering a new place to hunt, it’s always best to find out who owns the property, seek out that owner, introduce yourself, ask permission and learn the ground rules, asking considerate questions like, “Is there anywhere you don’t want me to hunt or park?” By making bold assumptions and driving across private land like it’s yours, you can ultimately ruin it for everyone.

Truth be told, I’ve suspected for the past couple of years, judging from what I’d seen in passing, that things were about to change on a rich wetland where my roots lie deep; and I even went so far as to warn a couple people to be careful as I reduced my own presence and waited for the changes to unfold. Then, a little more than a month ago at an archaeological dig bordering ancient family acreage, a man with indisputable insight warned me it was coming. I quickly reiterated my warning to a few friends and have intentionally stayed away this year since the season opened. Well, sure enough, Wednesday morning the inevitable phone call finally came. Yes indeed, one of the folks I had warned, a friend who had met the owners several times in my company, visited the site Tuesday afternoon, couldn’t find a parking place at the adjacent state covert, drove over the hump to the contiguous private covert and immediately noticed four trucks parked out along the brook cutting a vast hayfield in half. When he and his companion ventured out to see who was hunting and how they’d done, they found a band of unfamiliar orange-clad hunters milling about by their vehicles, stopped briefly to chat and departed for a different spot. Then, on the way out, they were flagged down by the landowner and politely asked who they were and where they were from before being informed that, unfortunately, times were going to change on the covert. In my opinion, posting was inevitable there. I sensed it coming long ago as more and more people found their way to the private side of the covert, and honestly, although I may sound provincial, I can’t say I blame them. If I owned it, I’d want to know who was hunting on my property, and if I wasn’t comfortable with the crowd, I’d put an end to it, too.

What’s interesting is that quite by accident I played a role in this sad development. Years ago, a fellow Frontier graduate was serving as Connecticut Valley Wildlife District game manager in charge of our pheasant-stocking and we were making small talk on the phone about “local” coverts we both knew well. During the friendly chat, it dawned on me to ask a question I had wanted answered for many years. That is: did they stock the place I called Balboni’s, an overgrown hayfield that had been very good to me over the years? I had hunted there for many years, primarily for woodcock and grouse, but knew pheasants always found their way to the covert as the season progressed. When he said, no, they never stocked property without the owner’s permission, I opined that the owner would have no problem with stocking it. Well, lo and behold, the man looked into the site, discovered it was for sale, tipped off the MassWildlife land-acquisition agent and the rest is history. Yes, the state promptly bought the parcel, a natural wildlife and wildflower refuge it soon “put on the map” as a Wildlife Management Area that has for 10 years or more attracted more and more hunters each year.

Talk about cycles, or maybe chickens coming home to roost. For years I’d wait a few weeks for that field to fill up with stocked pheasants from the nearby private covert, then visit it daily over the last half of the season, when I had it pretty-much to myself. Now, I suspect that just the opposite scenario will soon unfold, with the hunting pressure shifting exclusively to the public covert, which cannot hold many hunters at once, and many of the pheasants that escape them ending up over on the private posted covert t’other side, separated by a dense, wet, impenetrable alder swamp flooded by beavers. That dense wetland used to be huntable, holding many grouse and woodcock, but the vegetation is now older, taller, thicker, thornier and, even worse, much of it is underwater. But game birds can still find dry pockets of unhuntable jungle refuge full of nourishing seeds and berries.

My guess is that soon the private land will be legally posted, and thus no longer stocked but full of pheasants that will be out of play for most hunters. In my mind, it was inevitable. I clearly saw it coming. Only a blind man could have missed it. Streams of out-of-town hunters and vehicles are seldom welcome to landowners.

And so, yes, another good covert bites the dust.

posted in Columns | No Comments

Oct

2013

Drydock Blues

by Gary Sanderson

I’m starting to feel guilty. The dogs know. I can sense it, see it in their step, their demeanor. Hunting season is here. They know.

Problem is I’m getting off to a late start because I procrastinated on a few key matters down the stretch. Here’s the checklist:

1. Purchase hunting license (done);

2. Purchase hunting bibs (done at last minute, awaiting delivery, could get by with tattered pair hanging in carriage shed);

3. Purchase waterproof boots (also ordered late, still awaiting package, no appropriate boots to carry me through before new ones arrive).

