Now and Then

Today we decided we wanted to find someplace for a hike that's a little different from what we've been doing lately.  We didn't have time to drive terribly far, but decided to venture to Bear Swamp for our walk.

I hadn't been to Bear Swamp in years.  There are a number of Bear Swamps, but the one I'm talking about is down near the southern end of Skaneateles Lake.  It's owned by New York State and managed by the DEC.

It's a fascinatingly wild spot.  In total there are 3,316 acres, with about 13 miles of trails.  Some of the hiking trails seem to not get used very often, and we took one of those today.  There were spots where we had a mighty hard time telling where the trail was, and it was a good thing there are trail markers.  Other trails are much easier to follow and are maintained for snowmobiles, and then others are passable by car.

The history of Bear Swamp is that it was settled after the Revolutionary War.  In fact, I believe the area was actually cleared and settled by Revolutionary War veterans.  The population in the area hit its peak during the Civil War era and then declined until the Great Depression.  It was purchased by the State in the 1930s and planted with red pine, Norway spruce and larch by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Now it is used for hiking, mountain biking, snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, and judging by the number of shotgun shells we passed, hunting.  The State-owned land has a very jagged and erratic border, and is surrounded by privately-owned land with a few ramshackle hunting cabins scattered about.

This early in the spring there wasn't a whole lot growing, which made the few green plants stand out.  There were lots of what look like trout lily leaves, but no flowers.

There were also some big patches of myrtle, and some wintergreen, too.

One of the most noticeable plants was the skunk cabbage, which was everywhere.  I'm utterly fascinated by the stuff.

I love its speckly, shiny, pointy shoots, its pretty deep reds, and the way it looks so artistically swoopy when it first starts to grow.

A few of the trees were showing buds, but not all that many.

As far as wildlife goes, we didn't spot much.  That's probably because the hounds sounded like a herd of elephants crashing through the dry leaves.  Most critters had enough advanced notice of our approach to skedaddle long before we got to them.  This chipmunk was brave enough to hold still for a photo.

A ruffed grouse did erupt from nearly underneath my feet at one point.  Why is it that with every encounter I have with a grouse I feel like I lose another year of my life?  That kind of shock can't be good for me.

We also heard zillions of frogs croaking, creaking, groaning, clucking and whatever other noises they make.  I didn't manage to spot any, though, as the ground was way too wet to get close to the swampy areas where the frogs were swimming.

The dogs are pathetically out of shape after spending another winter refusing to go for walks in the snow, so we didn't manage to get too many miles in.  The humans weren't quite ready for the adventure to end when the hounds were, though, so we decided to do a little driving on the dirt roads that wind through the swamp.

We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.  Those dirt roads go on for miles, and they're pretty rough.  At one point I did think to ask my husband if there was any air in his spare tire, because it occurred to me that if we had a flat and didn't have a working spare, we might be stranded there for days.  There was no way we could give a tow truck directions to wherever it was that we were. A little later my husband asked what I though his office would say if he had to "call in lost" on Monday.

Then, in the middle of nothing but woods, we stumbled upon a sweet old cemetery.  It was clearly an old Wilcox family plot from the 1850s and 1860s, back when the area was farmed.  One of the stones belonged to a Civil War veteran, and someone still puts a flag out next to his stone.

It's hard to envision the area as it once was - all farmland.  There are a few crumbling stone walls that are the only markers of what the area looked like long ago.  Somewhere in those woods are surely some old foundations from the homes that once stood there.

I have mentioned before my fascination with the way the wilderness reclaims places humans have worked hard to clear and build.  I just have a hard time envisioning the place as it may once have looked, and wonder what the people who are buried in that cemetery would think if they could see the place now.  Would they despair that all their hard work in clearing and farming the land came to naught?  Or would they be pleased to find their resting place so peaceful and wild?  I'll never know.

Eventually, and happily, we emerged from that tangled web of seemingly endless dirt roads into farms and then homes along the southern end of Skaneateles Lake, sans flat tires, and with the exhaust still attached to the car.  Another happy Sunday foray into the woods has put life back into perspective for me.

