Alexandersmap

    Category: Travel

    • A Long Walk on the Erie Canal

      Leaving on a Sunday night for a business trip is never fun, but this week I tried to keep it in perspective.  Time away from home sucks, but time seeing new things usually tempers that a bit.  I got to the hotel in time to watch game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals, celebrated a Bruins win and prepped for the week ahead.  Monday would be a long day of customer-facing meetings, and by the end of the day I was ready to get outside and move.  My hotel was in Bushnell’s Basin, an especially lovely part of Perinton, New York.  A large part of the charm is the Erie Canal running through.  The tow paths have been reclaimed as walking paths, akin to a rail trail but with the benefit of a waterway on one side of you for the entire journey.

      A quick five minute walk from the hotel is Richardson’s Tavern, built in 1818 and now the oldest original canal house left on the Erie Canal.  I’ve written about it previously.  Just across the single lane Marsh Road Bridge is the Erie Canal Heritage Trail.  The bridge was built in 1912 but was just completely renovated.  It was the first time I was able to cross it to walk the trail so I made the most of it.

      The great thing about the Erie Canal is that it’s still a functioning transportation corridor.  Where once it was barges full of commerce coming from the Great Lakes to the Hudson River, today it’s largely pleasure boats making their way from point-to-point.  I thought it would have been a great place to row, with long straightaways and a convenient bike path for coaches barking instructions.  Funny how I always come back to rowing when I see the right body of water…  but today I was walking, and my goal was a quick five miles before dinner.  From the bridge I walked 2 1/2 miles towards Pittsford, turned around and walked back.

      Walking the trail, I passed walkers, joggers and bicyclers.  A highlight was watching two boats cruising the canal.  People wave to boats, and boaters wave back.  The world would be a better place if everyone else would follow their example.  This stretch of the Erie Canal is best known for a particularly challenging engineering project that had to happen to support the canal traveling through.  The Irondodequoit Creek ran perpendicularly 70 feet below the path of the proposed canal.  So James Geddes, the assistant engineer for the Erie Canal, designed the Great Embankment, a mile long, 7-story pile of rock and fill from the canal, with a 245 foot culvert to channel the creek they were building over.  This was the early 1800’s mind you, so digging and dumping required a significant labor force.  The embankment was completed in 1822.

      Back in Bushnell’s Basin after my walk, I took a right turn and headed for a new brewery that opened last year.  Named Seven Stories after the height of the Great Embankment and for the seven forms of storytelling, this brewery had great beer and better names for it.  They’re right along the canal, and I replaced my burned calories with a pint and a couple of 5 ounce tasters.  Seven Stories will be on my regular rotation on trips to the Rochester area.

      A lovely evening walking along the Erie Canal certainly beat eating at the hotel bar and watching television.  Getting out and seeing the world in earnest is my goal.  The Erie Canal Heritage Trail, paved in stone dust and lined in stretches with bollards for tying down barges once upon a time, was a lovely place to spend the final hours of Monday sunlight.

    • Revisiting Pabos

      My breakfast meeting was running late, so I decided to go see my Basque buddy Pabos again. After all, he died right down the street. We’re kindred spirits, Pabos and I, 400 years apart. I first spotted him a little over a year ago when I was driving to an appointment. His pyramid-shaped monument immediately caught my eye and I went back after the meeting to investigate. You can read about that encounter here. Pabos remains one of my favorite posts, partly for the randomness of finding him in the first place, but partly because I admire the explorer he was.

      So this morning I check out of the hotel, get in the car and I get the text message that my meeting is delayed. I’d been thinking about a drive-by at the monument yesterday so I decided to do it with my newfound time. I swung by to say hello – it’s only a few minutes from every customer in the Victor area – and gave Pabos a nod. Back at Denny’s waiting for my breakfast meeting to show up I re-read my original post, saw the date Pabos died and did a double-take. June 10, 1618. No wonder I was thinking about him yesterday.

    • Sunset

      Friday evening I had the opportunity to take a cruise on Big Island Pond, a pristine and beautiful lake in Atkinson, Hampstead and Derry, New Hampshire.  There’s a ritual that is both familiar to me and yet still new.  Those who live there with boats tend to cluster out in a certain spot at a certain time of day to watch the sun drop below the horizon.  Sunsets and water do go well together, and this one was perfect.  And so I participated in yet another sunset ritual.  I recalled another time last summer when I was in a spot very close to where I was, watching the sunset on the same boat with a couple of friends, Dan and Dave, when Dan got a call from his mother saying his father had fallen down.  We abandoned the sunset for service, and the three of us drove over to his mother’s house to help.  His father passed away a couple of weeks later, leaving a remarkable legacy behind him.