Oh well, no one to blame but myself. I shouldn’t have delayed so long before motivating, but in my own defense, I’ve been busy with other stuff, all of it interesting, dynamic too, more and more archaeological information coming at me daily; stapled documents, books and notes accumulating rapidly, piling up on my desk, a candle stand, chest of drawers, Queen Anne tea table. That plus an interesting home visit a couple of days after a lively public presentation in Deerfield. Yes, it seems it’s been one interesting conversation after another — some on the phone, others face-to-face — all part of an information-gathering process that should bear succulent fruit. It seems there’s always some new angle or accusation to ponder, the loose ends dangling here and there, willy-nilly in opposite directions like roots on an uprooted tree.

But, hey, that stuff’s gotta wait. It’s hunting season, I own two good bird dogs born to burst through muddy, thorny tangles, and we only get six short weeks to pound the swamps together in search of stocked pheasants, migratory woodcock and diminishing partridge. I remember daily youthful frolics when partridge seemed to startle us around every corner in my travels out and about looking for and often finding mischief. Not anymore. No sir. With our forests older and taller, partridge are scarcer, which isn’t to suggest I’m a proponent of bloody biomass rape to solve the problem by irresponsible clear-cutting that would indeed stimulate fresh new growth and a partridge comeback, not to mention dirty, smoky air. Wouldn’t that be selfish of me? I think so. Besides, I like forests with majestic hardwoods, cool upland ridges and hard protruding ledge.

Actually, above all it’s the boots that have me drydocked. I was trying to make a decision on a new style, hesitated and lost. Quite by coincidence and necessity a few years back, I threw on my Cabela’s insulated leather and Gore-Tex 12-inch “Outfitter Boots” purchased for deer hunting and, although hot, was pleased with the comfort and ankle-support. So, with those stiff, rugged, upland boots destroyed after a few years, I figured I’d look for something similar this time around, minus the insulation. When I emailed a Cabela’s contact person listed in my outdoor-writers’ directory for advice and didn’t receive an immediate response, I didn’t want to be pushy and waited patiently. But the fact is that I waited too long and am now paying the price, twiddling my thumbs and waiting for that familiar UPS truck’s roar approaching my yard. I went with the 16-inch waterproof Boa Snake Boots, although a little worried that they may not hold up to the punishment they’ll endure. We’ll see. What the heck? If I get three years out of them, I’ll be happy. If not, I’ll try something else next time.

I need a boot that will stand up to thorns, vines and hidden, rusty barbed-wire fences hugging the ground as I plow through black cattail mud and puddled depressions holding extended ankle-deep water from rains and overnight beaver dams. If these new boots don’t hold up, I could always go back to my old standby 16-inch L.L. Bean Hunting Shoes to which I was loyal for more than 30 years. The problem with them was that after a year or two (which adds up to 12 weeks of aggressive bird hunting), the stitches attaching the leather uppers to the rubber bottoms above the heel would break and leak. The new snake boots I selected are just as high as the Bean boots but lined with waterproof Gore-Tex top to bottom, no stitched seams to leak above the heel. We’ll see what transpires. I’m confident they’ll be fine, my feet warm, dry and comfy.

Something else that my friends wear and I’ve many times considered are those pricey high rubber boots you see English gentlemen hunters wearing in the field. Though knee-high and supposedly made of tough, space-age rubber, I have two serious reservations concerning durability: 1. they’ll tear in the thorny cover I frequently hunt and, more importantly, 2. they won’t provide the needed support for my loose right ankle the fellas shot up with Novocain at halftime of a high school football game against Mahar my senior year. It’s true, but no names. What were they thinking? Playing for a terrible team that won one freakin’ game in two years, you have to wonder whether it was really worth it? Looking back, I’d say no.

