Sporting the white, cotton, “Old Hawley Common” T-shirt with red letters that I bought Sunday at the common’s unveiling—hint of bear scent wafting through cool, clear mountain air—inspired inquiries from some folks I bumped into this week in my travels.

“Oh, you went to that?” was a question by some who had seen the event publicized; then, “What, pray tell, is your interest in Hawley?” that seldom-visited hilltown nestled into Franklin County’s southwestern corner, population 337. Well, as is often true in my case, it all comes down to history, place and blood, often intertwined in a geographical setting where one’s roots run deep.

Although I am the direct descendant of no original Hawley settler I know of, a Sanderson great-grandfather of mine was among the original proprietors; not only that, but peripheral genealogical lines run through that landscape like its shaded brooks and streams. Throw in a direct link to the historic building I call home, and my interest heightens. So, I guess you could say that my fascination with Hawley is all about personal connections.

Hawley, it seems, was one of many “frontier” destinations for those defeated rabble-rousers who publicly supported Capt. Daniel Shays of Shays’ Rebellion fame (1786-87). After Shays fled Massachusetts in February 1787, he and his soldiers dispersed to the hinterlands, many touching down in Vermont and New York State, some settling much closer, in places like Hawley, which seemed to hold preferred status for Whately/Conway rebels, possibly because they knew or were related to speculative landowners who did not intend to live there.

Adonijah Taylor and son John were two such men, the elder an early Deerfield miller who established the first Roaring Brook grist and sawmills on a rise overlooking the Mill River section of Deerfield. Today, that site is located in Whately, below the lower Whately Glen dam. Fifth great-grandfather Deacon Thomas Sanderson, the aforementioned Hawley landowner, purchased the home and mill sites from the Taylors in 1803, and they were likely longtime friends. Taylor’s wife, Rachel Sawtelle, and my Sanderson branch grew up in Groton, arrived here at about the same time and were connected by marriage to the Parker family of that town. That Middlesex County Parker family produced Lt. Isaac Parker, second in command at Fort No. 4 in Charlestown, N.H., New England’s northernmost French and Indian War outpost and the probable reason why the Parkers, then my Sandersons chose Deerfield and the Canterbury section of Hatfield (now River Road, Whately) for homes sites. Which brings us to another Hawley connection.

Abraham Parker (1726-1757), son of Lt. Isaac, was probably introduced to the peaceful intervale below Sugarloaf while patrolling on military detail out of Fort No. 4. What was there not to love about that idyllic, fertile plain? By 1748, Parker had built a dwelling there, and four years later, brother-in-law Joseph Sanderson, progenitor of my Franklin County line, was squatting next door. Tragedy struck the Parker family five years later when, on Saturday, March 12, 1757, Parker drowned crossing the Connecticut River ice on his way to or from Sunderland (tavern hopping perhaps?), leaving behind five children, one unborn. I have never found Parker’s grave, but it is probably in Sunderland if his body was recovered, because that’s where he attended church.

Parker’s first son and second child, Abraham Jr. (1752-1837), was one of Hawley’s first settlers; his cellar hole is the outermost of nine identified sites along the Hawley-Common route unveiled Sunday. I met three or four Parker descendants, distant cousins of mine, at Sunday’s dedication. Their family had lived in the original Parker homestead for nearly 120 years, until 1891, when the dwelling and outbuildings were abandoned, soon to be cratered memories. And yes, all that remains today are dark, damp, stone-clad holes. I feel a certain attachment to those Parker ruins because more than likely Abraham Jr., fatherless before his fifth birthday, viewed Uncle Joseph Sanderson (my sixth ggf) as a surrogate father, spending many a day roaming the woods and fields and swamps below Sugarloaf with Joseph’s eight sons, some older, others younger than him. Uncle Joseph, his gravestone the oldest in East Whately Cemetery, died in 1772. Four years later, when Parker Jr. was 24, he set out for Hawley, where his cousins — brothers Nathaniel, Abel and David Parker — were also staking claims, plus, first-cousin and boyhood neighbor Thomas Sanderson, six years older, owned a couple parcels there.

Ah-ha, all about family ties, it is.

Now, as for the link between my Greenfield home and Hawley, well, that was a more recent discovery. The journey began following a brief telephone conversation with Colrain artist Hale Johnson, whose mother, Louise Hale Johnson, published “The History of the Town of Hawley” in 1953, the year I was born. When Mr. Johnson asked about the history of my tavern, I told him the last major “improvements” were made by Ebenezer Thayer, who sold the Charlemont Inn before buying my place in 1836. When I informed him that Thayer had lived in Hawley, it piqued his interest, said he knew all the Hawley cemeteries after visiting them as a boy with his mother. Then, after later finding Louise Hale Johnson’s book in Google Books and reading her Thayer genealogy, I discovered what I believed to be an error. Her profile of Thayer as a good businessman who owned a hotel in Charlemont before purchasing “the expensive Arms Farm in Greenfield Meadows in 1835” differed from what I knew. Because I had done the deed research to document Thayer’s purchase of my Upper Meadows tavern in 1836, I thought Ms. Johnson was mistaken. A trip to the Registry of Deeds proved me wrong.

Thayer did indeed purchase what was known as the Ebenezer Arms Farm in 1835, a little more than a year before buying my place. Then, three years later, in 1839, he purchased the Moses Arms Farm, contiguous with the first Arms farm he had purchased four years earlier. The cost of the three Meadows properties that consumed nearly 1,000 acres was the enormous sum of $30,000, which would compute to millions today. All three homesteads are extant, with the two Arms farms situated in the Lower Meadows. The so-called Ebenezer Arms place stands on Thayer Road, overlooking the long Greenfield Community College driveway and, across it, the so-called Moses Arms Farm, later Myers Farm, today Four Rivers Charter School. My property is named Old Tavern Farm; Thayer bought it from Samuel Hinsdale III and soon added a porch and upstairs ballroom for tavern-keeping son Hollister Baker Thayer, whose name came straight from Hawley; it was there after 1810 that his uncle, Hollister Baker, built a stately, brick, Federal mansion-house that still stands proudly in Pudding Meadow and was recently sold to an “outsider” for a tidy fee.

So, there you have it: a few of the subjects that lured me to the Hawley woods on Sunday and will surely draw me back. A new discovery in the Doane Cemetery caught my interest during a brief stop with a friend and neighbor on the way home. Isolated under a hardwood shade tree just inside the eastern stonewall border of the burial ground stood the lonely, flagged gravestone of Capt. Oliver Shattuck, who died in 1797, age 46. His Shattuck family has an interesting history, one that also weaves through Groton and Fort No. 4 to our slice of paradise known as the upper Pioneer Valley. I think I’ll see what I can find about the man. Who knows? He may even have been a displaced Shaysite, rarely easy to document these days. But even if it can’t be proven, you can usually make connections, ones that provide a pretty good idea of where he stood on the conflict.

