Old Stage Road

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

My last several posts (not counting the late license plate update) have been short on pictures and long on words, so this one aims to redress the balance a bit. These pictures were taken in the middle of January. Apart from the weekend we got eight inches of snow, January this year felt a lot like March so it doesn’t seem that long ago.

From where I live there are two ways out. The official route is Halcyon Way. (Stop laughing! This is West Tisbury we’re talking about!) Halcyon Way is half a mile long. Most of it’s dirt except for the bit between Old County Road and Island Children’s School. Those big shiny SUVs and minivans get to roll on asphalt en route to deposit the kidlets at their nursery school — whose parking lot, however, is dirt.

Entering the WT dump. That's the Dumptique at center right.

This blog is about the back way out. It’s the short route to the West Tisbury post office and the nearest branch of M.V. Savings Bank, which almost face each other across State Road. I take it often, sometimes by car and sometimes by bike, with Travvy trotting alongside attached to the Springer. Pine Hill, a dirt road, emerges from the woods across from the West Tisbury dump, which is what most people still call it although I think it’s now officially a transfer station. From the dump to State Road is the length of maybe two city blocks, but it’s jam-packed with Vineyard life. This is Old Stage Road. Welcome to my neighborhood.

On Martha’s Vineyard, anti-fashion is always in fashion. In some quarters you can score big brownie points by admitting — modestly, of course — that you scored that nicely tailored blazer at the thrift shop (which probably means the one run by Martha’s Vineyard Community Services in Vineyard Haven but may mean the one run by the M.V. Boys and Girls Club in Edgartown, which looks more like a real store). But you score even bigger points if your find came from the Dumptique, the recycling shed at the West Tisbury dump.

What part of "LEAVE NOTHING OUTSIDE" don't they understand?

The Dumptique is run entirely by volunteers. Occasionally someone will grumble that the volunteers hoard all the good stuff for themselves. There’s so much good stuff in stock, and more arriving all the time, that I doubt it.

West Tisbury people love to pride themselves on their high level of culture and civic responsibility, so I’m secretly pleased that some of us either can’t read or don’t think the rules apply to us. We leave stuff outside when the Dumptique is closed. We leave stuff that no one could possibly want, all to save a couple of bucks in disposal fees, or maybe we just prefer to believe we’re recycling instead of just throwing away junk.  This is why I don’t begrudge the volunteers first dibs on the good stuff. They save us from our secret slobbery.

Have shovel, will dig.

My favorite landscape on Martha’s Vineyard is Goodale’s pit: Lawrence of Arabia meets the industrial revolution. My neighborhood features a mini version: John Keene’s sand and gravel pit is across the street from the dump. Keene’s logo (right) is one of my most favorites. Can’t decide whether it’s a bull or a Viking cow.

Keene's sand and gravel pit

Front gate: CLOSED. (It was Sunday.)

These two signs face each other across the road.

Now we’re ready to turn right on State Road and head up to the post office.

As my buddy and I strolled down Old Stage Road, who should we spot coming toward us but Lynn Christoffers in her very spiffy burgundy PT Cruiser. Lynn being a photographer, she had a camera on the passenger’s seat. Travvy being a dog, he had to look in the window. Here we are.

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March License Plate Report

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Eek! I knew yesterday was the first of a new month — I even paid my rent on time! — but it wasn’t till today that it dawned on me that I hadn’t issued a license plate report for the month just passed. I’m drowning in work, I’ve been running around too much, but the real reason is that I’m in total denial about April’s arrival because once April arrives the days of tax procrastination are numbered, even to a chronic tax procrastinator like me.

Gulp. March is gone. It was a pretty good month for license-plate spotting, though I’m still wondering where the hell Ohio is: Indiana, Nevada, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona are now accounted for. Here’s what the map looked like at midnight, March 31:

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Dogs on the Beach?

