Tag Archives: Finger Lakes Trail

F.L.T. and Me

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.

Hiking Into History (Part II)

Back in February we looked at a half-mile “history hike” on the Finger Lakes Trail (Map M12) in Pleasant Valley, northwest of State Route 54. Today we extend that hike by carefully crossing 54, still on the floor of Pleasant Valley, which already bore that name back in the 1790s. We can still see why.

Making our way up the slope of Mount Washington, pausing now and then to look backward… and depending on the foliage, on our elevation, and on the foliage below… we get a sense of the length and breadth of the valley. Even with a fair amount of acreage devoted to the cemetery, and more to a small airplane landing strip, we can see that much of it is still in cultivation or pasturage, just as it has been for at least 225 years.

On the far slope we can see the large buildings of what used to be the Columbia and Germania wineries. During the Great War Germania changed its name to Jermania, trying to duck anti-teutonic rage. The Taylor family bought Columbia during Prohibition. Since much of their sales lay in non-alcoholic juices, they were shielded somewhat from the Volstead Act and the 19th amendment.

In the 1960s Taylor bought the nearby Pleasant Valley Wine Company, makers of Great Western champagne. Founded a hundred years earlier, “P.V.” remains U. S. Bonded Winery # 1 for its state and federal district.

Taylor grew to be second only to Corning Glass Works as an employer in Steuben County. Distant corporate owners closed it in the 1990s, though local investors retrieved Pleasant Valley from the wreckage, operating from more modern facilities across from the old Columbia site, which is now home to Finger Lakes Boating Museum.

Adjoining P.V. is the Mercury Aircraft campus. Founded in 1920 as the Aerial Service Corporation, Mercury is a historic institution all on its own. Before World War II they built and serviced airplanes, and during the war made mountains of components for Curtiss-Wright in Buffalo. That experience taught them to handle those rare materials plastic and aluminum, which would serve the excellently in the postwar world.

Finally reaching the top of the slope, we walk roughly eastward along the crest to the blue-blazed June Big Trail, leading down to the Glenn Curtiss Museum. Photos from February of 1908 show that this snowy slope was where Glenn Curtiss and his colleagues experimented with hang gliders as research for their first airplane.

“June Bug” was the name of their third airplane, for which Curtiss was lead designer. Their flying field was off to our left, next to a barn that still stands as Building 88 on the Mercury campus. There a thousand people gathered on the Fourth of July, 1908 to watch Curtiss fly the first exhibition flight in America, winging a mile across the valley. Besides garnering a large ostentatious trophy from Scientific American, that flight marked the first time an airplane was filmed in America. It was the start of an aeronautical career that would turn Curtiss into a historical figure and a multimillionaire.

Drawings of Building 88 (the Stony Brook Farm barn) go back to the 1860s, but the Curtiss Museum, originally a wine warehouse, is far newer. The C-46 Curtiss Commando (R5C in navy lingo) cargo/troop carrier out front was one of thousands of such workhorses in World War II – once again, Mercury made components.

Continuing easterly, we should recognize that much of this land was cleared for farm or pasture in the 19th century. In the 1790s, farmers here on Mount Washington spent weeks each winter hauling their grain to Naples by sledge, since there was noplace closer to mill it.

We come out on the Winding Stair Road, and the trail moves southward. Turn northward, though, and you may get a feel for how steep the road becomes. Glenn Curtiss and J. S. Hubbs made local history in 1901, when they drove a one-cylinder Orient Buckboard all the way from bottom to top, ushering in the motor age.

After a northward short walk we can leave the road on the east side to take up the Triad Trail, a short non-F.L.T. spur. The Triad was a 1911 Curtiss model, the first practical amphibious float plane, which could go in the air, on the water, and onto the land. The Trail leads to a height from which we can see the village of Hammondsport, with the cleft of the Glen rising above it, and a good view of Keuka Lake, including where the train chugged up to the village waterfront, where passengers and cargo interchanged onto or off of steamboats making their way up to Penn Yan. (An 1803 schooner preceded the steamboats, which ran until 1922.)

