Betty’s Last Ride.

 

Since I’m selling Betty as part of the overhaul in my family’s transportation I thought a weekend camping in the Adirondacks with a friend would be the final jaunt for my pick up truck which has been a faithful steed on many an upstate journey. But surprise circumstances (thank God for out of town visits by old friends … of my wife’s) permitted another free weekend and I thought: Road Trip!

 

Considering, however, the heavy footwork of the recent backpacking trip in the mountains a road trip seemed a compelling alternative and a good excuse to log some final miles in the truck, maybe do some car camping in a state park something I hadn’t done since the backpacking bug bit.

 

The targeted area for the trip was New York State’s Central region. I’d wanted to further explore this area since first visiting it in summer of 2000 when I camped at Glimmerglass State Park near Cooperstown and had my first experience of the farmlands of New York. The region is a vast valley lying between the Catskill Mountains to the south and the Adirondack Mountains to the north and bisected by the Mohawk River-Erie Canal water route. I packed minimally jamming a sleeping bag, some long johns and extra socks, and some basic cooking gear into a rucksack. Lightness wasn’t an issue this time since I wasn’t going to have to be the mule for my stuff. I left Brooklyn on a Friday night a few hours before midnight.

 

As usual I fled the city via the Thruway. Motoring north I mulled over how far to go that night, what set of routes tomorrow might hold and hopes for good weather. I had that giddy feeling an unexpected trip brings to any freewheeling soul. Traveling alone I could expect free reign on all the behavior my wife would suffer: driving late, the windows down, smoking cigarettes, sleeping in the truck, and most of all no firm plan.

 

Made good time; factoring in an extended rest stop at one of those travel plazas to slap some cold water on my face and scan the map a while. In the early AM hours, about 10 miles south of Albany metro area limits, I ditched the highway for a state route near Selkirk. Within moments all trace of the tempo and pitch of the interstate vanished and I was the only vehicle moving on the road. The scant presence of any lights would have meant near total darkness but for a radiant full moon chroming the road, landscape and all else in its blue-white luminosity. I was making for NY 144 on a one lane road and each time it dipped I submerged in thick banks of fog. I hadn’t slowed down to the appropriate single digit miles per hour until an enormous stag materialized like some night apparition and darted away from me just in the nick of time. Speed adjustments followed immediately. The dense terrestrial vapors hovered above the ground in enormous sea-like patches stretching for miles; top lit by the moon, my black truck cresting out of them like a manta each time the road took a rise.

 

I continued on 144 through these surreal filaments until I came to Schoharie where I visited Old Stone Fort, a Palatine garrison, on my summer 2000 trip. At the road atlas designated attraction I looked out, then, over the near valley and was impressed by the clean health of it all. That was the day I fell in love with the state. (Old Stone Fort, by the way, has, among other things, a respectably thorough collection of state fauna somewhat folkishly exhibited in glass cases reminiscent of post-War school furniture achieving a sort of dusty, stopped time effect somehow.) In Schoharie the road intersected with state route 30 which I followed north for five miles to the town of Esperance. (Fifteen miles further north this same road is my usual exit off the Thruway into the central Adirondacks.) In Esperance I turned onto US 20. Driving west the scenic territory was rendered bright but flat in the night and knowing how much more dimensional it would be in full color I decided to find a cut off the road to park and get a few hours of sleep. That and the fact that it was 3 AM and I was down to one smoke, let’s call it a night. Found a discreet notch off the road and had said smoke while I wedged the seat belt anchors behind the seat so they wouldn’t jab my back and settled into a comfortable enough posture across the bench. I fell asleep looking at the Earth’s satellite through the windshield wondering why it was such a pleasure to be in a condition of near vagrancy. Was it relief from doing things some “right” or sensible way, or foregoing the comfort of a motel which I could easily afford? I suppose what felt so good was the sense of detachment, anonymity, and simplicity of style. Or maybe it was merely the indulging of a fantasy cousined to wayfaring in another time.

 

I glanced at my watch around 6:00 AM before really waking at 7, that last hour of contented dozing accompanied by the thrum of Saturday’s early commerce, trucks lumbering along. I brushed my teeth there mildly contemplating in the day light the notch off the road where I had laid over. A few moments later, wheeling onto the road, pointing west, I anticipated the first place where I could gas up Betty and get my necessary road trip fuels too. Breakfast was coffee, an egg sandwich and a small sack of beef jerky. The early morning sky and atmosphere suggested it was going to be a perfect day. A crisp, even light filled the truck cab and calmly heightened all the plain things near me. The coffee cup, the map, a curl of smoke sucking toward the window gap. Plain. Comprehensible. Driving along I was immersed in an arc of waking farms, undulating green ground and fences that lunged parallel to Betty as she coursed along happily in her element. Continuing on US 20 I was skirting north of Glimmerglass State Park and Cooperstown. From this point on I faced unexplored road. I did turn off at one point to investigate a KOA just to see what they’re all about. One word: RV’s. Wonder lodges of the itinerant retiree, deployed here like giant Easter eggs among the grass. Some wives were out for their early morning brisk walks while a couple of old codgers cranked up their Coleman stoves for breakfast. Acts summarily considered as the taking off and the putting on of fatty foods. I say go for it. You worked all these years; you have the right to decline just however you like. I admire that the underlying motif is being out in a campground and not in some high-rise condo. Although, would they if they could? I don’t know. At some point appearances have to stand for the facts and I'll accept that this is exactly what they want to be doing.