Mystery fuels discovery, uncertainty revs the motor, spins the wheels, mine already awhirl and shrill. Before a man can truly understand the little world around him, he must first discover who he is. It’s complex. I’m getting there.

I’ve had a letter sitting here on my desk for a couple of years, one I’ve “been meaning to get to,” if you know what I mean. But here I sit, finally getting back to it, prodded by the man who sent it, dignified octogenarian Edward M. Wells of Leyden, Franklin County roots nearly as deep as the Sunderland sycamore.

It was Mr. Wells who showed up at my door a month or so ago inquiring about the letter. Did I still have it kicking around? If so, he thought he’d float it past Irmarie Jones or someone else who may be interested. It brought me back to my school daze many years ago, the Harris-tweed, bespectacled teacher, chalk-dusted shoulders, asking how many more days I’d need to finish the essay due last week. Well, let’s just say Mr. Wells got a 21st-century response, no resemblance to my trusted 1970 friend, Sixties Defiance. The story of Robert “Bud” Coombs’ had indeed interested me; loved the writing style, too. I did intend to do something on it. Just needed a little poke, I guess. Well, Mr. Wells was there to dig his dusty pointer stick between my ribs. So here I sit, wondering where to start.

Accompanying the essay was Mr. Wells’ handwritten letter, dated June 2, 2007, prefacing the little tale, deft touch, that had been written for the Christmas holidays by his late cousin’s Tucson, Ariz., widow. Her name was Jean, wife of “Bud” Coombs, he from, you guessed it, Coombs Hill in Colrain, just a hop, skip and a jump west of me, on the site of the old Fort Morris of French & Indian War fame, one of four garrisons available to Coleraine’s earliest Scots-Irish settlers when danger loomed in the howling wilderness. Bud’s people had farmed that idyllic spot looking east at Monadnock since the start, parts of four centuries turning up stones and Native implements while tilling the soil.

But this is not a history of Coombs Hill or Coombs Farm or that old “South Fort.” No, this story has Franklin County Fair flavor, one that some of the older readers among us will remember well. It’s about what the annual September gathering on Petty’s Plain once meant countywide to farm- and schoolboys alike. Sadly, this weekend there will be no
schoolboy athletic competition akin to the days of Bud Coombs and my own father, himself a former fair sprint champion, then a Deerfield teen representing Greenfield after putting Deerfield High in his rearview due to “issues” with the school administration. Like they say, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Maybe I too should have fled. But I stayed … and ultimately paid.

Enough of that, though … back to Bud Coombs and his Franklin County Fair day in the sun, as told by his sweetheart in her stylish, heartfelt essay that touched on a little of everything pertinent to country fairs and those who attended them way back when. Times have changed. Now the grandstand is filled for demolition derbies; in my day, fireman’s
musters. Not back then, in 1942, bombs disrupting daily lives worldwide, subsistence hilltown farms struggling to make a go of it with laborers off to war on faraway
continents. Like many other agrarian highland lads, Bud Coombs was strong like bull and fleet afoot but unable to join proud Arms Academy’s athletic teams because daily farm chores precluded it.

The story begins in the barn, where Bud and his father are performing morning chores as part of their daily routine, the reticent teen hinting that he’d like to break free, no school, and take the old Chevy to the fair. His father, painfully short on words, one-ups him, tells him to take the big red Oldsmobile, quite a treat for a 17-year-old rolling down dusty Brook Road and across the lush Greenfield Meadows to the county fair. Yes sir, he was living large.

He climbs the gentle slope to the fairgrounds, parks the Olds out of harm’s way and heads for the gate. Once inside, young Bud goes directly to the grandstand area to catch the track meet, where the county schools — his Arms, Greenfield and Turners, probably others — vie for bragging rights annually in a spirited competition fueled by town and school pride. Remember, those were the days when every Franklin County town had
its own summer baseball team, and inter-town rivalries were intense, more so than today,
when kids have traded their Louisville Sluggers for joysticks. But let us not digress, or take cheap shots at today’s youth. Back to the ’42 fair, nine months removed from Pearl Harbor, the world aflame, young Bud quick-stepping down the midway to the track.

He arrives at in front of the grandstand and the Arms coach, short of competitors, is nervously pacing, furiously scanning the bleachers, the track, anywhere for able bodies. He spots Bud. Can he run? Timidly, Bud nods. Yes, he can run. He’s promptly rewarded with Arms maroon and white to don, a pair of “roomy” track shoes to lace up. He puts on his new uniform, receives quick lessons in stance and how to burst from the blocks at the report of a revolver, and proceeds to win the 220- and 100-yard dashes, helping his school secure the Franklin County track championship, quite a feat against the larger schools. A story fit for the big screen, that of Bud Coombs’ day of glory at the fair. Yes, a
wartime tale worth repeating.

Before departing for home, back up Brook Road to Coombs Hill, Bud is named captain of the fair team and spends the rest of the day walking the lanes, flirting, eating hot dogs, cotton candy, candied apples; playing games and riding the Ferris wheel with adoring Arms coeds, frightened by rocking at the peak. He arrives home a little late for evening chores and his father is already at it. He doesn’t say much, just nods and softly kicks a milking stool toward a waiting shorthorn. Bud sits firmly, grabs a teat, pulls and twists, producing that familiar hollow splash off the base of an empty bucket.

“Good fair?” his father inquires.

“Yup.”

More splashes.

Humble souls, those country folk from our bucolic Franklin hills. Don’t say much. Never did. Never will.

Just enough.

The first Indian trails I ever walked are carved into the Sugarloafs, north and south, one snaking its way up the south face of Wequamps to King Philip’s Seat, the other meandering through the cliffs on the west face of North Sugarloaf to another shelf-cave we were told had Native significance. How I found them I can’t recall. It must have been word-of-mouth on Graves Street and Eastern Avenue. But does it really matter? All I know is that we walked those trails often during the pleasant months, getting away from adult supervision, never a bad thing then or now, free play, even a little mischief now and then. Big deal. Out of sight, out of mind; no harm, no foul. Can you think of any other cliches to raise the ire of devoted AP stylists, if there are any left?

I’m sure I could still find those ancient trails with little effort, the more difficult of the two being the one on North Sugarloaf. To get there, you had to go to the end of Graves Street near a little electrical sub-station, then angle southeast to the base of the cliffs and follow it to pick up the trail, an obvious footpath sunken deep into the hard red clay. I don’t even know if kids still walk it. I hope so. But one never knows in these paranoid times. Could be that those footpaths haven’t been used for years. We always called them Indians trails. That’s what I believe they are. Who else could have made them prehistoric deep?