Kingsley Flats down below, bounded by the Inlet, the school and the public beach, was the Curtiss flying field – wheeled airplanes on the land side, seaplanes on the lake side. The first woman pilot in America made her first flight down there – so did the men who created the air arms for the American and Japanese navies. Curtiss created the flying boat seaplane down there. On a typical day before World War I there were more airplanes on the Flats than in most entire countries.

The Indian trail that came along our Fish Hatchery Road reached the head of the lake at today’s Hammondsport, where it divided, just as Routes 54 and 54A do now, into a path hugging the east shore of the lake path and a path hugging the west.

So our walk along this stretch of the F.L.T. embraces the Native footpath; the horse-and-wagon Fish Hatchery Road; the steamboats; the B&H Railroad; the old bicycle sidepath; the birth of motorcyling; the pioneer days of aviation; the new auto age, which made a road up “hospital hill” desirable; and, returning to the earliest days even before the Iroquois, the newer footpath of the Finger Lakes Trail.

Hiking Into History

It’s not the best hiking weather just now, but better days are coming, so I’ve been looking at some of my maps and doing some planning.

Hiking is a good way to connect with nature, but there are certain stretches that also connect us with history as we hike. And we can pack in a huge amount of history on a single half-mile in section M12 of the Finger Lakes Trail, in the Town of Urbana near Hammondsport.

We can pick up the trail at County Route 88 in Pleasant Valley, just about across from the Urbana town building. Heading westward we pass through a lovely vineyard… how fitting for Pleasant Valley… then dip down a short slope into the woods, and over a footbridge across the Keuka Inlet, near where it receives Mitchellsville Creek. A short distance more, and we connect with history by crossing the old (disused) Bath & Hammondsport Railroad. We’ve been walking more or less in step with the train tracks, the stream, and the Fish Hatchery Road.

All of which illustrates how geography formed the settlement and economic patterns of the area. The rivers and lakes were highways back in the 1790s, and Keuka Lake at Hammondsport was joined to the Conhocton River at Bath by Pleasant Valley… a long portage between the two bodies of water.

Slopes rise on either side, constricting travel. Five highways laid out over centuries overlie each other here, roughly following the stream: a footpath going back probably before Iroquois days; the Fish Hatchery Road; the B&H; a turn-of-the-century bicycle sidepath along the edge of Fish Hatchery; and yet another footpath, the Finger Lakes Trail, proving that the more things change the more they stay the same.

AT LEAST as far back as the 1820s there were schemes to dig a canal along the route… that never happened, but the railroad bridged the gap in the 1870s.

The railroad carried out tons of grapes and numberless gallons of wine, making both enterprises truly successful in the Hammondsport area. They also carried out first motorcycles and then airplanes for Glenn Curtiss. Without the B&H he could not have created his industrial operations. He might have ended his days in obscurity at the bike shop, or he would have had to move… at least to Bath… and make someplace else the “Cradle of Aviation.”

With separate railroads coming in to Penn Yan and Hammondsport, Keuka Lake also became a tourism destination, with visitors connecting from the train to the steamboat, then being whisked away to lakeside resorts. Finger Lakes tourism came to be in the years after the Civil War.

Back at the road you’ll find the lovely Grange hall a few rods down to the left, with wineries and Hammondsport beyond, but dominating all else is Pleasant Valley Cemetery. Charles Williamson gave land in the 1790s for a school-and-cemetery lot. The school continued until the 1950s and was succeeded by a Mennonite church, and that property is now private. But thousands rest in the still-active cemetery, where Glenn Curtiss was brought home in 1930 at the age of 52; ten airplanes flew overhead and dropped flowers on the crowd.

To the right, the road swings around toward the fish hatchery and Bath. Alexander Graham Bell cane this way to visit Glenn Curtiss in 1908, and young Curtiss traveled it himself, on his bike a decade earlier. Charles Champlin in the 1930s biked this way to Bath for cornet lessons… generals and admirals used the route to insect the airplane factory during World War I. Thirty-four year-old lawyer Benjamin Bennett drove by horse this way on business in 1861, becoming the first Hammondsporter to learn that the Civil War had begun. When he got to Bath, he enlisted on the spot.

