Mount Discovery Part 1
It was the Saturday of Labor Day weekend. My children had already returned to school, but not me, not this year. About seven in the morning, I found a well-worn walking stick in the coat room of my grandparent’s house. I moved quietly, conscious that my aunt and uncle were still asleep. I put on my hiking boots, trying to ignore the stiffness in my back from the muscle I had strained several days earlier. Walking quickly across the gravel driveway I ascended the moss-covered stone steps. Beautiful stone retaining walls surround the driveway, painstakingly built when labor was cheap during the Depression. As I climbed the hill, I was journeying into the past as much as the future. I was embarking upon a discovery of history, the natural world, and the possibility of an enduring connection to place.
The deer path was the only thing that allowed me to tentatively pick my way across what thirty-five years earlier had been a clearly established jeep trail. Soon I come to an old stone wall, the original purpose of which lies lost in the depths of time. Whether it was originally used to separate the sheep pasture from the potato field was as unknown as the thousands of Yankee farmers whose, laboriously constructed stone walls continue to crisscross the woods of the Northeast. It was a grim reminder that the labors of many of our lives may soon lie forgotten in the woods of the future.
