Well-traveled

Seems like everyone's been on the road lately--Bob and Jackie no sooner get back from their Greek excursion than Bob gears up to bicycle from Canton to Provincetown. Martha and David are recovering nicely from recent travels in the Northwest. I'm more of a home body, Thoreau's type, who famously said "I have traveled widely--in Concord."

I clock a lot of miles on evening strolls down the Red Sandstone Trail behind my house on the Raquette River. The route doesn't change much, but the seasons do. The ancient bones of the North Country show, sand and sandstone laid down by the Cambrian Sea, stone so old it contains no fossils large enough to see. The woods change--mostly oak along one stretch, mixed maple and struggling beech along another, cool pine shade farther down on Sugar Island.

At one end is Hannawa Falls, called by the original namers "nihanwate," laughing waters. My favorite stop is a shaded outcrop overhanging the falls at such a perilous angle, some day the water will have the last laugh. At the other end you can see the village of Potsdam downriver, the pilings of the old narrow gauge rail line leading to Oak Island, used to transport salmon-hued loaves of fresh-cut stone from the upstream quarries. The river is dotted with cairns of stone, where the log drivers anchored their booms deep in the 19th century. It's not wilderness, but a place like many in the North Country, where people have lived long enough to make their mark, and long enough for the marks to sink back into soil, to crumble and be overtaken by vines.

This has been my stomping ground since childhood excursions on a bike with a banana seat and ape-hanger handlebars. I see no reason to change now. Though it did look like there were some pretty fair walking trails on the Greek Isles, too.