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

We take dogs seriously on Martha’s Vineyard, so it’s often said, but (as is often the case) this “we” is not monolithic. Spring is town meeting season on the island, and one of the articles on the West Tisbury town meeting warrant has to do with dogs: dogs on Lambert’s Cove Beach.

People in this town take Lambert’s Cove Beach seriously too. Some of them have dogs, some of them don’t, and some of them think dogs and beaches are incompatible. In other words, this has all the makings of a hot issue.

It already is a hot issue. Last November, after heated discussion and in a very close vote, the citizenry at a special town meeting voted to ban dogs from the beach between June 15 and September 15. Beach-walking dog owners organized and collected enough signatures to get a article rescinding the ban on the warrant for the April 10 annual town meeting (ATM). Wanting to turn down the heat somewhat, they also organized a public forum on the issue and asked Pat Gregory, town meeting moderator, to moderate it. The idea was to solicit input from townsfolk with divergent views and perhaps to come up with a compromise proposal that most people could live with.

The forum was held last night at the Howes House, home of the Up-Island Council on Aging and host to many, many special events and meetings. When the dog forum got under way downstairs, a well-attended public forum on the library expansion was taking place on the ground floor. (When the library forum ended, library director Beth Kramer brought some leftover refreshments downstairs. The two plates of brownies were especially appreciated.)

Travvy prefers snow to sand.

My Travvy is not a beach dog, and I like beaches best when they’re uncrowded, unnoisy, and free, none of which apply to Lambert’s Cove Beach between June 15 and September 15. I do follow dog-related issues, however, and I support any attempt to promote civil discussion of contentious subjects, so I attended the forum.

Feelings did run high, but the discourse remained civil. The key points made by the ad hoc committee to allow dogs on the beach are made in the flyer reproduced below. The enforceability of the ban is very much open to question: are the police and the animal control officer going to drop everything to bust violators, who in most cases will be long gone by the time law enforcement can get there? The pro-dog people propose hiring someone to supervise dog hours at the beach (before 10 a.m. and after 6:30 p.m.), but neither the legalities of nor the funding for this has been worked out, and June 15 is barely two and a half months away.

Rhodry (left) and his look-alike littermate, Lakota, on Lambert's Cove Beach, long time ago.

One anti-dog person thought that allowing dogs on the beach nine months of the year and keeping them off the other three was enough of a compromise. This was clearly not acceptable to the pro-dog attendees. This individual also tried to suggest that dog feces were a significant factor in previous closings of the beach due to high fecal coliform counts. Better-informed people refuted this, pointing out (among other things) that the coliform counts weren’t broken down by species and that no-dogs-allowed beaches were also closed. Also noted was that dog feces, though annoying in the extreme when one steps in them, are not a health hazard.

Which brings up another reason I attended last night’s forum: at the special town meeting last November, I got the impression that the town’s parks and recreation committee, which oversees the beach and other public recreation areas, might be being overly swayed by citizens who were making refutable complaints but doing so very loudly and at very close range.

Another favorite technique is to invoke worst-case scenarios that happen rarely but still scare the hell out of almost everybody. (This has been a popular ploy on both sides of the roundabout debate: terrible things might happen if it’s built and if it isn’t, so we all have to decide which terrible possibilities we’re willing to live with.) Perhaps the most interesting part of last night’s forum was one woman’s talking about how her mother’s hip had been broken in a fall caused by an uncontrolled dog. That’s one of the worst-case scenarios for sure — but this woman is among those organizing to allow dogs on the beach.

No formal proposals emerged from the forum, but my perception is that the pro-dog people would be willing to compromise on a bylaw that allowed dogs on the beach before 10 a.m. but not after 6:30 p.m. Several people noted that the morning people were more likely to be responsible dog owners, and that more havoc was caused in the late afternoon by dogs running loose among picnicking beachgoers and those who come to watch the sun go down. Morning hours would also be easier to supervise than hours at both ends of the day.

All in all, a worthy effort. We’ll see how things play out at town meeting. Even though my dog and I don’t go to the beach, and even though I get very exasperated with the clueless and/or less-than-responsible dog owners we encounter in the woods and on the bike path, it’s a pretty safe bet that I’ll be voting for the dogs.