Read more...

Ruins, Yet Again

After driving about for quite some time, wandering different bits of the trail and getting a little bit lost, my husband and I finally found what we had set out to discover.  The Cayuga County Trail was once a railroad track that has now been converted into a trail.  It's hard to say precisely what these buildings would have been used for because there's a shocking amount of garbage that has been shoved in them over the years. Most of the larger rusting bits looked like farm equipment, so my best guess is these were used for storing and loading grain and other farm goods.

Regardless of their history, they are decidedly picturesque in fading February evening light.

It's hard to believe some of these are still standing at all.  I was afraid to sneeze for fear I'd blow them over.  I pity the poor squirrel or bat whose weight finally does in the one above.  It gave me a little more hope that my lovely old house with its slightly leaning basement wall has a long time before I need to panic about it.  And our barn, which is rapidly beginning to look like some of these, could stand for decades yet.  At least our barn still has 4 walls and a roof, although the angles at which said walls and roof meet up are becoming more peculiar with each passing year.

These wonderful old barns were hauntingly still and quiet while we snapped their pictures.  No creatures stirred, and for the first time all day the wind dwindled to nothing.  It was as though time was temporarily frozen.

I love the textures of the old wood as it slowly rots, and the remaining hints of the red paint that used to grace the boards.  I wonder why red is the universal color for barns?  It's sometimes amazing to me that neglect and decay can be beautiful.

Read more...

The York Minster and the Treasurer's House

My other good ghost story from York is as follows.

The York Minster dominates the city of York.  It is the largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe.  It's like a living thing, cropping up over and over again as one turns corners throughout the city.

The history of the York minster, in brief, is as follows.  The first York Minster was built for the Anglo Saxon King, Edwin of Northumbria.  He had been baptized in a small wooden church in 627, and ordered a stone church built to replace it.  That church was built and survived the Viking era of York, but was damaged by fire in the Norman conquest of York in 1069.  It is unknown where that church lay.

Incidentally, the title "Minster" is given to churches that were established in the Anglo Saxon period as missionary teaching churches.
 

On the roof of the York Minster

The Normans ordered a new Minster to be constructed in a separate location, and that is the location of the present Minster.  Construction was begun around 1080, and completed around 1100.  Bits of that version of the Minster are still visible in the undercroft.  The present Minster was constructed in stages, between about 1215 (starting with the north and south transepts) and 1472 (ending with the western towers).

The Five Sisters Windows

Next to the Minster, across a narrow cobblestone street, lies a building known as the Treasurer's House.  In medieval times, it served as the home for the treasurers of the Minster, which was a prestigious and coveted position.  In 1547 it passed into private hands when the office of treasurer was abolished as a result of the Reformation, and the house remained under private ownership until it was donated to the National Trust in 1930.  It's a magnificent house, although it has undergone so many renovations it is difficult to know what it may have looked like at any given time in history.  Sadly, I don't seem to have taken any photos of it.

The ghost story I heard on the ghost walks of York is as follows.  In 1953, a young plumber by the name of Harry Martindale was doing some work in the basement of the Treasurer's House.  He heard the sound of a horn or bugle in the distance, although thought little of it as he assumed it was the sound of kids playing in the street outside.  Suddenly the horn sounded very close to him.  He scrambled into a corner of the basement, from which vantage point he observed a bunch of tired and dirty Roman soldiers walk through the basement wall, through the room, and out through the wall on the other side of the basement.  He could only see the soldiers from about the knees up - it appeared to him almost as though they were walking through the basement on their knees.

After the incident, Mr. Martindale fled from the basement and told his tale.  Initially, historians were skeptical about his story because the description Mr. Martindale provided of the soldiers did not match what was known about the Roman soldiers at that time.  He described unusual kilts, helmets and other armaments, the likes of which Roman soldiers had never been known to wear. 