Continuing eastward on the F.L.T. we cross the very busy State Route 54, which turned Fish Hatchery into a byway when it was opened after World War II. Horses, oxen, mules, and early motor vehicles would not have managed that hill. Modern vehicles do, and that’s also history.

The Finger Lakes Trail — a Regional Trasure

When we first moved to Bath from Holcomb, I got a map of Steuben County. And there, running a whimsical route from east to west (or west to east) was a broken line labeled “Finger Lakes Trail.” So I drove out to one of those spots where the trail crossed a road, and started following the white blazes. And I’m still following, 23 years later.

*The F.L.T. is a hiking trail, “a walk in the woods,” or occasionally across fields, now and then along roads, once in a blue moon on village streets, as in Watkins Glen and Burdette.

*The Main Trail goes between Catskill State Park and Allegany State Park, meaning you can hike the 580 miles from one to the other, all across the Southern Tier. By far most of it is on private land, with access through the generosity of the property owner. Nearly every foot of it was laid out and created by volunteers, and nearly every foot is also maintained by volunteers.

*A 1962 meeting at Keuka College laid plans to emulate the Long Trail in Vermont, and set up the Finger Lakes Trail Conference. It took years to finish actually creating the Trail, and the whole system now adds up to a thousand miles of hiking.

*That includes half a dozen major Branch Trails. The longest is the 180-mile Conservation Trail, with one terminus near Niagara Falls, and the shortest is the 12-mile Interloken Trail in the Finger Lakes National Forest, overlooking Seneca Lake. Letchworth Trail runs the length of the park along the gorge. Onondaga Trail is south of Syracuse. The Bristol Hills Trail has one end by the Jump-Off Point north of Naples, and the other end near Mitchellsville. The CRYSTAL Hills Trail runs from Bradford southward (through the Village of Addison) to the state line. It’s the northern end of the Great Eastern Trail, which runs (walks?) all the way to Alabama.

*For much of its route the Main Trail also carries the Great Northern Trail, from Lake Champlain to the middle of North Dakota. Then there are spurs (usually to amenities, or to points of interest), or loops, such as one around Queen Catherine Marsh and one through Montour Falls.

*One two occasions while hiking the trail I’ve suddenly been at the center of a cloud of songbirds, circling all around by and chirping away. Twice I’ve had the same experience with butterflies.

*I often see deer while hiking, occasionally foxes, once a fisher. Squirrels and chipmunks are commonplace, of course, but near Birdseye Hollow County Park is a colony of black squirrels, actually a naturally-occurring color variant of the gray. In the right places, I find beavers or muskrats.

*I know two places where there are flocks of bobolinks. I’ve encountered hairy woodpeckers, and peregrine falcons. I’ve watched the turkeys range through fields, or settle into their trees as night draws in. There are gorges and waterfalls, some of which must wait for days before someone hikes out to see them. In one place, the Trail goes through a vineyard.

*Hiking the Trail is a walk through history on one-time roads, or farm tracks, or railroad routes. In the woods of Bradford you skirt an almost-forgotten country graveyard. Near Campbell, and again in Liberty Pole, you pass one-room schools. In Howard (drainage ditch) and in Bradford (evergreen plantation) you hike through the work of Civilian Conservation Corps lads, during the Great Depression. In multiple places you hike across stretches flooded in 1935 and 1972.

*In Urbana you’re walking where Glenn Curtiss flew, and passing the cemetery where he lies buried. A spur route down to Curtiss Museum descends the same slope down which Glenn and his friends experimented with hang gliders in the snow, back in 1908. You cross the route of the first Grand Prix. At some points you look down on Keuka Lake, Seneca Lake, Canandaigua Lake.

*After a year or two I stopped at a Trail register box, signed in, and pilled out a Trail Conference membership form, figuring that since I walked on the thing so much, I should at least pay some dues toward upkeep, and so I still do, every year.

*At 4 PM on Friday, September 6, F.L.T.C. Board member Laurie Ondrejka will make a presentation about the Trail for Steuben County Historical Society’s quarterly lecture. It’s a free presentation at Bath Fire Hall, and we hope you’ll join us to hear about this regional treasure.