Flyer passed out at last night's forum

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Shooting Update

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Both the Martha’s Vineyard Times and the Vineyard Gazette have updated their stories on Friday’s shooting.

Key points: Michael O’Keefe, district attorney for the Cape and Islands, has determined that this was a homicide committed in self-defense. Cynthia Bloomquist will not be charged in the death of her husband.

Ms. Bloomquist’s lawyer, Sean E. Murphy, issued a press release in which, according to the Times story, he stated that Kenneth Bloomquist was armed with a shotgun and a pistol when he broke into the house. “After Cynthia Bloomquist was shot with the shotgun,” according to the release, “Mr. Bloomquist then produced a handgun and attempted to shoot Cynthia Bloomquist with the handgun. During a violent struggle for the handgun, the gun discharged, hitting Mr. Bloomquist.”

Mr. Murphy also stated that “Cynthia Bloomquist did not have any firearms in the home.”

The Martha’s Vineyard Times story provides more detail about Cynthia Bloomquist’s request for a restraining order. I’m now even more surprised that it wasn’t granted. On the other hand, she could have gone down to the county courthouse the next day to apply again, but she elected not to do so. Perhaps something happened the night of March 1 to make her feel especially endangered.

Ms. Bloomquist is reported to be in stable condition at M.V. Hospital.

Updated Monday, March 26, 9:20 p.m.

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Guns, No Glory

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

No significant updates have been reported on last Friday’s shooting in my town. As far as I know, Cynthia Bloomquist is still in the hospital. It now appears that Kenneth Bloomquist broke into the house carrying both a rifle and a pistol, and that the pistol jammed when he fired it at his estranged wife. Were these the only two weapons involved in the incident? I don’t know.

A story posted Saturday to Cape Cod Online.com, the website of the Cape Cod Times, reported on an interview with Ms. Bloomquist’s parents. Said Elsbeth Helgerson, her mother, after a phone conversation with her daughter: “Cynthia doesn’t remember all of it, because when you’re fighting for your life, you’re not thinking about how many shots went off.”

No surprise there.

According to the Cape Cod Times story, Elsbeth and Carl Helgerson “said they worried about their son-in-law’s volatility after he threatened their daughter multiple times. On one occasion a few years ago, Elsbeth Helgerson said, Kenneth Bloomquist threatened his wife with a rifle at their former home in Harvard.”

No surprise there either, at least not to me, and not, I suspect, to most of the women I know.

I’ve been following the comments on the various news stories about the shooting, mainly on the Martha’s Vineyard Times website but also on the Vineyard Gazette and Martha’s Vineyard Patchsites, on Facebook, and (of course) on my earlier blog. A significant number focus on the role of firearms in the incident. These range from the Johnny One-Notes (such as “I wonder if all the gun-control whackos still think the Second Amendment is a bad idea?” and “Why after every shooting do the left wing liberals think guns should be outlawed? Thank GOD she had a gun or she would be DEAD!”) to speculation about how the story might have developed had no guns been involved to admiration of Cynthia Bloomquist’s evident ability to keep her head under extraordinary circumstances.

A significant number also address Ms. Bloomquist’s attempt to get a restraining order and the judge’s refusal to grant one. Most commenters think one should have been issued, even if it might not have prevented the shooting. One fellow, however, said this: “A judge won’t institute an order of protection based on one request and shouldn’t. That would lead to such an overused mismanagement of power it would be sickening. The judge will have nothing to answer for unless there has been a trail of recorded police reports for domestic issues.” (The comment was posted with a gender-neutral pseudonym, but if a woman wrote it, I’ll eat all my hats and the wool sweater I brought home from Norway.)

I and quite a few women I know aren’t likely to seek a restraining order till it’s clear that nothing else is working. Who cares what this anonymous guy thinks? Not me — but the possibility that Judge Kane denied Cynthia Bloomquist a restraining order for similar reasons is a strong argument for obtaining a permit and a gun and taking some serious target practice if you suspect your current or soon-to-be-ex partner might be somewhat volatile.