Fastforward to the late 1960s.  When the central tower of the York Minster began to collapse, a massive collaboration among historians, archaeologists, architects and engineers was launched to save the structure.  Before they could inject massive concrete supports into the basement to support the tower, excavations were done.  Elements of the Norman predecessor to the Minster were uncovered.  Additionally, archaeologists unearthed a Roman road that extended under the Minster in the direction of the Treasurer's House. 

Further excavation in the basement of the Treasurer's House revealed that the Roman road did indeed run under the basement, approximately 15 inches below the present floor.  The Roman soldiers Mr. Martindale saw had been walking on their own road, and that was why they could only be seen from the knees up.

Additionally, other artifacts were discovered in the Minster excavations that corroborated Mr. Martindale's descriptions of the soldiers' armor.  Other archaeological discoveries had also been made between 1953 and the late 1960s, that confirmed that indeed, Roman soldiers could have worn the clothing and armor Mr. Martindale had described.

This is probably one of the best documented ghost stories in York.  I have to admit, it's a convincing tale, since Mr. Martindale had talked with historians in detail about his observations long before the excavations under the Minster began.  Mr. Martindale was not a historian, and could not possibly have known about the presence of the Roman road, nor that Roman soldiers had ever worn such attire, as no one knew those details until many years later.

I heard many other ghost stories in York, but those are the two I remember best.  Remembering all this about York makes me want to take another trip to England!

Read more...

Hauntings

I promised ghost stories, so I shall deliver. Honestly, I'm running out of good things to blog about this time of year. I could use a good dose of spring. Absent that, I can at least tell some ghost stories for sitting around the fire of an evening. After all, I love to tell stories. I guess that is part of the reason I started this blog in the first place.

I mentioned last week that I spent some time living in York, England when I was in high school. York is a spectacular old walled city, with incredibly old buildings, the largest gothic cathedral in northern Europe, and wonderful atmosphere. One of the things I loved most about York was the sense of history just radiating off those cobblestone streets.

On the walls of the city:

Check out this ancient church and its wonky floors. I stumbled upon this one afternoon, tucked into a courtyard surrounded by buildings.

There are dozens upon dozens of tiny passageways and alleys around the city, referred to as "snickelways". While not the most romantic and medieval of all the snickelways, this snickelway was actually in the house I lived in, and led to the walled garden behind the house.

With a city that old, one is bound to have some sordid bits of history, like Clifford's Tower.

What a sad story - I cannot even comprehend having to make the kind of decision those 150 people had to make on that March night in 1190.

With history, especially gruesome history like Clifford's tower, tend to come ghost stories. York was named by the Ghost Research Foundation International to be the most haunted city in the world, with 504 recorded hauntings. For 17-year-old me, that amounted to some great history lessons, and a whole lot of fun, too.

There are a number of different ghost tours in York, and they compete fiercely with each other for business. I went on several in my time there because I got such a kick out of them.  It was fascinating to compare the different versions of the same story told by the different tour guides.  Some of those tour guides were talented actors.

Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when, on my first ghost tour, the tour stopped at...

My host family's house.  Yikes!

The house was supposedly named "The Plague House" in some old city records. In an ancient city like York, the bubonic, pneumonic, and/or septicemic plague made its rounds through the city more than once, often decimating the population. During outbreaks, city officials would mark an "X" on the door of any house in which someone was infected with the plague, warning people to stay away from the house. Eventually, officials would then enter the houses to remove the bodies.

I heard two different stories about the house at 5 Minster Yard. In one version of the story, during one of the plague outbreaks, a young girl living in the house contracted the plague. Her parents panicked and abandoned her, leaving her to die alone in the house.

In the other version of the story, the whole rest of the family contracted the plague - everyone except the young girl. Because of the X on the door, no one would approach the house, despite the girl's desperate cries for help from the window. In that version of the story she died of starvation.

