Bill Donovan: Beyond the Cascades12:00AM / Thursday, September 18, 2003
 | | Beyond the beautiful bubbling Cascades, an intriguing trail awaits |
Shaded by tall forest, running alongside a beautiful brook, the end of each new turn hidden around a knoll or behind a rock, the path through The Cascades in North Adams reminded me of the section of the Appalachian Trail a short way across the opposite side of the Hoosac River Valley.
In the middle of a hot August afternoon I had started out in The Cascades and then decided to climb past the waterfall. I had never been through the woods past The Cascades. There was a clear trail; however, it soon disappeared, blending into the woods about a mile past the waterfall. It was such a nice day I just kept picking my way through the woods. I was pretty sure I'd emerge along the upper stretches of Reservoir Road just below the base of the Mt. Greylock State Reservation. I just didn't know exactly where.
The first time I came out of the woods, it was after I had crossed the Cascade Brook and ended up looking up at a house, a back yard and a dog. I really didn't want to go through someone's property, especially when that property was inhabited by a not too friendly dog. I returned across the brook and headed up a gentle hillside into the woods. With not even a hint of a visible path to follow, I tried my best to just keep a straight line up the gradual slope. I kept a good pace until the dog stopped barking. Then I slowed down some, hoping to see a path of some kind.
Looking ahead and around myself as I walked, I still hadn't found any path at all after about half an hour. All at once a stone wall appeared amid the tree roots and forest debris. It was a mortarless wall, the stones having been the first harvest of what must have once been cleared and tilled land. It hadn't been an afterthought or a garden ornament. It was a substantial wall.
I started following the wall where it would take me, assuming that it would eventually intersect with another wall or a path. The wall continued for a good distance. As I picked my way through the trees and brush that had grown up around it, I imagined the hours and hours of backbreaking labor under the hot sun that was expended in its building. The stones that weren't plucked right off the sod when the trees were felled were handled after the land was tilled. Each single stone was picked up out of the warm brown dirt and dumped on a stone boat. The stone boat, hitched to a farm horse, was muscled over towards the last finished section of the wall. The stones were handled, once more one by one, until they were neatly arranged into a new section of wall.
After awhile, my original hunch proved correct. The wall led down an easy incline to a spot in the woods that had the feel of once having been a clearing. Another stone wall intersected the wall I was following, this wall being even taller and wider. This new wall traveled back up the slope, more or less at a right angle away from the direction I had been traveling.
As I walked in the middle of this once cleared area I could feel that it had long ago been a central and important area. I didn't see a foundation or any remnants of fruit trees, so I couldn't tell if it had been a home site or a livestock pen or even the central point of an orchard or large tilled field, but it had served a purpose. I could feel it.
Thicker forest undergrowth, bushes, vines and small trees surrounded me as I began to step slowly down the slope. But now I felt as if I was walking along a path or a way that had been used before. There was no visible path, but I could tell where to walk. I knew someone had used this way before because it just made sense.
Eventually, I found the brook again and this time immediately saw an indentation of an actual visible path in the leaf cover on the other side. I crossed and as soon as I climbed up the bank on the opposite side I saw fluttering orange surveyor's ribbons leading off the path. Guessing correctly that someone had tied them as a reminder, I followed them out onto Reservoir Road.
Some previous wanderer had tied orange surveyor ribbons to three branches that marked the way through the brush up and out to Reservoir Road. Popping up by a culvert like a curious raccoon, I stepped from the cool shadows of the woods to the suddenness of the bright late afternoon sunlight, finished the last of my water and started to run back towards downtown North Adams. |
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