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Shooting in My Town

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Trav and I were practicing a bit on the tennis court this morning when an EMT sped down Old County Road, lights flashing, siren wailing. A few moments later a West Tisbury police cruiser followed, then another emergency vehicle. An accident up the road? This was unusual enough that Travvy stopped to listen to the sirens, but not so unusual that I thought much about it.

This weekend I’m looking after a dog who lives on the Tisbury–West Tisbury line, so after Trav and I got home from our walk, I left him on the deck with a peanut-butter-slathered marrow bone and headed down Old County to feed my charge. A police car and several other vehicles were clustered at the end of Skiff’s Lane. Unusual, yes, but again, not so unusual that I wondered what was going on, beyond hoping that no one I knew had had a heart attack.

It wasn’t till I returned home at the end of a busy day that a friend’s message on my machine gave me the news: someone had been shot and killed in my town. This was unusual. Big-time unusual.

From reports in the online editions of the Vineyard Gazette, the Boston Globe, and the Martha’s Vineyard Times, I understand the following: Kenneth Bloomquist, 64, broke into the house on Skiff’s Lane where his estranged wife, Cynthia, 63, was living, and shot her with the shotgun he had brought with him. She then shot him with a small-caliber pistol. He died. She survived, and is reported to be in fair condition after surgery at Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

According to some reports, Mr. Bloomquist cut the phone lines before he broke into the house, but Ms. Bloomquist did call 911 — perhaps on a cell?

All reports seem to agree that earlier this month Ms. Bloomquist sought, and was denied, a restraining order on her estranged husband. I know hindsight is 20-20, but I’ve heard this story so often over the years that I want to throw up. Perhaps a reporter will get hold of the judge, one Robert Kane, and ask him why he denied the request.

The Martha’s Vineyard Times seems to think that the big story was that no West Tisbury School students were involved in the incident. The only connection between the incident and the school is that Skiff’s Lane is within a mile of the school. The tennis court from which Travvy and I heard the sirens and watched the cars speed by is right next to the school. We weren’t involved either.

The Boston Globe managed to interview Mr. Bloomquist’s 94-year-old mother, who was shocked to learn of the shooting. She said her son didn’t want the separation from his wife and thought they had “the best marriage ever.” Somehow I don’t think that’s the whole story.

I want to know why Judge Kane denied the restraining order, and I hope Cynthia Bloomquist recovers fully from her injuries.

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New Blogger up the Road

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Now you don’t have to be on Facebook to follow the musings and photos that spring from the Tompost Pile. It’s flowering on WordPress. A wise and witty take on Vineyard life (etc.) by a musician, gardener, and sign painter who also has a way with words. Highly recommended!

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The Privilege of Pique

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

This is by way of a sequel to “Compromise,” in which I listed a bunch of things I don’t like about WUMB-FM, the public radio station I listen to when I’m listening to the radio, and then explained why I just renewed my membership. This puzzled some people. I’m not surprised, because it sometimes puzzles me. In fact, the comment posted by “notlobmusic” sounded like a voice in my own head, the one that I squelch every year when I decide to renew. He wrote, in part:

Why would anyone who dislikes current programming continue to give support? Its logic is akin to “I don’t like the two major party candidate, but as they are my only choices will vote for the lesser of two evils,” then wonders why the “liberal” president is behaving much like his neocon predecessor.

I have sat out quite a few elections, presidential and otherwise, and even gone unregistered-to-vote for a number of years, because I didn’t see any reason to lift my finger for either of the major-party candidates. Sometimes, mostly out of pique, I voted for a third-party candidate, not because I thought he’d make a good president but because he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning.

At this point I should add that I’ve spent nearly all my voting life in either D.C. or Massachusetts, where the lesser of two evils was 99% sure to win whether I voted for him or not. My pique and scrupulosity is a privilege. I know that. I also believe that a similar pique and scrupulosity is behind much of the Obama-bashing in the left of center. I’ll get back to that.