Oh, how clearly I recall that doctor at my first UMass baseball physical examining the floppy ankle, holding it between his hands on opposite sides of my heel and wiggling it to check stability. Concerned by the range of motion, he suggested surgery that would require drilling a hole through my leg bone, pulling the loose tendons through it and fastening them to the other side for tightness. I wasn’t interested, assuring the man I could live with tape. So here I sit nearly 45 years later, still going strong on that balky right ankle which got me through the second half of that 1970 football game in South Deerfield, the painless throbbing eventually turning into sharp stabbing pain by late in the fourth quarter — all for the sake of athletic glory. Am I missing something, or is it ridiculous?

Anyway, back to my current predicament while awaiting hunting boots, I did make use of the idle time for backyard leave removal, then picked away at my side-by-side shotgun with paste wax that has it shining like a newborn’s behind. Problem is that the anxiety-soothing polishing activity uncovered yet another unexpected issue I am still at this point trying to resolve. You see, my European walnut stock feels a little loose and, with time on my hands, I sure would like to snug it up before it gets worse. Unfortunately, I don’t know where the screw to tighten it is and am unable to disassemble the shotgun’s receiver from its stock, if you can imagine that with a sweet little double-barrel I have owned for at least 25 years. On American shotguns and rifles I’ve owned, the stocks are typically attached to the receiver by a single screw that’s tightened with a long screwdriver through a hole in the base of the stock. Not so with this French double, and where does a man find a gunsmith these days? Trust me, I’ll find someone who can help but it won’t be as easy as hopping in the car and driving downtown. Not in today’s world, especially in a state unfriendly to gun owners. Maybe I can find some sort of instruction or a diagram online. If not, I can always drag out my 12-gauge Citori, which I haven’t used in ages. The issue is that to my knowledge I have no 12-gauge shells.

Oh my! Can it get any worse? Maybe I won’t get out at all this week. If so, I’ll feel bad for the dogs. They so love to hunt, and so do I. And hunt we will, promise, as soon as I get everything sorted out, which should have been last week but may not be till next week, eight days late, by then likely chasing stragglers that escaped the first furious push I unintentionally avoided and perhaps didn’t miss.

In the meantime, maybe I’ll kill time reading that Daedalus Online bargain-bin book I bought by Good Father Daniel Berrigan, one Catholic priest I can agree with on some matters. Better still, maybe I’ll hear that UPS truck pull into my driveway today, in the nick of time.

Old Jean Breuil wants to bark with both barrels, and the dogs are eager to “Fetch it up,” both sounds music to their ears.

posted in Columns | No Comments

Oct

2013

New Sheriff In Town?

by Gary Sanderson

More than half my cordwood’s in the shed, the Full Hunters Moon is building to a brilliant climax and green stocking trucks are rolling for Saturday’s opening day of pheasant season.

Yes, the bird-hunting season is upon us and here I sit in a familiar seat, still procrastinating about purchasing my hunting license online. Imagine that! I guess times change as we age. But trust me, I will soon embark on my normal busy fall pheasant-hunting routine, starting next week and ultimately dovetailing snugly into my customary December vacation. So, first the license — just a hunting license, not sporting, for the first time in memory — then a new pair of sturdy waterproof boots, and maybe, just maybe, even new Filson bibs; you know, the kind made of the Seattle, Wash., company’s patented Double-Tin Cloth, an oil-cloth material marketed as durable enough to provide a lifetime of wear. Well, maybe for some, but not me. After three seasons, my bibs are always tattered and torn, in fact shredded and ready to be cut into patches before trashing them. That adds up to 18 short weeks of brush-busting behind my energetic Springer Spaniels, sliding through and bounding over dense thorny cover. No, I’m not complaining. To me, Filson bibs are the best money can buy. But, still, they only last me, likely at the high end of aggressive field-testers, three measly hunting seasons. It’s a time-tested reality proven many times over, hopefully many more if my chronic arthritic left knee continues to cooperate.

But I’ll have more than enough time to write about pheasants, marshes, gun dogs and wing shots as the season progresses. In fact, I’m anxious to watch Chubby come into his own, now 2 and entering his third season at full speed and agility. I know it’s coming. He’ll blow past his 9-year-old mother this year. Which is not to suggest Lily’s any slouch. No, no, no. To the contrary, the old gal can still hold her own, thank you. But Chubby’s just bigger, stronger and much younger, not to mention an absolute unharnessed bundle of energy, all nose and tail, naturally biddable and entering his prime. He’ll be fun to watch.