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.

On the Letchworth Trail

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Well, I finally finished hiking the Letchworth Trail. Took me from June 2015 to September 2017 to manage 25.2 miles. On the other hand, since I did it in sections – hiking from my car, then retracing my steps – I actually hiked it twice.

*Letchworth Trail is a major branch of the Finger Lakes Trail system, and in fact it reaches the Main F.L.T. a little bit south of Portageville, in Wyoming County. This is the southern terminus of the Letchworth Trail, and the northern terminus lies in Mount Morris… 25.2 miles away. Except for a very short stretch at each end, the entire trail lies in Letchworth State Park.

*Wonderful!, I hear you say. This means incredible vistas in the “Grand Canyon of the East!”

*Well, not so much. Except right near the “dam site,” most of the trail is in the woods, set back from the gorge and actually closer to River Road. There are several spur trails that hikers can take to scenic overlooks. Access spurs in the other direction reach out to River Road.

*By the time I started the Letchworth Trail I had already finished the entire F.L.T. In Steuben County, plus the Bristol Hills Trail, the Crystal Hills Trail, the Interlaken Trail, and loop trails in Montour Falls and in Queen Catharine Marsh.

*But getting to Letchworth involved a lot of wheel-spinning. My wife experienced repeated severe health problems, and we suffered several out-of-state family deaths. With the trail an hour’s drive from our home in Bath, it just seemed like a slope too steep to climb. Inertia did its dirty work.

*Until a hot June Sunday when things were going pretty well, and our younger son was at home, and after church we all agreed that this would be a great day for it. I drove up to Mount Morris, parked at the access off Route 36 where Letchworth Trail terminates at the Genesee Valley Greenway, and plunged into the wilds of the Livingston County Campus. Then into Al Lorenz County Park, a pleasing setting shaded by tall old trees. Then into Letchworth Park, past the F.L.T. office, and across the parking lot to the dam. That was my goal for the day, and I’d completed 1.9 miles of the trail.

*I admired the gorge for a while, used the rest room, poked around the dam’s visitor center, and headed back (reversing 1.9 miles) for my car. I got there a little later than I might have, as I spent some time in a field watching a red fox.

*On my next trip I started at the visitor center and spent some time watching the soaring vultures before I struck out for the south. After that, from time to time, I did the trail piecemeal, from various points, though working generally north to south. I met chipmunks, and squirrels red and gray. I met vultures and blue jays, chickadees and pileated woodpeckers. I met hikers and cyclists and hunters, and monarch butterflies. I knew the park in summer, spring, and fall, and it was good.

*All in all, except in Portageville and at the dam/Mount Morris end, these were supremely quiet hikes. Most days I met nobody else at all. To all intents and purposes, I had Letchworth Park all to myself as my own private domain.

*What’s the hiking like? First of all, the trail is excellently blazed – kudos to the volunteers who work at that. The trail itself is clear and easy to see at all seasons, and very well maintained, nice and solid underfoot. Most of the route is over pleasant, gently rolling terrain, with very few long slogs upward.

*But there are, unsurprisingly, ravines. Of course water runs downhill to the Genesee river at the bottom of the gorge, and on the way it collects into streams and watercourses that cut right athwart the trail. Most of these are dry for most of the year, but it’s still a matter of down into the ravine, across the (probably dry) streambed, and up the other side, maybe three to five times in a given walk… and then, if you’re hiking the way I did, back again.

*Getting there, although a bit of a drive from Bath, is half the fun. The country between the park and I-390 is farm-and-forest land, with barns and hamlets and miles-long vistas, and occasional hay wagons on the road. Closer to the park some of the roads are dirt, and you meet the Genesee Valley Greenway again. In fall the roaring combines devour the cornfields. Amish and Old-Order Mennonites make their quiet homes here. You can get gas, or something to eat, in Mount Morris, Portageville, or Nunda.

