Pathway's End

After speaking with our friendly neighbor on our last day camping I learned of a beaver pond accessible from our campsite. The name of our site, Sunny Landing, perplexed us for days as we could not untease the use of the term "landing" for a site completely untouched by water. But the discovery of the beaver pond cleared the way for a logical etymology of our place in the woods.

Walking through the small meadow adjacent to our tent site, where the sun filtered through young-growth trees to offer warmth on the cooler mountain days, I trampled on over to the path now over grown in the far corner. Following the pathway, now becoming less covered with high grass and discarded tree branches to reveal the sandy bottom underneath, I made my way to what I thought to a clearing at its end. Slowly, the sound of multiple bullfrogs began to reach my ears and then, I arrived at my destination, a magnificently large beaver pond, half marsh and half freshwater. Once stately trees broke up the stillness of the pond surface, now drowned to become lonely yet still majestic stumps.

Up until this point the only beavers I had come across were in our own "beaver pond" known as Paradise Pond at Smith College. Beavers have always been a favorite animal of mine, no pun intended, perhaps starting in the zoo scene in Lady and the Tramp. In any event, no beavers were to be had at my morning visit that day in July, but the stillness and discovery still registered a warmth that I look forward to finding again on our journeys. Walking down a path in the woods, to its end, and discovering where it leads, albeit Frost-ean, is an extraordinary happening.

Forest Roads

After 3 hours of searching out the most comfortable and beautiful campsite possible, J and I came across a small dispersed campsite near Ripton, VT at the deadend of a tree-covered forest road. Forest roads are different from regular dirt roads in a couple ways: first off, they are less driven upon and often serve as pedestrian trails more often then vehicle runways; secondly they are hard to traverse by car, with large gaping holes in the dirt floor and steep shoulders down to rock encrusted rivers and creeks; thirdly they are hence the antithesis of anonymous, if you see a being on the road, whether human or animal, eye-contact most certainly is made and hands waved.

As our little slice of a forest road was on the side of a mountain (think our childhood fantasy My Side of the Mountain) clouds rolled by, both rain-bearing and innocent, often close enough to reach out and touch. The road was also the scene of evening walks after dinner to explore the woods together, afternoon drives up steep pathways, and morning expeditions to photograph and lose myself.

One of these mornings, our last morning camping, I met Nola, our neighbor, who we had seen other mornings walking her dogs with friends. She walked like an older farmer, perhaps from years of cross country runs, and had a warm smile with a melancholy tint. She told me of the changes seen in the forest over the years she has lived there, and explained of her feeling of the world pushing in on their little corner of wilderness. Escaping the tri-state area 20 or so years ago, she came to Vermont to find a simpler life and perhaps became, according to my own semi-touristic perspective, a steward of the forest life-ways. Fighting rifle ranges, logging, and the tossing of Budweiser cans, she doggedly keeps on with the important work one person can do to protect the small environmental oases we are lucky enough to visit. Shaking my hand, she invited us back and thanked us for being the kind of campers so welcome in the neighborhood. The friendliness of a stranger on the road put me on a natural high for hours.

You can easily get lost in the forest, each road looking a bit the same. J and I couldn't find our campsite our first morning there, after returning with supplies from town. But perhaps that isn't such a bad thing after all. For being off the map, you can trace your own swath of land and open your thoughts to creativity and purpose, free from the markings of media and "the grid."