Since those youthful days of explorative bliss, I have read much about our indigenous trails, honing my knowledge and fine-tuning my eye for historic landscapes and their traversing trails. The trodden paths that greeted Bradford and Alden, Winthrop and Saltonstall during New England’s contract period later became their highways to manifest destiny, widened and diverted here and there over time to become Boston Post Road or Bay Path, suitable for wheeled vehicles after improvements and corduroy roads through troublesome depressions. Over time, the secondary roads were discontinued and abandoned, but they still exist in our wooded highlands, many lined with stone-clad depressions and above-ground foundations that provide clues of what used to be.

When you ponder it without getting carried away, it’s really quite simple. Do you really think Rev. Thomas Hooker and his Puritan flock cut their own path to Hartford in 1636? Of course not. They followed existing trails to the Connecticut Valley, then used waterways and other paths northward to places like Northampton, Hadley, Deerfield and Northfield. Once those towns started to fill up with pre-birth-control congestion, settlers looking for space branched out into what became our hilltowns by following existing trails and staking their claims along them. They’re still there under a dense forest canopy, a lost world with fascinating historic relevance.

I continue to learn more about these long-lost hilltown roads and farms. Soon, I will start putting to use a new tool — my DeLorme Earthmate PN-40 hand-held GPS unit — to mark the roads, cellar holes and landmarks along the way. I think it’ll enhance my perspective, snuggle me closer to the land stained with my ancestors’ sweat and blood.

It’s great. Here I am 56 years old and still enjoying free play in the woods. Hopefully my grandsons will follow my footsteps long after I’m gone. Better still, maybe they’ll even use the intuitive computer skills I’ll never have to help me master the new toy.

That would be fun indeed.

I’ve had a letter sitting here on my desk for a couple of years, one I’ve “been meaning to get to,” if you know what I mean. But here I sit, finally getting back to it, prodded by the man who sent it, dignified octogenarian Edward M. Wells of Leyden, Franklin County roots nearly as deep as the Sunderland sycamore.

It was Mr. Wells who showed up at my door a month or so ago inquiring about the letter. Did I still have it kicking around? If so, he thought he’d float it past Irmarie Jones or someone else who may be interested. It brought me back to my school daze many years ago, the Harris-tweed, bespectacled teacher, chalk-dusted shoulders, asking how many more days I’d need to finish the essay due last week. Well, let’s just say Mr. Wells got a 21st-century response, no resemblance to my trusted 1970 friend, Sixties Defiance. The story of Robert “Bud” Coombs’ had indeed interested me; loved the writing style, too. I did intend to do something on it. Just needed a little poke, I guess. Well, Mr. Wells was there to dig his dusty pointer stick between my ribs. So here I sit, wondering where to start.

Accompanying the essay was Mr. Wells’ handwritten letter, dated June 2, 2007, prefacing the little tale, deft touch, that had been written for the Christmas holidays by his late cousin’s Tucson, Ariz., widow. Her name was Jean, wife of “Bud” Coombs, he from, you guessed it, Coombs Hill in Colrain, just a hop, skip and a jump west of me, on the site of the old Fort Morris of French & Indian War fame, one of four garrisons available to Coleraine’s earliest Scots-Irish settlers when danger loomed in the howling wilderness. Bud’s people had farmed that idyllic spot looking east at Monadnock since the start, parts of four centuries turning up stones and Native implements while tilling the soil.

But this is not a history of Coombs Hill or Coombs Farm or that old “South Fort.” No, this story has Franklin County Fair flavor, one that some of the older readers among us will remember well. It’s about what the annual September gathering on Petty’s Plain once meant countywide to farm- and schoolboys alike. Sadly, this weekend there will be no schoolboy athletic competition akin to the days of Bud Coombs and my own father, himself a former fair sprint champion, then a Deerfield teen representing Greenfield after putting Deerfield High in his rearview due to “issues” with the school administration. Like they say, the apple doesn’t fall from the tree. Maybe I too should have fled. But I stayed … and ultimately paid.

Enough of that, though … back to Bud Coombs and his Franklin County Fair day in the sun, as told by his sweetheart in her stylish, heartfelt essay that touched on a little of everything pertinent to country fairs and those who attended them way back when. Times have changed. Now the grandstand is filled for demolition derbies; in my day, fireman’s musters. Not back then, in 1942, bombs disrupting daily lives worldwide, subsistence hilltown farms struggling to make a go of it with laborers off to war on faraway continents. Like many other agrarian highland lads, Bud Coombs was strong like bull and fleet afoot but unable to join proud Arms Academy’s athletic teams because daily farm chores precluded it.

The story begins in the barn, where Bud and his father are performing morning chores as part of their daily routine, the reticent teen hinting that he’d like to break free, no school, and take the old Chevy to the fair. His father, painfully short on words, one-ups him, tells him to take the big red Oldsmobile, quite a treat for a 17-year-old rolling down dusty Brook Road and across the lush Greenfield Meadows to the county fair. Yes sir, he was living large.

He climbs the gentle slope to the fairgrounds, parks the Olds out of harm’s way and heads for the gate. Once inside, young Bud goes directly to the grandstand area to catch the track meet, where the county schools — his Arms, Greenfield and Turners, probably others — vie for bragging rights annually in a spirited competition fueled by town and school pride. Remember, those were the days when every Franklin County town had its own summer baseball team, and inter-town rivalries were intense, more so than today, when kids have traded their Louisville Sluggers for joysticks. But let us not digress, or take cheap shots at today’s youth. Back to the ’42 fair, nine months removed from Pearl Harbor, the world aflame, young Bud quick-stepping down the midway to the track.

He arrives at in front of the grandstand and the Arms coach, short of competitors, is nervously pacing, furiously scanning the bleachers, the track, anywhere for able bodies. He spots Bud. Can he run? Timidly, Bud nods. Yes, he can run. He’s promptly rewarded with Arms maroon and white to don, a pair of “roomy” track shoes to lace up. He puts on his new uniform, receives quick lessons in stance and how to burst from the blocks at the report of a revolver, and proceeds to win the 220- and 100-yard dashes, helping his school secure the Franklin County track championship, quite a feat against the larger schools. A story fit for the big screen, that of Bud Coombs’ day of glory at the fair. Yes, a wartime tale worth repeating.