When I lived in D.C. from 1977 to 1985, I was immersed in the feminist movement and the lesbian community. I mean immersed: not only did I live there and volunteer there, I was lucky enough to work there: from 1981 to 1985 I was the book buyer for Lammas, D.C.’s feminist bookstore. For most of the country, the National Organization for Women (NOW) was synonymous with feminism, but I — like many, many of my friends and colleagues — held NOW in contempt. We saw national NOW up close and personal: the back-biting and back-stabbing and, more important, the lesbophobia and the focus on the job aspirations of class-privileged women. You wouldn’t have caught me dead contributing to NOW, attending a NOW event, or wearing a NOW T-shirt.

However. Big “however”: Thanks to the bookstore and my other activities, I knew many, many women who did not live in big coastal cities. For them, NOW was often the only feminist option within a hundred (or more) miles. We big-city girls could turn our backs on NOW; we had plenty of other options. Women elsewhere didn’t have that luxury. The stories I heard from those women suggested that NOW chapters outside major urban areas were more diverse and more radical in their feminism than the national organization. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Where the need is great and options are few, you can’t hold out for perfection. You roll up your sleeves, hold your nose if you have to, and get to work.

But in this digital age, as “notlobmusic” points out in his comment, anyone with access to a computer and a high-speed connection has lots of options. We can pick and choose our music sources so that we’re never exposed to anything we don’t like. Cool, right? We can pick a third-party presidential candidate who doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of winning, but at least we won’t have to compromise any of our principles. What’s not to like?

Plenty. The U.S. is an almost unimaginably diverse country. Martha’s Vineyard, the little patch of it that I know best, is amazingly diverse. So is West Tisbury, the even littler town I currently live in. From the outside they all — even the vast, sprawling U.S. of A. — can look monolithic. Trust me, they aren’t. The last thing any of them need is hundreds, thousands, millions, of citizens who are too scrupulous to compromise, or even to listen to people with different ideas and experiences.

Too many left-of-centrists think politics is all about signing this online petition, making an online donation to this or that cause, and only voting for candidates they agree with at least 95%. The far-right-of-centrists are a lot smarter than that. They’ve been a lot smarter for more than 30 years. And that, I’d suggest, is a big reason why the Democratic Party has been sliding rightward since the early 1980s.

Martha’s Vineyard, like I said, is an amazingly diverse place. Until you’ve been here a while, you may not realize just how diverse it is: most people don’t wear their politics and their passions on their sleeve. (You can sometimes, however, get a clue from the bumper stickers on their vehicles.) The longer you live here, the more people you’re connected to; the more opinions and perspectives you have to take into account if you decide to stick your neck out. This is one reason so much change is driven by people who haven’t been here very long, and also why so many of the long-timers who do stick their necks out are people who, like me, are relatively unencumbered by the web of relationships that is year-round Martha’s Vineyard.

We who live on Martha’s Vineyard, and in other small towns and neighborhoods where in the course of a day you have to get along with an array of people without pissing too many of them off unnecessarily, don’t have the privilege of pique. We know all sorts of scuzzy things about our friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers. They know scuzzy things about us. We associate with each other anyway.

Hell, sometimes we even vote for each other.

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Compromise

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

Tonight I renewed my membership in WUMB-FM. WUMB is a public radio station out of UMass.-Boston. It specializes in acoustic and roots music, and in giving radio voice to the Boston area’s vibrant music scene.

I’ve been a member since not-quite-forever. I have two WUMB T-shirts, two mugs, and a sticker on my car. I discovered WUMB around 1997, as Wintertide Coffeehouse neared the end of its long, slow death. In my life it played part of the role that Wintertide had been playing for the previous dozen years: It introduced me to the wonderful troubadours who passed through New England, and in many cases were based here.