Till then, though, I’m still fascinated by and immersed in that Paleoindian archaeological excavation I observed back in September on a sandy southern Mt. Sugarloaf skirt. There, at a place where many years ago I picked tobacco and I shot pheasants over black Lab Sara, Paleoindians camped seasonally to capitalize on favorable topography for caribou hunting and whatever else they may have hunted and gathered there. Having watched Dr. Richard Michael Gramly and crew trowel through layer upon layer of dirt to collect 12,000-year-old, prehistoric treasure below the chocolate-colored plowzone, and having had the opportunity to talk at length to him and many of his loyal, experienced crew members, all donating their time from different parts of America and walks of life, I just can’t seem to shake the subject of Paleoindians and their Pioneer Valley travels focused around hunting for survival and clothing.

And now, could it be a coincidence that out of the clear blue sky, quite by accident, someone has stumbled upon and told me about a new development that suggests perhaps it was a good thing I watched that dig and asked those questions when I did, because such opportunities may soon be impossible if Massachusetts House Bill No. 744 is passed in the dark of night before anyone in the Connecticut River Valley knows what hit them. Presented on Jan. 17 by Peter V. Kocot, D-Northampton, and co-signed by Hampshire County sister Ellen Story, D-Amherst, the proposed bill — the genesis of which I’m still not certain of but have suspicions — is currently working its way toward enactment. If approved as expected, a Connecticut Valley oversight committee headquartered at UMass will be appointed “to preserve and protect the archaeological and fossil resources of the Commonwealth.” I don’t know what will change with a new Pioneer Valley archaeological watchdog on patrol, but suspect it will impact future exploration here. Stay tuned. I must explore this bill and its aims before commenting further. But I must admit that at first whiff the smell is unpleasant. I know who likely pushed the measure behind the scenes and why, while I also have spoken to many experts in the field who have reservations about these folks’ objectives, tactics and unaccountability, if not integrity.

In the meantime, you may want to attend a 2 p.m. program Sunday at the Hall Tavern in Old Deerfield. There, UMass anthropologist Elizabeth Chilton and former student Siobhan Hart will speak and answer questions about the Pocumtuck Fort site they have been quietly exploring on a ridge just east of Deerfield Village for 10 or more years. News of this presentation was not publicized in bold print on the Historic Deerfield website but was promoted on a brochure mailed periodically to Friends of Historic Deerfield supporters.

The long-lost, mysterious Pocumtuck Fort site, said to have been attacked by the Mohawks prior to 1670, has for almost two centuries piqued the interest of scholars and local historians alike. But in the big picture, it’s a Contact Period site that’s small potatoes compared to the nearby Sugarloaf Paleo Site, which is more than 10,000 years older. Most enticing about Paleo exploration is how little is known about these primitive human beings, with new discoveries and interpretation being made weekly. It is difficult to decipher precisely who these people were because time has erased their DNA, leaving behind only stone tools and implements and, if lucky, maybe some calcine (roasted) bone fragments and charcoal bits for carbon-dating. Having queried a broad sampling of the experts passing through the recent Sugarloaf Site dig, and read volumes on the subject, it’s clear to me that there is great disagreement relative to who these Paleoindians were and whether they were the ancient ancestors of the Indian tribes found living here at the time of the Pocumtuck Fort.