Before departing for home, back up Brook Road to Coombs Hill, Bud is named captain of the fair team and spends the rest of the day walking the lanes, flirting, eating hot dogs, cotton candy, candied apples; playing games and riding the Ferris wheel with adoring Arms coeds, frightened by rocking at the peak. He arrives home a little late for evening chores and his father is already at it. He doesn’t say much, just nods and softly kicks a milking stool toward a waiting shorthorn. Bud sits firmly, grabs a teat, pulls and twists, producing that familiar hollow splash off the base of an empty bucket.

“Good fair?” his father inquires.

“Yup.”

More splashes.

Humble souls, those country folk from our bucolic Franklin hills. Don’t say much. Never did. Never will.

Just enough.

I was poking around East Colrain last week, something I’ve done quite a bit lately, there and in Heath, another upland jewel in our western hills. Along the way, I bumped into a man I first met when we were both Frontier Regional schoolboys. He happened to abut the parcel I was exploring and was out tidying-up his lawn and tinkering with his lawnmower on an refreshing spring afternoon, around 4.

The snow had finally melted enough for a comfortable, in places soggy, walk through the crackly woods, which I had already completed when I popped into my old schoolmate’s back yard and stopped to chat about this and that, beginning with the long-overdue arrival of spring in the hills behind my home. He too was happy to breathe fresh, warm spring air, which undoubtedly had lured him out for afternoon chores, but he was quick to point out that it was still winter in the gorge below, the one known to natives as Bernardston Gore, before that Falltown Gore, a natural obstruction that created hardships for pioneer on both sides.

“I drove through Green River Road this morning and it’s still winter down there, deep snow and ice on the steep banks near where the road washed out,” he said. “Take a ride if you don’t believe me. There’s still a ways to go down there.”

Knowing the unforgiving terrain in that deep ravine, I didn’t doubt him but had no interest in revisiting winter. I had my fill weeks ago, to be perfectly honest. But it did get me thinking about that “gore,” the one our earliest colonial settlers, some of them ancestors living just west of the Green River, found to be quite an obstacle in their daily travels, particularly Sunday treks of an ecclesiastical nature.

Going back to the original early 18^th century land grants of Boston Townships 1 and 2, which have become northwestern Franklin County, a chunk of what is today Colrain along the western bank of the Green River belonged to Bernardston (Falltown), forcing residents to take an arduous, 14-mile weekly trip to church and back. The route meandered south through parts of the current Shelburne and Greenfield, then looped back north and east to Bernardston, presumably crossing the Green River near the Pumping Station ford. That trip became unnecessary once East Colrain built its own meeting house on Chandler Hill, but before Bernardston Gore inhabitants could attend the Colrain church, the colonial government in Boston had to annex it to Colrain, and, like any bureaucratic venture, it didn’t happen overnight.

Having fished that section of the Green many times over the years, even way before I moved into “the neighborhood,” I am familiar with the steep, picturesque Falltown Gore and can sympathize with early inhabitants whose 1771 petition to Gov. Thomas Hutchinson I recently reviewed. The petitioners with names like Workman, Clark, Henry, and Lukas ask the governor to approve setting off their section of Bernardston to Colrain due to hardship in travel to and from church services. They cited difficulty crossing Green River when swollen, and the impossibility of building a road through the gorge as the main reasons for their request. Before 1780, the request was granted and Bernardston Gore became an extension of East Colrain. Today, trout fishing, swimming and deer hunting are the primary activities there. An east-west road through there has never been attempted and never will be. You just don’t cross geographic divides like Bernardston Gore. You follow them through or go around.

As we cross a large, local, free-flowing stream such as the Deerfield River and look down toward the water on a pleasant spring day, we are apt to notice a stationary angler wading to his waist and performing any number of tasks.

Perhaps he’s tying a tippet to a leader, or a fly to a tippet. Maybe he’s dressing a dry fly with floating salve. You may catch him making a long, slow, artful cast — a flick of the wrist back, a flick forward, and colorful line glistening as it shoots through a backdrop of water, hardwoods and bright blue sky. The angler could have a fish on, rod high and bent in a shallow U, tip bouncing with each furious tug from beneath the water’s surface. If you wait out the battle, you’ll see the angler skillfully tire the trout and gently work it to within reach before slowly reaching forward with a wooden-framed net into which he’ll guide the exhausted trout. Then he’s apt to carefully unhook the fish and release it back into the river, laving it for another day.

That’s fishing as we know it today a way to wind down after a stressful week. But it’s an image we must purge from our imagination when trying to picture the fishing activity of the Connecticut Valley’s River Indians during the fist days of European contact. Then the purpose of the seasonal fishing that took place annually at strategic locations along New England’s largest rivers was to fill the stomachs of a native population that had endured a long, difficult winter. And so it was each spring that the native tribesmen of the Connecticut Valley gathered to harvest large numbers of migratory fish at the natural falls located in Turners Falls and  South Hadley in the Pioneer Valley, Bellows Falls in Vermont, and the Enfield falls in Connecticut. Another historic fishing site of indigenous Pioneer Valley people sits along the Deerfield River in Shelburne at a location known today as Salmon Falls, where tourists flock to view the glacial potholes that have attracted so much media attention over the past decade.

For the purpose of this discussion, however, let us focus on the Pioneer Valley’s grandest, ancient, spring fishing site, one made famous by Capt. William Turner. There, at a dangerous cataract known to Native Americans as Peskeompskut, or Great Falls, river tribes congregated each spring for intensified labor and playful interaction while gathering thousands of American shad and blueback herring, and perhaps hundreds of large Atlantic salmon. It was during one of these festive gatherings, on May 18, 1676, that Captain Turner and his assembled troops from valley towns turned the tide of King Philip’s War by ambushing and slaughtering hundreds of weary, sleeping native people in the dark of night. The tribes were congregated there to feast and replenish their barren food stores after a difficult winter on the run from English troops.

Although the precise location of the famous “Falls Fight” is unknown, it is generally believed to be hidden under the bed of the impoundment behind the Turners Falls Dam. An exhaustive underwater study is currently being conducted at that site by a team of University of Massachusetts researchers. Sifting through the sediment, the researchers are searching for artifacts that would pinpoint the location as the famous English ambush. Also submerged behind the dam is Burnham’s Rock, regarded by colonial fishermen as the most productive site at Great Falls. Could it be that the English were simply following the lead of River Indians who preceded them? There is no question.

Although Great Falls was clearly the focal point of the River Indians’ annual fish-gathering operation in Turners Falls, there was another site, located about a mile downstream that was nearly as important. Referred to as a fishing camp below the falls in early accounts, this work station surrounded a natural fish weir that has come to be known to Montague City swimmers as Rock Dam. The site was first dubbed by colonial residents as “Indian Dam,” a name more fitting than today’s.