*The on-again, off-again opportunities to hike made the Letchworth Trail take on symbolic significance: when I could carve out time to go there, it meant that things were going well. Even when my wife was wheelchair-bound in late winter, we set this as the year that I’d finish the trail. I made a couple of trips, and then I was down to the last five miles – ten miles, by the time I’d done my round trip. Two hikes to go, and now we set September as the MONTH I’d finish.

*Saturday the sixteenth went well, despite the heavy fog, but the following Saturday the heat went well up into the eighties, and I wisely skipped it. A week later rain fell off and on, but I forged ahead, wearing my L. L. Bean duck shoes. After doubling back I followed a doe that was also using the trail, maybe twenty yards ahead and seemingly unaware of me. And on September 30, I finally finished the Letchworth Trail.

What I Did Next Summer

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It’s a joke or a stereotype… the September back-to-school assignment for an essay on What I Did Last Summer.
Well, I have some thoughts on what I want to do THIS summer. Some of them have actually been on the list for quite a while. But it seems like whenever I’m about to get started, some family member winds up in the hospital. Still, a man can dream… and try… so, what I’d like to do not just SOME summer, but THIS summer….

Visit Genesee Country Village. I’ve been there several times before, but not for quite a few years. In particular I want to walk the nature trails. I want to see the gallery of outdoor and wildlife art. And I want to see their reproduction Civil War observation balloon.
Two out of three of those are going to be weather dependent, of course. If weather permits, maybe I can squeeze in watching a game of “town ball,” that very early version of baseball.

Hike the Letchworth Trail. This is 26 miles along the east rim of the gorge, in Letchworth State Park. Had I been on my own theoretical schedule, I’d have finished two years ago. As it is, I haven’t yet started. Onward!

While I’m over thataway, visit the early 19th-century Mills Mansion in Mount Morris. Each year some of my American History students visit for one of their required projects, but I’ve yet to be in town and available at a time when it’s open. I’ve got to plan ahead and do that.

Tour the new wing at Corning Museum of Glass. I’ve had several invitations, but schedule hasn’t permitted. This summer I hope to make it happen.

Walk and bird-watch frequently in Mossy Bank Park, above Bath. My wife and I were just there this morning, now that it’s reopened for the season. An 1851 diarist wrote of how it had become a Bath fad to go up to Mossy Bank for picnics and rambling. And we’re still at it! Most seasons lately, we even have eagles and osprey.

Hit Cruisin’ Night in Penn Yan. That’s loads of fun with the crowds, the old cars, the open library, stores and restaurants. We miss it about as often as we hit it, mostly through inattention, but this year we’re trying to schedule it in. (June 19th!)

Play some miniature golf. At least as of last season there were courses in Bath, Penn Yan, Harris Hill, Corning, Wellsboro, and Watkins Glen. We still haven’t covered them all.

Spend a day at the Windmill. With all that hospitalization, we’ve missed the past two years. But wait till this year!

Walk in to Taughannock Falls. Mrs. Window on the West hasn’t had a chance to do that, but now we’ve actually got it in the calendar! (Weather permitting.)

Go to Steuben County Fair in Bath. I’ll probably wind up volunteering at the one-room school, so that should make it easy.

Get the bike tuned up, and start cycling to work. It’s a catch-22 with Addison’s disease – you need the exercise, but you pretty much start the day already tired. Still, except for emotional inertia (and bad weather), there’s really nothing to stop me.

Do some hiking on the main Finger Lakes Trail in the Burdett-Watkins Glen area, linking up stretches that I’ve already hiked.

Visit Record Archive (a cool place) in Rochester, and pick up some more music CDs to listen to while I’m driving.

Well, all that should keep me busy. Maybe it’s too much for a single summer, but we live in an area with lots of great stuff to do. And without some planning ahead, the whole summer will just turn into work and grocery shopping. Summer in the Finger Lakes should be much more than that.