 

At route 28 I opted north. Approaching Mohawk the road suddenly drops several hundred feet in a trio of rollercoaster descents and bottoms out at the same named river. The appellation invokes the historical fact that not so long ago this was Indian land which became settled first by frontiersmen; then colonists; then citizens. The Remington gun factory and museum here attest to the necessaries of peacekeeping and trading in those times. This town, like others in the region, would have been a distant point on the long routes between centers like New York and Boston and Buffalo, a mile marker of respite and restocking stores along a rugged way.  The Erie Canal extending the river and the advent of railways would have brought towns like Mohawk out of obscurity but I would suspect right up until the development of modern highways this was considered territory far flung from the big cities at either end of New York. In considering how distant home seemed now in the midst of this expansive countryside and all the miles I’d driven to get here, I sensed a cross temporal connection to that frontier heritage. Feeling, I suppose, some pulse of the region’s history and a celebration of regionalism itself, whatever shreds of it are left in the wake of its effacing forces is what impels me to roam like this. 

 

Much has been discussed of America’s migration west and for me any road trip oriented west, however short, resonates with that history as a kind of reenactment. I think there is even more to be discussed about travels that follow the sun’s path versus those that counter it. To travel west is to move with the grain of time and when that travel and time are ended it is a kind of petit mort.

 

 

North of the river I kept on 28 through Herkimer and on up to Remsen passing from Herkimer County to Oneida County. This area is just outside the western boundary of the Adirondack Park but incrementally north enough from where I’d started this day to evoke small modulations in the terrain and atmosphere. Pines made their appearance in thick stands among the blazing foliage of the hardwoods, a more mineral edge in the grass’s color, the pastoral scenery more nuanced. Compact towns displayed well preserved classic architectural styles in their older homes and work places detailed with stained glass windows, stout stone chimneys, gables, and wrap around porches. A backdrop of clean sky and even plating of gold light highlighted the scenes. Like other migratory creatures I was homing in on a nameless destination guided by internal compass.

 

In Remsen I turned onto a county route west to connect with NY46, the way to Pixley Falls State Park. This segment ratcheted up the headiness of the previous scenery and towns were becoming more distantly spaced. The drive funneled me through banks of innumerable trees packed across slopes like gigantic pixels of the classic autumn palette: bright, flaking yellows, deep oranges, bouquets of crimson and in tow the greens of their unchanged siblings. Consistent with the day’s mileage some sort of stream, brook or river wound its way astride or across my truck and me. The slow rise of land could barely be detected but a surprise gap on the route allowed a view back to an immense swath of valley which had as its probable horizon the general area I’d woken up in. It was a breathtaking vista evoking a Thomas Hart Benton-like agrarian idealism of beauty and bounty. A vast hatch work of furrowed earth and paling stalks quilted the hips and troughs of ground, staked here and there by silos and brick colored swatches of barn sides.

 

A moment of anti-climax occurred at Pixley Falls when I read a posted sign: camping was closed for the season. Before leaving home I had checked a state website for which campgrounds were open south of the river but hadn’t for up here so it had been a gamble anyway. I was halfway to Boonville so I proceeded there and paused there for some map reading and decisions about the rest of the day.  I half thought about heading into the Adirondacks for a camp site but that would deflect from the region I’d meant to focus on. I didn’t mind the idea of retracing 28 all the way back through Mohawk but when I did a U-turn in a church parking lot in Boonville and Betty made a suspicious noise I got a rush of adrenalin and thought, oh no! don’t break down on me way out here. Okay, this was incentive for shortening the tether on this frivolity. In the six years I’ve had this truck and the numerous trips it has made into New York State, New England and as far south as Maryland it had never broken down or even faltered. Considering I got it at 115,000 miles and it was going to hit 170,000 on this trip it had performed well but I prayed the swan song didn’t include a tragic note. I guess it was a caught branch or something because nothing bad happened to diminish Betty’s record for reliability as a road hound.

 

Entering Otsego County on 28 I had gone full circle and was soon tunneling through the woods abutting the west shore of Canadarago Lake spaciously dotted with older lakeside houses appended with prim little piers. You could tell living there was all about the water. Pontoon boats, sleek hulled motorboats and little skiffs were variously moored. Some kids scuttled around on the piers, others fished lackadaisically.

 

South of the lake the road returned again to the open country of the state’s meadowed vale, I happily meandering under a borderless ceiling of blue suffused with the high sun’s radiance and hung with mare’s tail clouds. The road pitched and fell and leaned into the flanks of the October land as I made for Gilbert Lake State Park.