At this site just west of Cabot Station, the Connecticut River splits around an island identified on contemporary maps as Rawson’s Island. Where the Rawson’s moniker came from is anyone’s guess, but the fact is that this island, the northernmost of a cluster of three islands located upstream from the General Pierce Bridge, is Smead’s Island.

Smead’s island was first granted to Rev. John Williams by the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s Great and General Court for services rendered to Deerfield and the colony. It then passed into the hands of another Deerfield man named James Corse, whose family retained ownership until 1761. Then Samuel Smead of Greenfield purchased the northernmost island from Gad Corse and it became Smead’s Island forevermore. During the 65-year period between 1761 and 1826, 10 transactions involving this piece of property are recorded in the Registry of Deeds of Hampshire and later Franklin County, and all 10 refer to it as Smead’s Island.

Before and after Smead’s purchase of the island, it had great value as a fishing site as noted in the 1783 transaction between Samuel Smead and James Ewers, who purchased a one-third interest on the southeastern side for “managing the fishing.” Fifteen years later, David Smead sold the island and fishing rights to Jonathan Bissell, who referred to it as “the great fishing island.”

The Pocumtuck and other River Indian trbes who frequented the site before and during the early European contact period wouldn’t have disputed Bissell’s description. In fact, “the great fishing island” may have been an English interpretation of a native description.

Unknown is the Englishman who first laid eyes on the network of spring fishing camps at Peskeomskut, including Smead’s Island and the ancient weir, but it was surely either Springfield founder William Pynchon and/or his scouts, who established a series of profitable fur-trading posts along the Connecticut River beginning around 1635. Well-worn paths from all directions would have led explorers through the primeval forest to this site of great importance to native tribes. Although no written accounts of the discovery exist, springtime explorers would have found hundreds if not thousands of industrious natives celebrating the annual shad, herring and salmon migration into the valley at temporary fishing camps. It would have been a concerted effort, with some natives dip-netting, others seining fish from the water, others hauling baskets to streamside processing stations and drying racks, and others picking up guts and trash fish to use as fertilizer during the annual planting of their fields.

At the fish weir — today located between the eastern shore of the Connecticut River and the island inaccurately called Rawson’s — there would have been much harvesting activity above and below Indian Dam. Below was the settling pool, where hundreds of fish would congregate to build enough strength to climb the falls. Some would make the leap, others would try several times, give up and backtrack to the easier route through the shoal around the other side of the island. But natives would have been stationed on both sides, dip- and seine-netting passing fish. At the impoundment above the Indian Dam, native fishermen would net fish from large logs protruding over the calm, narrow impoundment.

Although the activity described above was not recorded by primary Connecticut Valley historians, Western Native American fishing camps were observed and similarly described during the 18th and 19th centuries. Anthropologists assume the prehistoric New England fish-gathering process was similar if not exactly the same, because many other customs associated with Western tribes were identical to those of their Eastern cousins.

Although the fish-gathering process of Eastern and Western tribes was probably almost identical, there was a significant biological difference between Eastern and Western migratory fish, and a correlating difference in the way natives utilized the resource. Pacific salmon embark on their spawning runs in the fall, after the crops have been harvested, and were thus an important winter food for Western tribes that could easily store fish through the cold winter months. On the other hand, Eastern tribes used annual fish migrations to replenish their energy after a long winter, but could not store the fish through the hot summer months and thus could not depend on them as the staple of their winter diet. Presumably, the Eastern tribes capitalized on the fall spawning runs of freshwater species like brook trout for their winter food reserves, but such runs would not compare in volumn to the anadromous fish runs of spring. Thus the Eastern tribes had to rely more on preserved crops and natural plant foods, such as roots, nuts and dried fruits and berries, to survive winter.

Like many other important Native American archaeological sites in New England, the fish weir at Indian Dam has been buried by more than three centuries of  European dominance. The few native people who remain among us have to view the 17th century European invasion as a great volcanic eruption that buried a proud culture deep. Perhaps archaeologists of the new millennium will uncover long-buried native treasures like the fish weir in Montague City and bring them to light for future generations to enjoy and study.

Let’s hope so.

You never know where an ancient road through reclaimed hilltown forest will lead you, which is one of many reasons I enjoy traipsing through the Franklin hills of my ancestors, be it hunting or just poking around.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of the latter, chewing into acorns and beechnuts along the way to inspect the meat, picking up an occasional hickory nut, walnut or butternut out of pure curiosity, checking the availability of wild apples, scouring forgotten cemeteries, peering quietly into shaded squaretail pools for subtle movement along the stream bed, tracing the footprints of decayed farmsteads buried beneath a canopy of aristocratic hardwoods. Essentially, what I’m trying to do is get a handle on the status of wild food sources important to deer before moving into the busy bird-hunting season, which will monopolize my precious spare time until the December slugs fly. I’m pretty confident I have it pinned down by now, knowing things will change between now and snowfall, when the gray beech bark will stand out among skeletal hardwood trunks and limbs; but at this point I at least know where the feed is and isn’t, which may or may not be helpful come December.

Overall, it looks like a good year for hard and soft mast, with nuts plentiful on the ridges and apples similarly abundant high and low. Isn’t it funny how the yield of individual apple trees can vary so in the same old orchards? At one highland site I visited recently, on one level there were large, edible apples everywhere, big red ones that could have easily been sold in the Grade A bin at Green Fields Market. Then, on an elevation not 100 yards away in the same ragged fruityard, not an apple anywhere; good, tall, healthy trees, leaves dense, no apples. Although I’m certain there’s a scientific explanation, I don’t know it and feel no overwhelming urge to solve that puzzle just now. So I’ll just make a mental note of where the fruit is and where it isn’t for future reference — near future.

No less fascinating during my country meandering are the long-ago abandoned farms concealed in the densely forested uplands that were stripped bare a century and more ago except for stately tree lines bordering roads and stonewalls. You stand there looking at the massive footprint of a house and its outbuildings, the tidy stonewalls, the quaint, stone-armored cemetery, and wonder who was Malachi Maynard, buried nearby, and why did he come to our western hills from Westborough in 1767? How long did it take him to clear his land? How long after his departure did the forest return? Interesting stuff. Captivating.

Still curious about man and mission after returning home, I performed the cursory research needed to answer my questions, and in the process found a major discrepancy that presented a problem, that being what was true and what was not in the conflicting hard-covered history. How can one native minister remember as a young boy in the 1830s seeing the flames that completely destroyed Maynard’s dwelling house and outbuildings shooting from the windows, then another respected native reverend place Maynard’s descendants residing there in 1867? My guess is that the 1867 remembrance was written from afar by a man who had long ago left his hometown and ”assumed” Maynard descendants were still living where they had when they were his neighbors.