What it couldn’t do was introduce me to the music being made right here on Martha’s Vineyard. To be sure, it’s a thrill to hear on WUMB a song by young Willy Mason, or a blues recording by the late Maynard Silva, but Willy and Maynard I already know. I couldn’t volunteer and hang out at ‘UMB either, it being in Boston and me being here. And I try not to wonder why I never hear the likes of Libana and Sweet Honey in the Rock and Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir on WUMB. Still, the station saved me from total withdrawal and total ignorance of the national and international roots music scene.

My membership renews in March, and every March for the last several, I’ve sworn that I wouldn’t renew. WUMB isn’t what it used to be. Year by year my favorite shows vanish from the schedule, like Afropop Worldwide, or are banished to time slots when I’m not awake, like Midnight Special. Once upon a time I started listening when I woke up on Saturday morning and didn’t stop till I fell sleep Sunday night.

Then Barbara Neely (yeah, that Barbara Neely — author of the Blanche mystery books and an altogether awesome interviewer) left as host of the Sunday night Commonwealth Journal public affairs show; her replacement was 90% affect and 10% substance, and it seemed she was only allowed to interview UMass. professors who had new books out.

Then Barnes Newberry was replaced as host of the wonderful Saturday morning Highway 61 Revisited show by a jerk who sounds as if his entire knowledge of the music comes off the liner notes. And the weekend schedule was further disrupted by moving Downeast Ceilidh from Saturday night, where it was a natural segue from Celtic Twilight, to Sunday night. And so on and on — Dick Pleasants and Dave Palmater are the only weekday deejays worth listening to, and Pleasants is ill with Parkinson’s and isn’t on the air much anymore.

So I’ve been listening to WUMB less and less as the years go by. I’m not, however, listening to other radio stations. I’m listening to my CDs. I’m listening to Pandora — last year I cut a big chunk out of my WUMB contribution and upgraded my Pandora to the ad-free version. More recently I started using iTunes in earnest. I learn about new performers from word of mouth or word of Facebook. Thanks to the Pit Stop, I’m getting reacquainted with what’s going on in my neck of the woods.

I was all set to let my membership lapse, but the semiannual fund drive is on and during Celtic Twilight this afternoon I slipped: my hand reached for the phone, I punched in the numbers, and I renewed. My reasoning, or rationalizing, went something like this: Yeah, the station seems to have lost its way. It doesn’t have its daggerboard in the water. I don’t listen very much anymore. But at least two-thirds of my CDs are by artists I heard for the first time on WUMB, and WUMB gives airplay to wonderful musicians who aren’t heard on many, or any, other stations. If I keep my membership up, I can keep going to the archives and listening to the live interviews and concerts with performers I like. And even on my limited budget $50 is not a huge amount of money.

If you’ve got a hunch that I’m not just talking about public radio here, you’re right.

 

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March Walk

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Susanna J. Sturgis

We “sprang forward” clock-wise (hyphen inserted to suggest that we aren’t going round in circles) in the wee hours of Sunday morning. What to do with the extra hour of daylight at the end of the afternoon? The day was bright, brisk, and breezy, perfect for walking. Aha! Why not visit a couple of my longtime favorite “secret places”?

Purple splotch = our range

What gave me that idea? I hadn’t been to either of them in at least a dozen years. From March 1992 through September 2001, I lived on State Road on the Tisbury side of the West Tisbury line. You could walk for hours in the woods back there without crossing your own trail, and if you crossed the main road you could walk for a few more hours and maybe even get lost. Rhodry and I spent a lot of time back there.

Horses changed our walking habits. After I got back into horses, and especially after I bought Allie in the fall of 1999, base camp was wherever Allie, not I, was living. And some trails that are easy for a person on foot are an obstacle course for a person on horseback. So Sunday Trav and I headed, in trusty Malvina Forester, for the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank property at Wompesket, at the top of the Merry Farm Road. One of my secret places was en route. Well, it’s not exactly secret, it’s right next to the road — but the road is a dead end, so people don’t find it accidentally.