 

It had been two years since I'd camped in a state park and as I drove around the site loops to find a good spot I was surprised to feel more acutely than I’d expected, differences from my backcountry mountain hikes. It’s apples and oranges really but the campground had a welcome docility. This, like other New York campgrounds I’ve stayed in, was mixed grassy and wooded areas situated around a lake, impeccably clean and sheltered respectful guests contentedly sequestered in their own tent side industry. I staked out my spot and then went for a walk down to the lake, a glacial scar of about 40 acres. At the water’s edge a hem of trees grew out of their blurred rejoinders impressionistically feathering the lake’s mirror with the fall spectra.

 

Back at my site I set up camp, puttering around with satisfaction: pitching my tent, getting a fire going, rustling up the ridiculous foods I bought in the last town. For dinner I had a 99 cent loaf of white bread and a pack of hot dogs to work with. I chuckled at the thought of the diced vegetables on my dish, steamed loose from their frozen brick, resembling a personal size serving of the seasonal landscape: green, orange and yellow. I traded some packaged chocolate chip cookies with my neighbors for a much appreciated Sprite. Breakfast would be a jumbo can of Campbell’s meat and potatoes soup plus a couple of those cookies dipped in the evaporated milk I bought to go with some instant coffee. The Folger’s had been in my truck for at least one year, drop forged through winter and super-heated in the summer, it had petrified into a slanted wedge in its jar but I wasn’t giving up on scraping out a cup’s worth. Of course, this is exactly what camp-o-phobes fear the food will be if they ever have to go. I had shopped cheap, easy and dispensable on purpose. My only requirement of a meal here was warm mass and it tasted great. The rest of the evening I idly stoked the fire, listening to muted end of day chat among other campers.

 

In spot 67 my tent was pitched off to the side on a flat of lush grass centered in a circle of 100 foot pines naked three quarters of the way up. Their lofty branches ringed a perfect disc of sky animated in the dark by the rotating template of constellations and the arcing trajectories of combusting interstellar debris and for a period the false incandescence of a full moon. I fell asleep to these movements visible through the skylight of my tent’s ceiling, the two circumscribed portals like ends of a towering telescope.

 

On Sunday I burned the last little firewood while I broke down the camp. I packed up Betty and set off on routes decided over breakfast, a course which reckoned a want to wander with the requirement to not stray too far and roughly bend home. South of the campground I traveled on route 7 which parallels the Susquehanna River, a magnificent stretch of road which passes yet more lovely farms. Iconic white and green farm homes, broad red barns with mansard roofs and attendant wells, sheds, pens, hen houses and spines of fencing planted across the hills and pasture sat with healthful dignity in their bucolic order and strained quietly to recall a pastoral ideal only occasionally betrayed by oversized carbon colored satellite dishes.  Route 7 wound beside the river past produce stands with pumpkins, knobby gourds and Indian corn and yard sales with tempting tables of junk and on through noiseless small towns. One of these towns, Unadilla, with dark red banners on lamp posts along its main street informed passers-through it is the hometown of Boy Scout Troop 1.

 

Further on trout fishing camps showed themselves to be the local preference in a campground lifestyle. “Ready to catch fish?” dared a billboard. The occupants of these sites and their various RV’s and pop-up trailers seemed a contented riparian society. In Sidney, with not a little resignation, I wheeled east across the Susquehanna for the final section of my tour. Route 206 due east climbed out of the valley into the western foothills of the Catskill Mountains. Elevated panoramas of the lowlands showcased rural junctions like toy villages nestled in the crooks of the hills.

 

A county road loop detoured from 206 down to the Cannonsville Reservoir, one of the several huge water reserves upstate owned by New York City. I threaded through the two prongs of the reservoir’s north end and turned to cross and cross back, just for the fun of it, a municipal works bridge whose coordinates are in the middle of a many mile diameter lake surface corralled by mountains crenellated in burnished colors like flames ravaging the forest canopy. When the loop returned to 206 I was near adventure’s end. Towns became more robust and active with the easily spotted city antique hunters as I got nearer to the Catskills border. The East Branch of the Delaware River flanks the west side of the park preserve and turning south it’s only a short drive on it before coming to Route 17 where an access ramp thrust me back on the highway and suddenly, brashly, I’m the other cars hurtling who knows where.

 

I’m a lover of the road trip. Wending country byways and taking in the scenery is a pastime of limitless gratification for me. I don’t necessarily forge acquaintances but what conversation there is on the way is usually friendly; I can rely on returning home with a sense of camaraderie with those there by simply having visited the far flung habitations of my countrymen. Seeing the lay of towns and the routes between them, smelling the country earth, pondering the atrophied muscle of old mills and factories, these things make map points mean something more to me than mere names. I always feel like my truck runs better too on a trip like this. I’ve come to know its hum as well as its tired groans when it’s time to rest. Betty has been my wheels, a carriage for stowed equipment and yard sale trophies of the trip, a living room, bedroom and a widescreen for un-programmed viewing. I can count on more trips in cars to come but it will take many miles for any of them to achieve the stripes this truck has earned and I hope where ever it goes will be a kindly fate too. Buyer be alerted: she likes out.   

 

 October 2003