Assumptions like that are not helpful to future generations attempting to stitch together the Maynard legacy. For sure, such misinformation creates a lot of work that a little fact-checking at the time could have eliminated. But in defense of the 19th century historian who wrote it, fact-checking from faraway was no easy task back then, before motorcars, telephones and computers simplified such endeavors.

It’s amazing how well preserved and passable the old roads running between sturdy stonewalls remain; so easy to follow on foot, most still negotiable with narrow, 4-wheel-drive trucks like mine, particularly during the dry summer swelter. I was recently walking such a road with a hunting buddy, no kid, assessing the acorn crop when, out of the blue on our way back to the truck with three energetic spaniels, he asked me a simple question. He wanted to know why the road and others nearby have remained so open with little apparent use. I wasn’t certain I had the answer but gave it my best shot, speculating they were packed hard under a dense, sun-blocking canopy where the soil is rocky, shallow and less than rich. Thus, with limited travel and occasional clearing of inevitable blow-downs, the roads remain open for generations, if not centuries.

Uncertain after returning home that my spontaneous explanation had been on the mark, my cranial wheels started spinning like bald tires in a black mudhole. Isn’t it ironic, I thought, how the same factors that had driven hardscrabble, upland farmers west with the opening of the New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio Valley frontiers were now helping to preserve the long abandoned roads they traveled. With my mental pistons churning at high rpms, I went to my library to research the roads and hardy folks who built them. Not surprisingly, the research led me to my adjacent computer, where I Googled several keywords focused on roads and the towns they traversed. Sure enough, there it was in black and white — a recent court case involving the road we had walked and my friend had questioned me about. Come to find out, it had been approved in 1766 as a highway from Ashfield to Hatfield. That’s right, 1766 — before the incorporation of the two towns sandwiched between the destinations. And think of it: this road that can still be driven with a rusty Volkswagen Bug during the summer months was discontinued before the Civil War. Had such a road been carved through the fertile bottomland three miles east and discontinued during the mid-19th century, not a trace would exist today. But hilltown roads, some originally Native paths, have staying power. Posterity is the beneficiary.

Armed with this new information, I called my buddy before departing for work that night. The conversation went something like this:

You know that road you asked me about today?

Yeah.

Well, guess when it was discontinued?

No clue.

What if I told you 1845?

No way.

Yep, 1845. Can you believe it?

I can’t. Unbelievable!

I too found it incredible, even though I have studied that historic landscape, know it well and actually believe kindred spirits guide me through those woods, leading me to new discoveries relevant to my very being. Now maybe these woods have become more intriguing to my friend. If so, he’ll ponder the historical context from time to time when walking that road, alert, gun in hand, taking the quick route from one stand to another.

As for me, well, it’s just another revelation to harmonize my sense of place and being; all in the course of chasing a passion — actually two of them.

Hunting and history are intricately linked.

People often ask why I write about locations I’m unwilling to pinpoint. The answer is simple: Maps draw crowds that compromise special places, which soon lose their sacred status, be they fishing holes, deer stands, strut zones or historic sites buried under a forest canopy.

I found such a site just this week, one I had been trying to locate for weeks and would rather not share with grave-robbers. I guess how it came to me is most interesting, an example of how a persistent sleuth finds things once he puts his mind to it, reading, writing, ”asking around.” I call it discovery, a process that’s fascinated me since a boy, although, for some reason, I never found it in the classroom. Maybe that was my fault. But when you think of it, once you have the basics — the innate curiosity, the perseverance — who needs advanced classroom instruction and professorial scrutiny? Like the wise old man of a Dartmouth/Harvard pedigree once told me to conclude a short discussion about the philosophies of education: ”If all you learn in school is how to find information, that’s all you need.” That comment from an accomplished gent of a classical education hit me like a 10-pound sledgehammer to the kisser, a bull’s-eye. So, take heed class clowns: there is hope for all, with or without fancy academic degrees that are all too often earned by bootlicking and a, b, c, d, or all-of-the-above testing. I have met many with impressive credentials who couldn’t find their way home without a compass, eggheads who can dazzle you with facts, figures and Shakespearean verse but have no clue, no peripheral vision, no needle to meld their knowledge into something meaningful.

My latest local-history discovery occurred in Conway, along the so-called Seven-Mile Line, in woods I first explored before puberty, fishing, then in my teens, hunting partridge and deer, then horsing around in my friend’s 1972 Toyota Landcruiser, dubbed the ”Toyotski,” then shortened to ”Yotski,” a vehicle that produced incredible off-road adventure. Give us that Yotski, a come-along, 40 feet of heavy chain, and a chain saw, and we were unstoppable … believe me. But let’s not digress. I feel like I’m looking out the window on a bright spring day during expository-writing class.

The fact is that I had often danced around the periphery of the historical landmark I discovered this week. I probably even passed right through it but had no clue the cellar hole of Conway’s first settler was there. Cyrus Rice, a Barre man, built his home there in 1762 or ‘63, on a western elevation looking back toward Old Deerfield, in the so-called South East District of Deerfield, overlooking Sawmill Plain and Mill River, both part of the Long Hill Division West, if any of that makes sense. It does to me, and I suppose that’s all that matters. But it can be confusing, especially to an outsider reading Sheldon or other local 19th century historians for the first time. Even I — a native who’s explored the local woods for nearly two generations — had difficulty deciphering the location of this site from written description. In fact, had it not been for an impromptu stop at Hatfield’s Bradstreet Cemetery, Memorial Day, on an asparagus run, looking for the grave of a relative, I’d probably still be trying to figure it out. My sense from what I had read was that the Rice site was situated on the south side of Hoosac Road, overlooking Stillwater. I was wrong. It’s south of there, that’s all I’m saying. Sorry, fellas.

But back to Bradstreet, the cemetery, my wife relaxing in the car, me searching for the grave of Martha (Almira Sanderson) Field, sister of my great-grandfather, Willis Chapman Sanderson. I vaguely remember Ant Mattie as old, Hatfield’s oldest citizen, holder of its golden cane, still taking care of herself after passing the century mark on May 27, 1976, a rare bird. I probably would have found her grave had I not bumped into three cyclists stopped for a break at the graveyard, but I got gabbing and didn’t want to leave my wife in the car too long.