Some experts believe the River Tribes of our valley carried the genes of the Paleo people Gramly was exploring; others speculate that those genes vanished from our valley in northern pursuit of the caribou herds, which, myself, I find preposterous. So count me among the folks who believe that all the tribes who met European explorers disembarking ships along our eastern shores from the days of Viking Leif Erikson forward encountered Indians who had evolved from the nomadic, post-Ice Age Paleoindian hunting bands. Yes, there are those who will respond to that opinion by claiming I’m “uninformed.” But the fact is that neither my hypothesis nor theirs — that the River Indian tribesmen of 1630 carried no genetic markers of the Paleo people camping at the Sugarloaf Site — can be proven at the present time. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, and while you’re at it, pack it with a little of old friend Jimmy Pasiecnik’s medical marijuana if you will. Or, if that Whately entrepreneur can’t talk sense into the rigid town officials he’s dealing with, maybe Mike Ruggeri will soon be able to supply some primo green-bone filler. Will government pot-Nazis ever give up? Hasn’t this gone on long enough? Isn’t it inevitable that pot will someday be legal, no matter how loud Nervous Nellies from the Ecumenical Council wail? All this bluster is ridiculous, not to mention a colossal waste of time and money. It must have been nice back in the Paleo era when people were governed by the forces of nature, not uniformed officers enforcing laws enacted to preserve and protect the status quo, be it compassionate or corrupt, more likely the latter. But why digress … back to the Paleoindians, who slaughtered caribou with spears right where I dropped many a cackling ringneck rooster fleeing for cover deep into the foreboding Hopewell Swamp, still rich in virtually everything a man needs to survive.

Those who believe Paleo people disappeared from our region say they did so in pursuit of the caribou herds, which they followed north to cooler climates. There’s no reason to doubt that Paleo hunters initially moved north with the shifting caribou range because, like all human beings, they were creatures of habit locked into a lifestyle. But don’t people and animals evolve? Did deer, bears and squirrels leave our landscape when American chestnuts died of blight, or did they adapt and learn to survive on other available hard-mast crops? Does anyone truly believe that Paleoindians, who savored caribou meat above all else and chased the herds as a way of life, didn’t know there were also fish and fowl to eat within the same habitats? Weren’t they aware of other sources of red meat as well? If caribou moved to colder regions as New England warmed, wouldn’t the people who followed ultimately return to their old haunts, find that life was easier and adjust their diet? I can’t imagine any other scenario. Do you really need a doctorate to figure out such basic, primal questions of simple human survival? Not in a world of common sense and intellectual instinct.

All I can say is that I want to know more about questions like these. I’d like to connect the Sugarloaf Site to Peskeomskut and South Hadley Falls and the Hamp Meadows and a certain balanced rock and prayer seat I know of, buried deep in a place known to some as The Four Corners. But I get the feeling that if this House Bill No. 744 goes through in the dark of night without public awareness and scrutiny that future Paleo archaeology will be off limits except to selected pals in agreement with a small cabal of secretive stewards serving their own needs and padding their resumes.

I guess the least I can do at this late point is shed a dull ray of light into the shadow obscuring the bill; that and hope I won’t soon after its imminent approval be proclaiming right here in this space that I told you so.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Oct

2013

More Paleo Patter

by Gary Sanderson

Does anyone else have problems getting their head around small encampments of Paleo-Indian hunters spearing to death migrating caribou funneled through a tight ravine at the base of Sugarloaf some 12,350 years ago? Yes, mind boggling indeed, yet quite real.

I suppose what makes it all so unfathomable is the sad fact that the typical American citizen taught in the average American school is lost in a very intentional Christian/cultural fog that deceives most into believing that New England history began with the Plymouth pilgrims in 1620. If creative, curious and sophisticated, you may even want to begin with Leif Erikson and long-lost Vinland, circa 1000 AD, still to this day being hunted by scholarly explorers. Well, let me tell you a little secret: It all started way before the Vikings, secretive Basque fishermen or a Portuguese explorer named Christopher Columbus, and it was happening right here where we live, dating back between 12,000 and 13,000 years, maybe even a bit earlier. That was proven this week by radiocarbon dating performed on calcine (baked) bone fragments collected on a two-week archaeological excavation led from Sept. 7-21 by veteran, soon-to-be 67-year-old archaeologist Dr. Richard Michael Gramly, a Harvard Ph.D specializing in Paleo discovery, with the ground-breaking Vail Site in western Maine’s Rangeley Lakes Region and many other important sites to his credit.

