Tag Archives: Bristol Hills Trail

F.L.T. and Me

Leave a reply

I was excited when we moved from Bloomfield to Bath, back at the end of 1995, because we’d be living close to the Finger Lakes Trail. And in the spring, guided by my official Steuben County road map, I started thoroughly enjoying it. It must have been a year or two later that I pulled a membership brochure from the registration box east of Aulls Road on M13, figuring that if I was going to keep walking on the trail, I ought to pay something to help with the upkeep.

And on I went, cheerfully hiking, until late October 2005, when I started to feel – off. And on November 1 I crashed. Losing weight. Dropping blood pressure. No interest in food. Constantly falling asleep. Losing muscular strength. Forgetting things. And feeling cold – horribly, horribly cold. I’d lie in a warm bath as long as I could manage, but would soon be shivering again. Our cat was my best friend, pressed up against me as I lay covered up in bed wearing multiple layers of clothing.

Not much hiking in the spring of ’06, though I just managed to lead a hike uphill along the Mitchellsville Gorge. As we approached the County Route 13 my vision suddenly became like a photo negative for about sixty seconds, and that was the last hike. By June I had lost almost 60 pounds, and I couldn’t sit up without a chair back to support me. I figured that I had less than a month to live, and most of my family and friends figured the same. At just about the last possible moment doctors pulled the right diagnosis out of a hat. Addison’s Disease – a vanishingly rare wasting condition, incurable but easy to treat, with steroids twice a day to replace those that my body no longer generates. I started taking them on a Saturday, and on Tuesday noticed just a little spring in just a few steps. One August day I had an explosion of strength and energy, climbing steep trails all over Mossy Bank Park.

But that was it. Just one day. I ate again, I regained weight, I stayed awake, I no longer suffered that Dante-esque cold – but I was still worn down, and beaten down. In February ’07 our elder son Josh dragged me out to Penn Yan and Keuka Outlet Trail, and we managed a few hundred yards each way, despite a cold wind and about three inches of snow. After we finished I was shaking at Dunkin’ Donuts – not from cold, but from depletion.

We went back a week later, and we even got an early spring that year, with snakes and frogs and turtles and all. I’d walked the entire route (a rail trail) before, and with Josh’s help determined to do it again, and by summer I had! (Twice, in fact, walking out and back in segments.)

I returned to the FLT, and at some point I completed walking the Main Trail from one side of Steuben County to the other. (Twice) Then I decided that I would work very deliberately on my recovery by completing Bristol Hills Trail. I had done much of B3, so piece by piece I finished it below Bean Station Road, then went on toward B2. The BHT has a lot of ups and a lot of downs, and some are steep and some are long, so it was a struggle for a guy doing this in order to recover his strength. And in early July of 2010 I walked from the north and west into a little shop in Naples and celebrated with a sandwich for finishing the BHT. Once I’d hiked back to my car I gave myself a round of applause for having end-to-ended it twice.

It took me a couple of years to get the new Crystal Hills Trail done (twice), and a couple of weeks later I started on the wonderful Interlaken Trail, just finishing (twice) before winter weather set in.

Being alone in the woods and the fields gives my PTSD soul a world of good. But now… literally… where do I go from here?

Though my Addison’s is under control, I still only get a few hours of output each day, and that’s EVERYTHING – hiking, driving, paying bills, writing articles, washing dishes – whatever. So driving an hour, hiking for two hours, and then driving back, withdraws four hours from the bank for that day, which is pretty close to the limit.

Soooo… I re-hike trails, of course. I’ll surely do the Interlaken again, and probably the Crystal Hills. I’ve just replaced my maps, so I’ve already started doing re-routes. There’s much of the Greenway Trail I haven’t done, and trails in Keuka Lake State Park. I’m doing the Outlet Trail again this year (and I’m almost done!).

It’s a blessing that my wife and our sons are incredible supporters, and are willing to live with my limitations. I owe the world to them, and to Josh in particular for dragging me out that day… and to my doctors… and to the Outlet Trail… and to the Bristol Hills Trail. And to the Finger Lakes Trail, a footpath across New York [the parts I can easily reach, anyway], forever.

The Finger Lakes Trail is the Cemetery Trail

The cover of the latest Finger Lakes Trail magazine bears a photo of Six Nations Cemetery in Orange. And rightly so. Perched on a little prominence above Kelly Hill Road, the cemetery offers a glorious view of Lamoka Lake, surrounded by the rolling fields and hills of Schuyler County. The very old cemetery itself is carefully kept, and you can wander quietly among the antique stones, musing on the folks and families who lie here, perhaps forgotten in practical terms, except for the enduring stones.

*You’d have to work to find that spot. It’s one of many treasures hidden throughout our region. The F.L.T., as it turns out, can give us a tour of interesting cemeteries and burial grounds.

*The small Six Nations is on F.L.T. Map 13. Near Birdseye Hollow County Park (also F.L.T. Map 13, but 20 trail miles away from Six Nations), is another small rural cemetery, in Bradford. It’s only a few steps off of Telegraph Road to the south, but not really visible from the road, though the Trail runs right by. Unfortunately word gets around, and it’s still close enough to the road to be prey to vandals.

*Map 12 guides us near the huge Pleasant Valley Cemetery in Urbana, just outside Hammondsport. It’s rightly noted as the burial place of aviation giant Glenn Curtiss, along with other motorcycling and aeronautical pioneers. Curtiss’s family plot is marked by a huge boulder. When he was buried, three future World War II admirals were pallbearers, and ten airplanes flew overhead to drop flowers on the crowd.

*Glenn’s old friend and associate Bill Chadeayne has a mausoleum. A key man in the early days of Mercury Aircraft, Bill made a punishing coast-to-coast motorcycle odyssey over a hundred years ago, struggling from New York to Los Angeles in under 48 days… a record in those frightening days when there was no road at all between Denver and Omaha.

*Six Nations Cemetery, as we mentioned, is on a bit of high ground, and it used to be typical to site cemeteries in space that was high, or sharply sloped, or otherwise undproductive. But Pleasant Valley sits right smack in the midst of a long flat stretch of excellent farmland… an indication of how imporant it was to the early inhabitants.

*Sliding over to the Allegany County Line, West Pennsylvania Hill Cemetery is on F.L.T. Map 9, just a little off the Main Trail but on the hunting season bypass (Webb Road), and also on a spur trail that leads down to Kanakadea County Park. This is a lovely well-kept cemetery, and also offers a little parking potential for the hiker.

*There are two major F.L.T. Branch Trails in Steuben County. The Bristol Hills Trail rises from the Main Trail (Map M 12) in Wheeler and runs on north of Naples, in Ontario County. Just where the trail starts to climb south of Bean Station Road on Map B 3 is the beautiful walled Covell Cemetery, lovingly restored and cared for by the late great Bill Garrison. I haven’t been up there in several years, so I can’t speak to its current condition. We can only hope.

*The Crystal Hills Trail rises from the Main Trail at Map M 13 in Bradford, and thence south to the state line. When you’re heading south on Map CH 2 in Addison, you come out of woods into burying grounds… Addison Rural Cemetery, St. Catherine Catholic Cemetery, and Maple Street Cemetery… before turning toward the heart of the village.

*And on Map CH 3 in Tuscarora, with Pennsylvania almost in sight, you pass Liberty Pole School and Liberty Pole Cemetery, both echoes of bygone days when communities were small and widely spaced. As communities still do today, they banded together to give their children a good start in life, and to give their neighbors a respectful end.