      Over the last 18 months I’ve sought out sunsets in faraway places and right back here at home.  Joining the party on Mallory Square in Key West, and making our own party on a pontoon boat in New Hampshire; wrapping up the day in assorted faraway places from Sagres on the edge of continental Europe to Buffalo, on the edge of Western New York.  From 25,000 feet above New Brunswick back to sea level on Buzzards Bay.  I’m a shameless seeker of sunsets, and celebrate the moment for all that it represents.

      Last night I was wrapping up a day of yard work and watched the bright, last rays of the sun shining horizontally through the woods, illuminating the western trunks with a remarkable glow.  I saw deep in the woods a bright red pole rising out of the forest that I’d never seen before in twenty years looking back into these woods.  It was the bark of a white pine tree glowing in the setting sun with a red brilliance I’d never realized before.  I was struck by the uniqueness of the moment and almost walked out into the woods to visit the tree before reason took over and I remained where I was.

      This morning I finished reading Walking, by Henry David Thoreau.  It was a quick but lovely read, based on a lecture that he’d done several times before publishing it.  I was jolted in the final paragraphs when Thoreau described a scene very similar to what I had experienced last night:

      “We had a remarkable sunset one day last November.  I was walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before setting, after a cold, gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon, and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon….  while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams.  It was such a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of that meadow.  When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever, an infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was more glorious still.” 

      “…We walked in so pure and bright a light, gliding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it.  The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

      So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bankside in autumn.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walking

      It isn’t lost on me that I’ve been drawn to Thoreau at this stage of my life.  It may be that I’m just now refocusing on the world around me, but I don’t believe that’s the case.  I think he’s just been waiting for another person to dance with, and I’ve indicated a readiness to tango.  His analogy of stepping into heaven to the brightest beams of a sunset isn’t uniquely his, but his phrasing is lovely.  Some day we’ll all catch our final sunset, and reflect on the life we’re leaving for whatever lies beyond the horizon.  But please, not today.

    • Deep Greens and Blues

      “And as the moon rises he sits by his fire, thinking about women and glasses of beer.” – James Taylor, Sweet Baby James

      The weekend begins soon, but I know its abbreviated.  I’ll be driving west Sunday to Rochester, New York for an early start Monday morning.  And so it goes.  The trip on I-90 is a familiar one, and each season brings its own delights and challenges.  June brings tourists, exploding bugs on the windshield and orange cones.  But also a lovely green carpet on the Berkshires.

      The Berkshires make me think of Sweet Baby James.  If Boston has Dirty Water and Shipping Up to Boston, the Mass Turnpike has Sweet Baby James.  Its a song that I’ve listened to countless times, but it brings back memories of being a college kid driving I-90 to Ontario, Syracuse and Indianapolis for regattas.  Driving back is when the song resonates, as the song is about longing for what you’ve left behind to do what you need to do.  Both a song for the restless spirits in the world and a lovely lullaby I used to sing to my kids to get them to fall asleep many moons ago.

      “Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose, won’t you let me go down in my dreams?  And rock-a-bye sweet baby James.”

      In winter I’ve put this song right after I cross the border from New York into Massachusetts and see the mountains rise up ahead of me.  The lyrics offer an appropriate soundtrack and after many days away from home I’m usually very ready to get back.  And so the song carries me there…

      “Now the first of December was covered with snow
      and so was the turnpike from Stockbridge to Boston
      Though the Berkshires seemed dreamlike on account of that frosting
      with ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go”

      My daughter posted something online stating her favorite colors are blue and forest green.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and somewhere along the way those lullaby’s resonated for her as well.  James, with an assist from me, has left his mark on another generation.  And so it continues.

      “There’s a song that they sing when they take to the highway
      a song that they sing when they take to the sea
      a song that they sing of their home in the sky, maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
      but singing works just fine for me”

    • Two Henry’s

      “Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant….  Then recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages.” – Henry David Thoreau quoting Arnold Henry Guyot, Walking

      Infante D. Henrique, better known as Henry the Navigator, was born in 1394 and died in 1460. Henry, with political clout from his relationship with his brother the King of Portugal and monetary clout from The Order of Christ, inspired the Age of Discovery 500 years ago.  The Portuguese would go on to discover Madeira 600 years ago this year, then the Azores, and further down the coast of Africa during his lifetime, and inspire like voyages by Christopher Columbus and others well after his death.  I came across a statue of Henry the Navigator in Sagres, Portugal last year when I was exploring the area.  The statue faces towards Madeira and the coast of Africa; Henry’s focus half a millennium ago.