Not one to putter around procrastinating over scholarly reports while storing artifacts in dark, locked vaults secreted far from public view, Gramly has, since returning home on Sept. 21, been furiously piecing together the clues uncovered with shovel, trowel and soft-bristled brush by his veteran, highly coordinated American Society for Amateur Archaeologists crew. After packaging and mailing his bone samples to Beta Analytic, a respected Miami, Fla., lab he and other top archaeologists have for 30 years used to date material, Gramly has continued to diligently pick away at the artifacts, attempting to reassemble broken pieces and comprehend precisely what it all means. Beta lab has already examined the bone and dated it to 10,350 years Before Present, plus or minus 50, which, according to Gramly, computes out to approximately 12,350 actual calendar years or to roughly the date 10,337 BC … mind-blowing indeed. That’s nearly 10,000 years before ancient Greece and Rome, more than 9,000 years before ancient Egyptian civilization coalesced.

Wow!

Truth be told, Gramly was a little disappointed with the date because what he had seen led him to speculate the artifacts gathered at the site dated back as far as the Vail Site he dug in 1980. Beta Analytic and another independent lab dated the bone collected there at about 350 years older, some 12,700 years old. But hey, a layman might ask, what’s 350 years in a picture so deep? And although that sounds like a reasonable assessment, Gramly says one should be careful not to dismiss 3½ centuries so haphazardly, saying 350 years is not in any way insignificant in the big picture. Much can change in three centuries, including such crucial factors as climate, glacier-melt and vegetation to name a few, and Gramly insists that archaeologists must pay close attention to the minutest details when interpreting prehistoric data. So, for the time being, he’s going to treat the Vail and Sugarloaf sites as apples and oranges, comparing the South Deerfield site bordering a sandy, agricultural Whately plain as a “sister site” to the famed Bull Brook Site of Paleo legend in Ipswich.

“That site sits 120 miles due east of the Sugarloaf Site,” said Gramly, reached at his North Andover home Tuesday. “We don’t know if we’re dealing with the same bands of hunters at the sites, or related bands, or if it was the same people migrating with the caribou herds from one site to the other. We may never know, but I’d sure like to know.”

Gramly’s most recent dig was his second at the Sugarloaf Site. Following his first dig — performed in 1995 on private abutting property that has since been purchased by the state and kept off-limits — Gramly wrote a book and gave all his field notes kept in India Ink along with reports and photos to Memorial Libraries in Deerfield. Not only that but he gave all artifacts to the rightful owners, the Whately family that owned the land before selling it under pressure from the state. That family has shown the artifacts to many, including New York scientists who are now trying to date them using new, state-of-the-art technology. But now Gramly has beat them to it, finally getting a definitive date after nearly 40 years of bureaucratic thumb-twiddling fueled by professional/academic competition and jealously.

Gramly’s top priority was to date the Sugarloaf Site, and that has now been done thanks to the many bone fragments he was able to collect. Actually, he could have sacrificed the only bone fragment he found on his last dig 18 years ago but refused because it was the only piece of bone he found and he didn’t want to destroy it. In the near future, he’ll also be submitting an exciting collection of charcoal discovered in more than one two-square-meter pits, including one uncovered toward the end of the second week that what was believed to be a bowl-shaped fire pit. However, Gramly warned, “Charcoal dating is a little more risky. Sometimes a tree can burn right down to the roots, leaving charcoal. That’s why I wanted bones to date. Bone dating can’t be denied.”

In the meantime, Gramly is working furiously to put together a PowerPoint summary of the Sugarloaf dig he plans to unveil a few weeks down the road in Portland, Maine, where the prestigious Eastern States Archaeological Federation is meeting the weekend of Nov. 1. There, with rumors likely already swirling through scholarly Northeastern archaeological circles, Gramly will likely blow the cover off the Franklin County site, which he implores has sat idle long enough and should be explored further in search of habitation and kill sites there. If he can supply the wind behind the sails, that Sugarloaf Site could open the gates to long overdue exploration of other important Pioneer Valley prehistoric sites, places like Canada Hill overlooking once-sacred Peskeomskut waterfall in Turners Falls, the Bashin in North Hatfield, Kells Farm in Greenfield, sites in Northfield and Hadley and Sunderland and on and on and on.

“I don’t know what they’ve been waiting for,” said Gramly. “I’m a scientist and the inactivity makes absolutely no sense to me. How can they continue to ignore it? Here we have one of the most important Paleo sites in North America, one we’ve known about for more than 40 years, and they’ve been just sitting on it all this time. By now, in my opinion, there should have been 40 or 50 doctoral dissertations to come out of that site and related sites right there in your home, the Connecticut Valley, an archaeological treasure trove that needs to be explored.”