When the officials later came to clear out the bodies, they found her lifeless body.  Presumably just for dramatic effect, the story tellers would often suggest that the girl had slipped into an opening in the wall while she was crying out the window for assistance, and that when the officials came to collect her body they merely left her there and bricked her body in. That bit of the story I never did understand - why on earth would they leave her? I admit, though, that it kind of wigged me out that if you measured all the rooms on the second story of the house, it did seem that there was some space in the middle that you couldn't access. A hidden room, long ago bricked up? Probably nothing so exciting, but one does wonder.

Surely the question you all want to know the answer to is, was the house really haunted? I never saw anything suspicious during my brief time there, and at least at that time my host family hadn't, either. However, the people who had lived in the house before my host family had allegedly seen a young girl's ghost crying in the spare bedroom.

Whether because of that rumor or perhaps just because they wanted to keep the spare room free in case they had other guests while I was there, my host family renovated a room in the attic for me rather than putting me in the spare room. Although I have a wicked sense of curiosity about such things, I think I'm glad I didn't have to sleep there. I would have worked myself up to a major case of the willies every night.

The only curious thing that I experienced wasn't until I got back home and developed my pictures. Near the end of my stay, I took some photos of the inside of the house. One turned out very strange. There were no reflective surfaces in the room other than the window you see in the photo, which had curtains hanging in front of it. This doesn't look like anything in particular to me - I certainly don't see the shape of a ghostly, night gowned, plague-ridden child in it - but it is interesting. I still wonder what caused the weird effects.

The window that the ghost tour guides would stop and point at was a tiny little window, not the one in the photo above.  You can hardly see the ghost tour window in this photo:

If you look at the little stone house on the end of the row, you can see one large bay window on the end, and just to the right of that is a much smaller window. I'm certain the tour guides point to that window for effect because it is a charming little window. Inside the house, that window merely led to a hallway, not a room:

The girl I exchanged with and I had tremendous fun scaring people on the ghost tour.  We would hide in that hallway and wait until the tour guide got to the most suspenseful bit of the story. Then I would silently press my hand against the glass of the window, and we'd collapse into hysterical laughter at the screams of all the poor souls on the tour. Even the tour guide was a bit taken aback the first time we did it.

I still chuckle to remember it.

The next installment of the ghost chronicles:  The York Minster and the Treasurer's House.

Read more...

A Sense of History

I think I've mentioned before that our house was built about 1831.  Our Village was developed because of the Erie Canal, which ran right through the heart of it.  Our house was undoubtedly part of the Village's big growth spurt, since the original canal was completed in 1825.  It's old.  I love that it's old.  I love to flip through our abstract of title, and wonder about the people who have owned the house before us.  At some point I'll find out more about them.

Erie Canal Village, long ago

In the grand scheme of things, though, I kind of have to chuckle when people exclaim about how old our house is.  For the U.S. it's a respectable old age, but I've lived in much older.

When I was in high school, my best friend and I were itching to do something different during our junior year.  So, with the help of our history teacher, we developed an exchange program between our school and York College for Girls, in York, England.  (Sadly, YCG has now closed its doors).

The father of my exchange family was a Canon at the York Minster, which is the big cathedral in York.  The house they lived in was just across the street from the Minster, and it had been built around 1250.  No, that's not a typo.  That house was old.  When they first told me when the house had been built, I remember being surprised that they even built houses back then, or at least that they built them out of something other than reeds and thatch.  (Hey, I was only 16).

See that little stone house on the right hand side of the photo?  That's the one.  Here it is from the opposite side:

My room for those few months was that little window at the top on the right, and looked right at the Minster. You can imagine that my understanding of what constituted an "old" human structure was quickly redefined.

But then I went on a tour of the basement of the York Minster.  If I had thought the house was old, I was even further surprised to learn the history of the Minster itself.  Back in the late 1960s, the central column of the Minster was found to be sinking at an alarming rate, as the old English oak that it had been built upon had begun to rot.  In excavating under the central tower preparatory to injecting new concrete supports, they discovered an archaeological treasure, including the foundations of several churches that had previously stood on the same spot, and a stretch of old Roman road littered with some Roman artifacts.