      No place in continental Europe makes you feel like you’re on the shore of an unknown ocean more than the western coast of Portugal.  Of course, I’d flown over that ocean to get to Portugal, but this was a time when pirates were a common threat for coastal communities and the thought of sailing beyond the horizon was likely terrifying for most.  It wasn’t until larger sailing vessels were built that the Portuguese and later other European explorers would take the leap into the unknown.

      There was a dark side to exploration, as local populations were exploited, enslaved, murdered or exposed to lethal diseases for the first time.  Progress for some is regression or annihilation for others.  The spirit of exploration and discovery is on the face admirable, and I like to think I carry some of that spirit within me, just as Thoreau did.  Standing on the edge of a hundred foot cliff with breaking waves reaching up halfway to welcome me, one catches the spirit of those words; Arrived at the Atlantic, he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean.  This would give any sane person pause.  But the courage to move on anyway opened up an entire world for these Portuguese explorers.

      I have Scottish and English blood in my veins, but I also have Portuguese blood.  I like to think that exploration and adventure are a part of my DNA.  And while my relative low risk exploration of the coast of Portugal pales in comparison to the sailors of centuries past, the serve to expand my perspective on the original European explorers who first set sight on America.  As visiting Portugal opened up my perspective on where these souls came from, visiting the Santa Maria replica gave me a greater appreciation for just how small those Nau’s were.  On a vast, unknown ocean, with no previous knowledge of currents and at the whim of the weather, courage was only part of what these explorers needed.  They also needed luck.

      Henry David Thoreau quoted Guyot even as he disagreed with many of his theories.  Thoreau was an explorer whose vehicle of choice were his feet.  I think he would have been fascinated with the fisherman’s trails, the stunning Rota Vicentina, that wind along the coast from Sagres north. Hiking this trail was a highlight for me, and I wish I’d had more time to fully explore the region.

      Thoreau writes of the magic of exploration, and his tendency to head southwest in his journeys away from home.  There is no point further Southwest in Portugal than Cape of St. Vincent and it’s distinctive lighthouse. Had Thoreau stood on the cliffs, as I imagine Henry the Navigator once did and I had the opportunity to do in my own humble way, I think he might have looked westward and recalled his own words, appropriate for this extraordinary place:  “We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.  The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions.”  That spirit seems as true today as it was in 1860 or in 1460.

    • Santa Maria

      While having a lunch in Newburyport I had the opportunity to check out a replica of the Santa Maria docked for a short stay in town.  The original famously sailed for America in 1492 with Christopher Columbus.  This one sailed to America for a 225th anniversary tour this spring.  There are plenty of differences between the original and the replica, starting with the additions of steel, fiberglass and electronics.  But the dimensions are accurate, and you got a good sense for what the sailors on board were dealing with.

      A few observations from walking around onboard.  First, a 58 foot square-rigged sailing vessel seemed too small for the 45 members of the crew.  Cramped quarters, frequent exposure to the elements, sleeping on wool rolls on a hard, sloped deck, and eating sponge cake washed down with red wine was not a recipe for optimal living.  Throw in hygiene issues, not the least of which was serious body odor, and health concerns ranging from scurvy to lice and it was clearly not a place I would have opted for.

      The Santa Maria, called a Nau in Spain but known as a Carrack in the rest of the world, was a three masted, square-rigged ship weighing between 80 and 150 tons, which stood high about the breaking waves.  The ship’s large hold made it attractive for someone like Christopher Columbus, who made the Santa Maria his flagship.  The raised quarterdeck allowed the captain and midshipmen to command the ship with good sight lines fore and aft.  Striking to me was just how much of a pitch the deck had.  Good for quickly shedding sea water from heavy wave action or rainwater, but standing on it in rough weather must have been tricky.

      The original Santa Maria didn’t survive the trip to America and back, running aground when Columbus and the captain both slept while a cabin boy steered the ship onto a sandbar.  Steering on the Santa Maria was done with a whipstaff, which was a vertical pole connected to the tiller.  The limitation with a whipstaff was that you could only adjust a maximum of about 15 degrees in either direction because a pole stuck through the quarterdeck to the tiller just didn’t allow for more range.  Ships wheels wouldn’t become standard on sailing ships for another two hundred years.  So the cabin boy who was steering wasn’t exactly set up for success.  Even though the ship never made it back to Spain, it remains one of the most familiar ship names in America (Show me a kid who doesn’t know Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria!).  I do hope this one has a longer lifespan and none of the navigational issues of its namesake.