Asked if it’s likely there are earlier sites in the neighborhood, Gramly didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative.

“Yes, it’s very likely there’s just such a site not far away,” he said. “Bud Driver has a drill point of an earlier style that showed up prominently at the Vail Site, and it came from within a mile or two of Sugarloaf. I intend to investigate that site and talk to the farmer.”

So, stay tuned: The days of public railing against this stuff as hysterical anti-development rhetoric and historical hooey may be over if Gramly has anything to say about it. My guess is that a new clamor is building intense pressure and ready to blow. New spokespeople driving the message will be unimpeachable experts in their field, and the old boys trying to discredit and demean them will look foolish indeed, if not intentionally manipulative and, in the end, uninformed at best.

As for the staid academic cultural-resource managers committed to silence in the name of protection and preservation, well, we’ll see how it all turns out for them. They may yet figure out how to have it both ways.

“Can you imagine the state buying that first site I dug to prevent further study?” asked Gramly. “They paid almost half a million dollars for it. Just think what we could have done with a half-million to dig it.”

Something smells fishy.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Oct

2013

Unearthing Issues

by Gary Sanderson

I’ve found that most things happen for a reason. Take, for instance, Wednesday morning’s incoming mail.

Having heard the white USPS jeep pass a half-hour earlier while reading, I pulled my truck up alongside the mailbox to retrieve the mail on my way out of the yard to run the dogs. The first item to catch my eye was a flier from Cobb’s auction in Peterborough, N.H., the cover displaying the glossy color photo of a formal Chippendale chest of drawers similar in style to a friend’s recent purchase. The next item to pull me in was a pale, robin’s-egg-blue, greeting-card-sized envelope addressed to me below a paste-on return address from Kirk Spurr, the dean of diggers assisting Dr. Richard Michael Gramly on a recent archaeological excavation along the perimeter of an important Paleo-Indian site situated on a sandy terrace below Mt. Sugarloaf. Inside was a personal note and a compact-disk archive of photographs taken by Spurr, 83, and other participants during the important two-week dig performed by members of Gramly’s American Society for Amateur Archaeology on what is likely the hottest Paleo site this side of the Mississippi River, definitely sacred ground in the archaeological world.

Before I proceed, I suppose I should take a moment to explain to those who spend their free time perched in treestands with bow and arrows how a man penning an outdoors column can get drawn into writing about archaeological excavations. Well, all I can say is that hunting and fishing and the outdoors are still important to me, but not nearly as fascinating as 12,000-year-old Paleo hunters spearing caribou and wooly mammoths on my childhood haunts with stone, bi-faced weapons sharpened in an open-air workshop being uncovered before my eyes on Sugarloaf’s lap. Can it get any more interesting than that? Not in this man’s world.

But, back to Spurr — a man I observed performing various excavation chores, usually wearing a distinctive, tinted-billed straw hat, not to mention a palpable gleam of boyish enthusiasm — my indelible image of him was planted in my mind on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, Sept. 25, as the archaeological crew buttoned down its sophisticated, fine-tuned project for the night. My wife had spelled me in my son’s Springfield hospital room and told me in passing that a friend had left a phone message to say he was traveling to the site to meet an important Paleo scholar expected to arrive from France that afternoon. Good timing, I thought, having already intended to stop on my may through and see what was happening. Upon my arrival, I noticed local dig-liaison and Deerfield Historical Commission member David “Bud” Driver standing and talking to a thin, distinguished, bespectacled, gray-bearded man between the gabled ends of two barns stuffed with aromatic field tobacco. Driver signaled me over with his hand and introduced me to Duncan Caldwell, who I discovered was the very man my telephone pal thought I should know en route. Fact was, he was not coming in from France, though, but a place much closer, Martha’s Vineyard, his summer place of residence. What does it matter? He winters in France. Anyway, I spoke for some time with Caldwell, a fascinating man and skilled conversationalist who was most interested in historical context of the site I know as Hopewell, the plain and swamp below, which I was more than willing to provide. Our rambling, dynamic conversation lasted perhaps 20 minutes, stopping just in time to wander toward the picnic table where the work crew drifted at the end of each day for casual conversation and laughter.