Pet graveyard?

When I first came upon this, two L.L. Bean boots protruded, soles up, from the stones on the right. It cracked me up. I have no idea what the spoons signify: I would love to know who established this little cemetery, who maintains it, and who’s buried there. Here’s a close-up of the tombstone on the left. It says:

R I P
D.H.S.
Bernie’d in his prime

A Facebook conversation Sunday night elicited the information that someone named Bernie who worked or works for the Steamship Authority might live back there, but that’s all I know — and it’s more than I knew when Rhodry and I first passed this way.

Trav, Malvina, and I continued up the road, only to discover that there’s no place to park a car at the Wompesket trailhead. I knew that, but in the old days, I always arrived on foot, so it didn’t register. It dawned on me that there are many places on Martha’s Vineyard that I can get to on foot or horseback but have no idea how to reach by car. I did know how to find the Ripley’s Field trailhead, which provides access to this general area from the Lambert’s Cove Road side, so thither we repaired.

Windmill at Ripley's Field

Ripley’s Field is currently carpeted by dozens, maybe hundreds, of baby pine trees. Possibly they are plotting to reclaim this gently rolling little meadow for the surrounding woods? When I used to pass this way regularly, the moribund remnants of a wind-driven pump stood off to one corner. Now there’s a windmill merrily spinning above it. Whether it’s pumping water I don’t know.

Sign on the way to the former Williams farmhouse

From there we struck out along the fenceline that marks Famous Singer’s property and finally hit the Red Coat Hill path, which looks a lot more like a (dirt) road than it did a dozen years ago. Following it, we came to the placid little tree-encompassed pond, and went on to what I first heard described as “Mrs. Williams’s place.” The sign that read “R. D. Williams” (IIRC — I may have the middle initial wrong) is gone. The farmhouse, one of the most beautifully sited dwellings I’ve ever seen, is still there. I cut right, trespassing across the little field. The path I used to take, along the old stone wall, was overgrown with brambles. This was hard going; maybe it was time to turn back?

Aha! After a little twisting and turning we came to a footpath clearer than anything I remember. It was heading in the right direction, toward the Hoft/Alisio farm, so we followed it. The Nature Conservancy acquired the property quite a few years ago, after my regular trespasses came to an end. Now my passage was legitimated by a well-maintained trail, the occasional sign, and a plea to keep dogs under control to avoid disturbing the wildlife.

This was the view when we emerged from the woods and climbed a rise in the field.

Old barn, Alisio/Hoft farm

The dam

We cut clockwise around the field, then followed the high thicket hedge till it opened up to allow passage to the dam. I remember when I first discovered this place. Keep in mind that I was trespassing; I wasn’t supposed to be there, and it was easy to imagine that no one else had been there for decades, at least no one else who wasn’t supposed to be there. The dam is still there. Water comes sluicing through, singing and sparkling, from Black Water Pond just above, heading through the trees toward Duarte’s Pond. Now as then, a board crosses the stream so you can bounce across the water to the path on the other side.

But what made the place magical for me was the numbers written in smooth stones set in concrete: 1902. Was this the year the dam was built, and the numbers the builder(s) way of signing his work? The builder must have set those stones for the eyes of future sojourners, and here I was, many decades later, unimagined by the builder but there to appreciate what he, or they, had created.

On this trip, 110 years later, my breath caught. The 0 had disintegrated or been smashed by something. The numbers were no longer perfectly formed. You can’t go home again, I thought — and yet I was glad I had come back, glad the place was still there, glad I was still around to come back to it.

Trav and I headed back to where Malvina Forester waited at the Ripley’s Field trailhead. I love this place, with all its mysteries and secret wonders and history waiting to be discovered. I remembered the lines that have been favorites of mine since Robert F. Kennedy was killed in 1968:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

They are the words of an old Ulysses (Odysseus) looking back at his life, put in his mouth by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, when the poet was still a very young man.

Much is taken, and much abides; and here we are.

My Fellow Traveller

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