      Columbus has lost his luster as a heroic figure, but there’s no doubting the courage of the crew for sailing on a ship this small, with two even smaller ships, to explore the unknown.  I think that’s why there’s still such a fascination with the three ships, and this one in particular.

    • The Merrimack River Frontier

      Yesterday I dove deep into the Cape Cod section of John Seller’s Mapp of New England.  Today I’m looking at another fascinating section – the border between “civilization” and the “wilderness’.  I’ve written before about place names like World’s End Pond in Salem, New Hampshire.  Nothing hammers that home like seeing a map from 1675 showing the Merrimack River towns of Haverhill (“Haveril“), Billerica and Chelmsford (“Chensford“) Massachusetts as the frontier towns they were at the time.  North of the Merrimack River is wilderness in this map, South are the growing settlements of Massachusetts.  The river serves a critical role for settlers and Native Americans alike as both transportation and a border.  Settlements at this time were largely along the rivers and their tributaries, the Concord and Nashua Rivers.

      That bend in the Merrimack River northward was a critical point in the understanding of this land.  Isolated outposts like Billerica, Groton and Lancaster represented the outer reaches of people like us.  The map shows Lake Winnipesaukee and its many islands, so there was clearly knowledge in 1675 of what lay beyond, but it remained for all intents and purposes a vast, dangerous wilderness for another century until the fortunes of war, attrition in the Native American population and the shear mass of settlers from Europe turned the tide.

      It’s no surprise that the most notable Indian raids of the day were happening along the frontier.  York, Haverhill, Andover, Billerica, Chelmsford, and Groton all suffered Indian raids during the series of wars between the French and British.  Further west Brookfield and Deerfield had similar raids.  These frontier towns were dangerous places, and the settlers there would rarely venture out to tend their fields unarmed.  Towns like Haverhill were building fortifications and the brick 1697 Dustin Garrison for a measure of protection in the years spanning King Williams War and Queen Anne’s War.

      There were a series of conflicts between the English settlers and the Native American population that impacted northern New England.  In all cases the underlying conflict between the expansion of English settlements and the encroachment on the Native American population was a key factor.  French influence on the Native American tribes also contributed significantly in many of the raids in Merrimack River Valley from 1689 to 1713 as raiders were offered rewards for scalps and prisoners.  Living in this area for most of my life I see many reminders of that time in our history, and I always glance over at World’s End Pond and the Duston Garrison whenever I pass either.  Duston’s wife Hannah was famously kidnapped during King William’s War, her baby and many neighbors killed, marched through the town I live in by Abenaki warriors, and later escaped back down the Merrimack River on one of those raids.

      Wars Impacting Northern New England in the Early Colonial Period:

      • King Philip’s War 1675-1678 (Northeast Coast Campaign vs. Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • King William’s War 1689 – 1697 (French and Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • Queen Anne’s War 1702–1713 (French and Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • Dummer’s War 1722-1726 (Wabanaki Confederacy)
      • French and Indian War 1754 – 1763 (French and Mohican, Abenaki, Iroquois and other tribal alliances)

      So Seller’s Mapp of New England was a living, breathing document that was strategically important to the British and by extension the English settlers living in New England.  If matters were largely settled with the Native American population in the Southern New England areas by 1675, they were anything but settled in Northern New England.  Northern Massachusetts, including what is now coastal Maine and New Hampshire were the literally on edge, looking north and west for raiders.  That they would ultimately overpower the Native American population and New France settlements was not a foregone conclusion at the time.  Another reason it completely fascinates me.

    • Where the Narrows Open Out

      Looking at John Sellers 1675 “Mapp of New England” I’m drawn to the place names on Cape Cod. “Yermoth“, Sandwich and Pocasset on the Cape, and the islands of “Martina Vineyard” and “Nantuket“. As with the entire map things are way out of scale, but still a fascinating snapshot of place in 1675 Cape Cod.  The other unique thing about Sellers’ map is that he turns New England on its side, offering a new perspective on the familiar shapes.

      The Pocasset Wampanoag were no strangers to Buzzards Bay, but they lived in the area that is now Tiverton, Rhode Island up to Fall River, Massachusetts and surrounding towns. If a place were going to be named Pocasset wouldn’t it be Tiverton or Fairhaven or some other place on that side of the bay? So how did this little corner of Cape Cod become known as Pocasset?