I recognized the pretty blonde lady in the group. She was from Conway and we had met somewhere. I couldn’t remember where. We spoke. She refreshed my memory. At a friend of mine’s memorial service. Of course. How nice to see her again, happenstance on a gorgeous spring afternoon. A man and woman, presumably spouses, accompanied her, they too from Conway. They happened to live along a road I’d been traveling recently while researching its earliest residents. I knew who they were once they introduced themselves, both behind me at Frontier Regional School, but I knew their older siblings. The three friends knew each other from their days as neighbors along my road of interest. They were familiar with the old trails from hiking and biking, horseback, snowmobile and dirt-bike riding. No, I couldn’t have found three better resources had I been searching. So I picked their brains about the discontinued roads I’d been studying on old maps when the man chimed in about the site of the early Rice farmstead. Bingo! I had what I’d been searching for without even asking. Not where I expected it, either. A wooden sign on a tree, to boot. I would find it. Sooner the better

The next day on the phone I delivered the good news to a friend who’s recently been exploring Conway with me. He also had some new information to chase down in my 4-wheel-drive truck, and the day was ideal for him. Me, too. So off I went, three dogs porta-kenneled on the truck’s bed, all of us eager for a little safari.

I picked up my friend and took a ride, circling a couple of hills, stopping to examine the outflow of a few abandoned roads, their paths back into the woods, and even found the gate to a road we’ve wanted to explore open, inviting us in. We drove all the way to a dead-end snowmobile bridge crossing a bog. We got out, both of us, three dogs, crossed the bridge, followed the road a short distance to a fork, got acclimated and turned back. Then off to a driveway the cyclists told me about, one that will bring you to the Rice homestead. We drove in but weren’t certain it was cool, so I decided to turn around and travel farther down the road to see if the male cyclist was home. He wasn’t. His son was. Said his dad was having lunch, would be right back. Soon Dad appeared, told us the easiest route to the marker, through private property. Said the landowner wouldn’t mind historical-research trespassers. Off we went to give it a shot.

We arrived at the driveway to the landowner’s home and drove in, perhaps a quarter-mile to a dwelling I had no clue was there, on that road I traveled many years ago. I got out and knocked, yellow labs barking, no answer from inside. We continued up the narrow road and came upon a bearded man wearing head gear and earphones, mowing grass down the side of the road toward us. I got out of the truck, explained our reason for being there, and he was friendly, accommodating, leading us right to the site a short distance up the gradual hill. The small wooden sign was there, head-high, behind it a small L-shaped cellar hole. According to Conway historian Rev. Charles B. Rice, the marked site was a later Rice home, the original stood 25 rods southeast. When my friend broke the news to our guide, he said there was another ancient cellar hole down the hill a bit. We went to it and, after a brief hunt, found a small, stone-clad depression, about 30 feet long, maybe 12 feet wide, sitting on a gentle elevation, sheltered in a hollow, spring brook nearby, loam black and fertile; a peaceful upland alcove in which to build an early home.

And to think it all began on a whim, a spontaneous graveyard visit.

Spooky, huh?

Next time, I’ll find Ant Mattie.

Promise.

An undisturbed snowplow ridge told the story: It had been months since a four-wheeled vehicle had driven the aboriginal trail that became a Colonial path, then a well-used thoroughfare from Williamsburg to Conway until discontinued around 1950.

Because the mud season hadn’t yet arrived, I decided to give it a shot, convinced I’d stay atop the solid, crunchy corn snow, confident the come-along and chain in my pickup’s bed would rescue us if needed, always a comforting thought. But we got through our little journey fine, no issues, then poked around briefly in a quiet hardwood forest, once the farmstead of 18th century rebel Perez Bardwell, a Whately man of hardscrabble Yankee temperament. Unusual name for the time, too.

I had traveled this intentionally unnamed, unimproved road many times in worse conditions, deeper snow, muddier, with chains fastened around my back tires. So I was confident my all-terrain treads would take us the short distance required without calamity, which, at midday, work in the foreground, I wanted no part of. An experienced four-wheeler never lets his guard down at this time of year, the absolute worst if the mud is right. I know. Seems I learn most lessons the hard way, including mud-caked misadventures. Guess it’s just who I am. But it’s gotten me this far and I’m too old to change.

My passenger was a Pennsylvania native who touched down in Conway some four years ago and, having a history background, is enthralled with the town and its 18th century pioneers. Of particular interest to the man, working on a book, is a fiery Bardwell soul brother named Samuel Ely, a disrobed Congregational minister who came to Conway from Somers, Conn., in 1772 and called our western hilltown home for 10 turbulent years. It was during his final year there, in 1782, that he whipped a frenzied mob into open revolt against the Massachusetts government and Hampshire County Court. Coined Ely’s Insurrection, the clamor proved to be a precursor to Shays’ Rebellion (1786-87), which brought western Massachusetts notoriety before the Constitution was written or George Washington was elected our first president.

Back in the day, Ely knew well the country we traversed, the roads, too, connecting Conway, Whately, Burgy and beyond. In fact, a road we sampled would have been his route from Conway to the Hampshire County Courthouse he and his insurgents assaulted. That’s why I showed my newfound historian friend the layout, for perspective, not to mention invigorating chatter. Our interests intersect in many local-history spheres and, come to find out, politics as well … a subject to approach on tip-toes with someone new.

Always searching for an excuse to visit my favorite haunts before turkey season and after a tough winter on deer, I was more than willing to show my companion the lay of the land, and the place Bardwell called home before moving around 1790 to Phelps, Wayne County, N.Y., where he died in 1815. A proud veteran of French and Indian War expeditions to Crown Point and Canada, then a Revolutionary lieutenant, Bardwell was a member of the mob that freed Ely from jail in Springfield, then briefly was held hostage by Northampton authorities trying to recover Ely. I knew Bardwell’s cellar hole from research following many deer hunts there, and thought it would be of interest to my passenger.

We pulled up to the intersection of two wooded trails and parked, releasing two of my Springers, Lily and Bessie, from their porta-kennels before taking a short trek, maybe 100 yards, to the flat wooded site at the base of a ridge. The first visible remains were stones from a barn’s foundation, then 100 feet east, a stone-clad cellar hole some 40 by 25 feet, no indication of where the chimney had stood, probably centered. A short distance east of the homesite was a small, clear, free-flowing spring brook, then, some 75 feet upstream, a stone foundation that crossed it, likely a barn judging from the high western foundation butted up against a shallow hill; no small barn, either.

During hunts and hikes covering bits of five decades and two centuries, I have identified many similar sites in those woods, reconstructing a lost world in my memory’s bedrock. It’s a fascination that lures me to such places, often alone, gun in hand, so it’s always a bonus to meet someone to share them with, especially folks who’ll respect and leave them undisturbed, no metal detectors, please. My companion on that day fit the bill.