On our short walk to the table, capped with a cooler-ful of soft drinks, a few colorful pumpkins and items of discarded clothing here and there, Caldwell recognized Spurr standing near a wooden-framed, wire-screen sifter resting on sawhorses along the edge of a two-meter-square hole and greeted him with a warm hello and smile. He immediately walked over to him, shook hands and wrapped both arms around him in a brotherly embrace that told me Spurr — a retired Ph.D chemist with a Dartmouth and Cornell academic pedigree — was not anyone you’d call an amateur. Caldwell, a world-renowned expert in Paleo-Indians, was obviously greeting him as a peer and colleague, someone he had worked with many times before and for whom he held his deepest respect.

“They call us amateurs because we don’t get paid for this work,” Spurr explained in his quiet, humble, Ivy League way, “but we have more field experience than most working professional digs, which are usually manned by young college students.”

Another big difference I have sensed between professional and amateur archaeologists from personal observation is hesitance on the part of the former go public with site locations and reports. Not so with Gramly, who I watched drop whatever he was doing several times to walk a new arrival around the site explaining everything, and then some. A true educator with youthful exuberance and energy, Gramly never showed a trace of impatience or a hint that he was being inconvenienced. On the other hand, local academics have been digging locally for decades and largely keeping their reports and artifacts hidden from public view in the name of site preservation and protection. Not only that, but these folks, the haughty professionals, pejoratively refer to Gramly’s crews as “amateur,” even though a cursory review of their crews’ credentials would reveal an entirely different story. No one can call Gramly an amateur, he who holds the same Harvard degrees as his most outspoken critics, not to mention decades more experience. And the same can be said for most of the men and women who follow him from site to site as a faithful, competent crew.

“I was happy to hear Mike was leading this dig because I know he’ll publish something quickly that people can get their hands on,” said perhaps the world’s preeminent Northeastern lithics expert the first time we met on-site. And although this source didn’t go into detail and throw anyone under the bus, I knew the target was the secrecy and perhaps hidden agendas of state officials and some local academics who carry their water at digs conducted under state permit.

Although I won’t go overboard criticizing the state archaeologist and her UMass minions who deny they are secretive, then refuse access to their reports and artifacts, I know of two local landowners who permitted important archaeological excavations on their land over the past 20 years and have yet to see an accounting of the artifacts dug or the reports written. One of these landowners even sent a written request for a report and had received back not even the courtesy of a response at press time. Yet defenders of state policy claim that all reports are maintained by the Massachusetts Historical Commission and can be requested by interested parties. Of course, that doesn’t mean such a request will be approved. In fact, I’d say it’s unlikely that John Q. Public Citizen, or a newspaper for that matter, would have much success obtaining such reports. If you doubt it, give it a shot and see where it leads.

Gramly, a sophisticated scientist at the top of his game, is likely now in marathon analysis of the many artifacts collected over 14 days in Deerfield, and I know from speaking to him on-site that he is in awe of what was gathered and will publish in a timely fashion a comprehensive summary of his findings, something average readers will be able to purchase and understand. It is also likely that many others who participated in the dig will write their own accounts describing what it means in an assortment of magazines aimed at scholarly and average readers.

It’ll be interesting to see where this all goes and what the “official reaction” is. My suspicion is that the wheels are already spinning, someone’s unhappy with Gramly, and something is about to break. But my guess is that officials who make and enforce the rules will be very careful. Remember, given a choice, they’d rather sweep this stuff under the carpet than stir up a dust storm in the press, especially when the facts could turn public perception in the wrong direction.

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Archives

Calendar

Categories

Dire Wolf

Myth Debunking

Lucifer’s Loop

Adjustments

Deer Friend

Another Fine Covert Bites The Dust

Drydock Blues

New Sheriff In Town?

More Paleo Patter

Unearthing Issues

Pages

Categories

Archives

Search

Blogroll

RSS Feeds

Meta