      The answer might lie in the word itself. “Pocasset” and some similar Algonquin names like “Pochassuck” and “Paugusset” all mean “the place where the narrows open out”. And that certainly applies to this part of Buzzards Bay. For the English settlers choosing Pocasset was likely easier than Pochassuck.  I can imagine the middle school jokes at neighboring towns if they’d gone that route.

      This place was likely visited by the Pocasset often as they traded with the Pilgrims at the Aptucxet Trading Post nearby. In talking about the land and the bay around them it’s probable that’s how the area was described as the bay opens up right after the point of Wings Neck. On the map Pocasset encompasses what is now Falmouth. Given the scale of the map it could be a minor point, or perhaps the entire stretch from Wings Neck to Woods Hole was considered the place where the narrows open out.

      That description fits the mind as well. Looking at old maps, reading books, and traveling to new places opens up my own once narrower mind. I break free of the daily routine and see things in a new way. So having a home away from home in Pocasset is more appropriate than I first thought.

    • The Rose Standish

      A little piece of historical trivia is the name of the very first ship to travel through the Cape Cod Canal when it opened on July 29, 1914.  Following the Jeopardy answering with a question format, What is the S.S. Rose Standish?  And the ship was the perfect choice to be first.

      Rose Standish was the first wife of Captain Myles Standish.  She was one of many who died in 1620 during the first winter after the Pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Myles Standish would explore the Manomet and Scusset Rivers three years later considering a canal.  That canal would finally be completed almost three hundred years later with great fanfare, with a future President of the United States, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, in attendance.

      That first ship, the S.S. Rose Standish, was a coastal passenger vessel built just two years earlier in 1912 and operated by the Nantasket Beach Steamboat Company of Boston.  On that July day in 1914, she led a parade of ships through the canal.  The celebratory mood was likely tempered by news breaking about events the previous day, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, marking the beginning of World War One.  Almost exactly four years after the canal opened that war would impact the canal itself when a German U-Boat surfaced off of Orleans and fired on a tug towing barges.  That prompted the United States Army Corps of Engineers to take over the struggling private Cape Cod Canal so ships wouldn’t have to take the more dangerous route around the cape.

      The S.S. Rose Standish would be in service into the 1930’s.  There’s a great picture from 1930 of her docked in Boston Harbor, right about when the Cape Cod Canal was being widened to its current 480 feet.  She likely outlived many of the people who witnessed that first trip up the canal 16 years before.  History is full of related twists and turns, and this story offers a good example with Rose Standish, one of the first pilgrims, a young Franklin D Roosevelt and a German U-Boat all playing a part in the same story.

    • Talking Turkey

      This morning I went for a 3 1/2 mile walk and came across a large tom turkey standing on the side of the road. A little later in my walk I saw another turkey, this time a hen, about twenty feet up in a tree. Two turkeys in 3 1/2 miles isn’t exactly extraordinary nowadays in New England, but I was on the Cape and you don’t think of turkeys and Cape Cod. But like everywhere else in New England the turkey population has exploded.

      When I was a kid running around in the woods of various towns in Middlesex County, Massachusetts I never saw a wild turkey. The first wild turkeys I ever saw were in South Kent, Connecticut in 1993. I remember it because it was a unique experience at the time. But Litchfield County is where you might expect to see wild turkey. It’s also where I saw my first coyote in the wild. Now you can see turkey almost anywhere.

      This exponential turkey population growth took place while we (most of us anyway) weren’t paying attention. Back in maybe 2007-2008 I recall seeing a few here and there but it was still a novel experience. Today in Southern New Hampshire it’s novel if I go a day without seeing or hearing one. There are an estimated 40,000+ turkey in New Hampshire today, and an estimated 200,000+ in New England.

      It wasn’t always this way. When Europeans first settled in New England they started clearing the land for farms. This destroyed the habitat of the wild animals that lived there, and those who didn’t die out from lack of habitat were eliminated through hunting. Turkey, deer, pigeons, wolves, bear, and countless other animals suffered the same fate. By 1850 turkey were largely extinct in New England.

      Efforts to re-introduce turkeys began in the 1930’s, first with releasing domesticated turkey into the wild. When that failed wild turkey were caught in Upstate New York and released in New England states. Over time those turkey reproduced and the population growth began to accelerate. One Tom can mate with many hens, which can hatch 6-12 eggs. With few predators it’s easy to see why the population exploded. Today they’re seemingly everywhere, including a little peninsula jutting out into Buzzards Bay.