Cold Brook

Sometimes you have to play out a hunch. Late afternoon in March ... not the best time to go into the woods, maybe, with a gale blowing in, predicted as rain turning to snow. But it was still light out, and I figured I couldn't get too lost, following a stream. I could always turn back. I'd driven the hard road a thousand times, always taking note, of what looked like a way in. One path, clearly blocked, intentionally, steep as hell, with the look of "keep out". Well, I would keep out, at least until I understood why they'd taken pains to destroy the old road. I set my sights further on, where another hardly noticeable footpath, still seemed viable. I'd done my map study. I knew who'd claimed ownership: a conservation group, with the stated aim of protecting a watershed. Not advertising it, exactly, they were now calling it "wilderness" with few details and no information about access. I felt a little vulnerable, hiking the shoulder of a state highway, for the first leg, while fast cars whizzed around the bend. I was keen to disappear, as soon as I was able. Not a very nice hike, at first. A climb requiring frequent stops, to catch my breath, and gaze down to gauge my progress, and height gained, as the highway began to drop below the trees, and the sound of it, lessen. Huge water bars had been build in, to discourage any type of all terrain vehicle, and literally, I had to climb up and down trenches for a half hour, to make any headway, at all. With the snow so recently gone, the vague hollows of abandoned logging road were just barely alive with Christmas fern, reemerging, and grasses, and saplings no one was tasked to cut. I took note of a few sparse strands of pink surveyors tape, appearing randomly attached to almost nothing. No human boot prints, only deer scat, and the clumsy leftovers of what must have been moose travel, fairly recent.I wasn't sure, but I always veered right, to stay within range of the brook, though I couldn't see it. Finally, after going pretty hard uphill for a while, things leveled out, sort of. I had, suddenly, a hope I'd lift out of the ravine, soon, or something would change. And it did. I began to notice the hemlocks, like a line of defense, which I knew, instinctively would mean the wild water was somewhere in the area. A few mossed over stumps, half rotten, marked the beginning of the decline. I passed them, then turned to look back at them, knowing they could lead me out, if I did get turned around somehow. I try to memorize a few things, where my going deviates, and changes are about to occur. My deer hunter friends, I thought to myself, must observe the same rituals. There's no other way, to go in blind, beyond what you know. I would never consider myself at the level of the native ridgerunners of Vermont, and yet, I'd say, I've absorbed a few things, mostly intuitive, by walking with them. It was, none-the-less, a shock to be dropped down into the stream, without much warning, pretty much at the apex of some incredible waterfalls I felt a chill raise up in my spine, as I first gazed upon the scene. I knew photos could hardly do it justice, or capture anything of the majesty of the place, yet always, I am game to try. Maybe to focus my attention away from the dangers of climbing over slimy rock ledges, where the precipices are littered with crazy log forms and foot traps, and crevices that have been loosely filled with debris. The spirits that guard such caverns are formidable, and ancient. What has grown there, has grown into such solidity, within utter fluidity, that it baffles the senses. I did my best, looking forward resolutely, as I peered into a kingdom of untamable power, and force. That idea that water just keeps pouring out of enormous, hidden aquifers here, is beyond reckoning. That we live by that water often loses the fact that we also live, for the water. Our actual forays into worlds that have preceded us by centuries, that operate outside our laws, and gestures of environmentalism, continue to generate humility & awe. I suppose those of us who muck about on properties properly called "the back 40" will forever be trying to express what we've experienced, in terms of what may be leaving us, and what can never, truly, be found. I have no need, personally, to conquer Denali. I'd rather make a dumb decision to follow a hunch a few miles from home. And come back, red-cheeked, enamored, and chastened.