Our first field trip was brief; too short, in fact; but I was able to point out future exploration routes along the way, ones we’ll revisit when the snow’s gone and the turkeys are gobbling. Once the mud dries, we’ll return for further inspection along roads that appeared iffy this week. Why push it? The day will soon come when I’ll be able to show him Morton’s mill, Elihu Waite’s farm, and the small home of Isaac ”Cider Marsh,” known before the turn of the 19th century for the spirituous liquors he distilled and, apparently, liberally consumed. Legend has it that people in the neighborhood back then referred to 30-barrel tanks as ”Marsh’s tumblers,” obviously a tribute to a man who could ”hold his liquor.” Yes, sir, they say old Cider Marsh was quite the boy, a throwback from way back, a local legend whose spirit still lurks in the damp watershed air. My newfound Conway friend and I will return to pull this damp, wooded, Marshy spirit deep into our lungs. From it will come lively conversation, a brisk walk, an energetic romp for my pets. It’ll be mutually beneficial. Stimulating on many levels. Physical, mental, spiritual. Especially the latter.

I guess it’s all about knowing the woods in a way not generally associated with hunting.

Like chasing ghosts, kindred spirits.

On the road again, me and an old codger, he a spry octogenarian.

We were following e-mail leads from Conway readers commenting on last week’s column about my visit to Conway’s first cellar hole, that of Cyrus Rice, circa 1763, now hidden in a manicured 350-acre wood lot. The tips led me to Shirkshire, to Poland, then a return to the Rice site for a guided tour by the owners, pleasant academics with warm affection for their land. And what is there not to love about it: cellar holes; a classic well; a spring hole nestled into a depression between two hemlock spines; discontinued 18th-century roads, likely former indigenous trails; even a stately, stone Seven-Mile-Line bound buried deep in the woods behind the old Otto Farm, which started its decline around 1960? That’s when owners Bill and Helena, and son Bill, started to fade. By 1965, both Bills were gone; Helena eight years later. Soon the big dairy barn and silos were gone and the farmhouse had melted into the background, along a well-traveled road, like so many before and after it. Some call it progress. I call it sad. Slow death by industrial revolution; the final days of family farming aimed at subsistence. Once prevalent in the valley and its rolling hills, family farms kept the countryside fresh and fertile, the meats and produce salubrious; organic, no preservatives or poisons. No wonder our ancestors worked so hard and lived so long before we discovered a ”better way,” one that polluted the earth, air and water in a greedy race to riches. But let’s not digress; back to my recent tips and trips, 87-year-old Harry Stafursky in tow, soaking it all in.

Harry grew up on Stafursky Farm, once a square, dual-chimney, hipped-roofed, colonial tavern that served North Shirkshire residents and passersby alike. The building is long gone, burned to the ground in the Sixties or early Seventies. The image in the minds of those who remember it is two massive chimneys standing sentry over the site. The few who remember the whole spread are getting fewer, soon to vanish like the buildings. But Harry remembers it well, lived it, cherishes the memories. So it was interesting to bring him along to view the remains of a large, early farm and mill site on the property of a neighboring landowner, a reader of this space, by chance a distant cousin of mine through the 1749 union of Jonathan Edson and Mehetable Lillie. Yes, a small world indeed, this Pioneer Valley; kinfolk up the ying-yang if you pay attention to such things. I do. Can’t get enough of it. If you don’t know who you are, what’s the sense of living? That’s the outlook that fills my sails.

But, back to the Shirkshire dwelling’s cellar hole, massive hearthstone capping a pile of rubble that once served as the footing for a large, walk-in colonial fireplace; nearby, the stone-clad remains of a significant barn; still farther down the discontinued road, remains of a major dam and millpond, presumably a sawmill and impoundment that provided lumber for construction, ice and sawdust for the milk house. The brook feeds Bear River. Know it well. Often fished the outflow by the bridge as a young man; productive. Who knows who lived there and built this dam? I’d like to piece it all together. The information is at the Registry of Deeds. Another day. No time now.

The next day, Sunday afternoon, we traveled to another part of town, unannounced, me and Harry, in search of the e-mailer whose husband had turned up a derringer in an uprooted tree near his North Poland home; entertainment for both of us, Harry and me. Uplifting.

We arrived at the intersection of Bullitt Road and North Poland and I looked around, trying to figure out which house it was. Then I remembered my dogs, three of them, cooped-up in their porta-kennels since Greenfield, anxious for a hilltown romp, maybe a swim. So we headed up Bullitt Road, toward a reservation, and followed a farm road into a mature hayfield, where we parked and released the animals, eager to scope out the area, figure out what critters had passed through. The dogs sprang through the field, noses on full alert, frolicking, as Harry and I remarked on the beautiful landscape and pleasant change in the air following a deluge.

As we spoke, I noticed chartreuse on the dirt road, then a capped horseback rider trotting up the road. She passed and I whistled the dogs into their crates before heading down the trail toward the road, where we bumped into the rider, doubling back. I stopped and asked if she knew anything about a derringer. She asked if I was Gary. We chatted briefly. She described where she lived, said she’d be along shortly. Harry was amused, tickled by the developments, the method to my madness, how it all seemed to come together on a wing and a prayer. I too was amused in a playful manner. I love hunting, finding things.

We pulled into the woman’s yard, got out of the car and waited. Soon the chartreuse was headed up the long U-shaped driveway. She pulled into the stable at the bend and put her Arabian horse up for the night before walking our way. She invited us in and showed us photos of the derringer, said she was expecting her husband, in the upper meadow, only he could open the safe. We went out on the deck to chat, then heard a tractor approaching. It was him, returning home. We exchanged pleasantries as he approached and he went inside to retrieve the rusty derringer, wooden handles rotted off, circa 1865, Springfield Armory, interesting relic. Who knows? Maybe the corpse was nearby.

When he returned with the pistol, we engaged in lively chat, dancing from one subject to another, Harry right in the middle of it, visibly pleased with the chatter. Then, when he started praising me and my interests, I stopped him, told him it was time to go, didn’t want to wear out our welcome or stir up my wife waiting at home, always a convenient excuse.

We hit the road and I drove Harry back to his place in Greenfield, a meandering route through Conway and Deerfield. In his parking lot, I declined a friendly invitation upstairs. He wanted to show me something. There would be another day. Maybe another Shirkshire jaunt, perhaps Cricket Hill, home of Conway historian Deane Lee, Harry’s late schoolmate, maybe even a visit to Cy’s cellar, South Part, Henhawk Trail. Who knows where our whims will take us? Who cares? It’s never boring, can be invigorating, often providing impetus for new journeys that keep life interesting, the mind active.

It’s all about discovery, equally satisfying for young and old. First, though, you must embrace it, and it you.

Harry knows.

Me too.