I'll blog about the good ghost stories I learned about both the house and the Minster relative to that Roman road sometime soon.  For now, I'll just throw it out there that the house is referred to in some historical records as "the plague house."  Great start to a ghost story, right?

Ever since that time in England when I was a teenager, I've been fascinated with the passage of time, and how some of humankind's handiwork survives and stands for hundreds of years, and other bits are built, used, abandoned, and decay.

Rievaulx Abbey, Yorkshire

We tend to think that what we build is permanent and indestructible, but it's amazing how fast nature will reclaim something once it's abandoned.  Even our house is a good example.  When we bought it off foreclosure it had stood empty for about a year.  It had been winterized so no pipes had broken, but stray cats had gotten in through the basement and done all sorts of damage, and a fine layer of mold and dust covered every surface in the house.  It would not have been long before the damage started to affect the house structurally.  Houses and other buildings need constant care and maintenance, or else they quickly wind up full of vines, trees, squirrels, snakes, and all sorts of living things.

Ruins along the Erie Canal, Memphis, NY


I'm surely not the only one who is amazed by the concept.  Fascination with decay has been documented for a very long time.  For example, "The Wanderer" is an Old English poem preserved in an anthology known as the Exeter Book, which is a manuscript dating from the late 10th century.  "The Wanderer" itself dates from sometime before that, possibly as long ago as 597, although its actual date of origin is debated.  The poem is narrated by a warrior whose king is dead, and who is paddling the seas in solitude while reflecting on what he has lost.  Translated, one excerpt of the poem reads:

A wise hero must realize

how terrible it will be,

when all the wealth of this world

lies waste,

as now in various places

throughout this middle-earth

walls stand,

blown by the wind,

covered with frost,

storm-swept the buildings.

The halls decay,

their lords lie

deprived of joy,

the whole troop has fallen,

the proud ones, by the wall.

War took off some,

carried them on their way,

one, the bird took off

across the deep sea,

one, the gray wolf

shared one with death,

one, the dreary-faced

man buried

in a grave.

And so He destroyed this city,

He, the Creator of Men,

until deprived of the noise

of the citizens,

the ancient work of giants

stood empty.

Clearly, people have long contemplated the ruins of human habitation.

Dunnotar Castle, Stonehaven, Scotland

The British Isles are full of layer upon layer of history.  All of Europe is, for that matter, as are other areas of the world that have long been populated.  Many of the areas of Ireland and the highlands of Scotland are full of abandoned structures, very slowly decaying.  Ruins are one of the reasons I love Ireland and Scotland so much - even ruins of castles seem to stick around for a mighty long time, and I can think of few things I enjoy more than exploring them.  As you can tell, I tend to take pictures of ruins, both because they're picturesque and because they capture my imagination.

Sherkin Island, Ireland

Godstow Abbey, Oxfordshire

In the northeastern US, however, things seem to get re-consumed by the wilderness very quickly.  Part of that is surely our building materials.  Simply put, wood rots.  But I think our wilderness just seems more eager to take things back unto itself.  I'm sure there are many good scientific explanations for that eagerness (types of plants, amount of rainfall, etc., etc.).  But to me, I find ruins like those my husband and I stumbled upon on Sunday to be a constant reminder of the hardship people endured while creating the structure and infrastructure we now take for granted.  Ours is not a natural environment that readily gave up its hold.

Ruins along the Erie Canal, Memphis, NY

I love art and architecture and love that examples are preserved for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years.  I would be heartbroken if the York Minster and that little house next to it were allowed to crumble, and feel that way about many of the places I have lived and loved. I was also overjoyed to learn the old Erie Canal aqueduct had been reconstructed, so that it once again reflected the former glory of the Erie Canal days.  

But there's also a part of me that likes to hope that all the stuff we build and all the damage we do to our natural environment isn't really permanent.   I find ruins to be a refreshing reminder that the wilderness would be happy to take it all back... if we let it.

Read more...