HAPPY HIKING With Ed Sidote

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Ed Sidote passed away a couple of weeks ago, at the age of 97. While the public at large may not recognize his name, the public owes him more than it realizes.
In 1990 Ed became the third person to walk the entire Finger Lakes Trail – an act that still has only been accomplished by about 500 hikers. He was 73 years old at the time, though he pointed out that his hiking partner, end-to-ender number 4, was only 72.
More than that that, he served for years as president of the Finger Lakes Trail Conference, especially in the years when it was still trying to chart a course, and carve a trail from the woods and fields.
More even than that, he helped physically create the Trail in our immediate area, sleeping many nights at Hickory Hill Camping Resort near Bath in order to be up with the songbirds with axe and shovel.
For many years Ed ran the Finger Lakes Trail’s end-to-end award program. It used to be said that if you finish the Trail at 2 A.M., in the middle of the woods, Ed will be there to hand you your badge.
Always looking to the future, Ed celebrated his 90th birthday (and the FLT’s 45th) by donating $1250 to open the FLT Forever Society. Those funds become part of the Sidote Stewardship Fund, dedicated to Trail protection.
Each summer the Finger Lakes Trail hosts an Ed Sidote guided walk. It’s one of four seasonal “named hikes,” and this year takes place in Chenango County (sometimes called Sidoteland).
A portion of trail in Chenango County is named and dedicated in honor of Ed.
A stone bench on the Trail in Pharsalia was dedicated in his honor. Ed picked the spot, and it’s engraved “Ed Sidote: Mr. FLT.”
When the North Country Trail was being created (from North Dakota to the New York-Vermont state line), it took advantage of the existing FLT route. In 2010 the North Country Trail Association gave Ed its Lifetime Achievement Award.
In that same year the New York State Outdoorsman Hall of Fame inducted Ed as an honoree.
In 2004 Ed received the FLT’s Howard Beye Lifetime Award (the first to receive it – even ahead of Howard). In 1993 he received FLT’s Wally Wood Distinguished Achievement Award.
Up until the last year or two Ed was still joining group hikes, though not necessarily going the whole distance any more.
Thanks to Ed and many others, the Finger Lakes Trail is a remarkable feature. The Main Trail stretches 558 miles from Allegany State Park to Catskill State Park. With six major branch trails, plus spurs and loops, it adds up to what’s almost a thousand-mile system of “continuous footpath across New York State… forever.” And for most of our readers, it’s right in our back yard.
There are a few places, such as Watkins Glen State Park, where the Trail crosses public land, and in a few of those places public crews do the maintenance. But overwhelmingly the Trail exists through the hospitality of hundreds of private landowners. Overwhelmingly it’s planned, created, and maintained by those volunteers who put in 15,000 hours a year.
Ed was sort of the avatar of volunteers. He signed all of his letters, notes, and e-mails with HAPPY HIKING. Which it always was, if you were hiking with Ed.

Walking into Autumn

I started at the end of August, and finished at the end of September. I started in the south, and finished in the north. I spent the “better” part of five days walking into autumn.
For a long time I’d been dreaming over my map of the Interloken Trail, through the Finger Lakes National Forest east of Seneca Lake. For a long time I’d been longing to make the hike, and in August I finished the Crystal Hills Trail. Twelve miles, I said to myself. An hour from home. I can do this comfortably in four or five out-and-back hikes.
I started at the southern end, on seasonal Burnt Hill Road north of Bennettsburg. In just a few minutes I wished I had my camera, for I was walking through a gap in a stone wall that made me feel like I was hiking with my dad, back home in Rhode Island. Acorns and hickories spotted the trail. It was a green and leafy walk through the forest, with just a hint of fall to come. But after a couple of miles I broke out of the woods into grassy space by the Burnt Hill Pond, a good spot to take a seat on a boulder and indulge in some peanut butter crackers.
Pushing onward, the trail got a little rocky and little bumpy… nothing hard to manage, just enough to keep you alert. I crossed the Gorge Trail and reached the Burnt Hill Trail. Almost three miles — 2.9, to be exact. About face, and back to the car.
For my next hike I parked at Matthews Road and doubled back southward six-tenths of a mile to reach my previous stopping point, then back to Matthews and on to the north from there. Here I was crossing into a pasture… the national forest permits grazing… and the apples on a large lone tree caught the morning sun, every one of them clamoring that although it might be still be warm, fall indeed was here.
Up till now I’d been hiking in forest, but now I could see for miles off to the westward. Not to Seneca Lake — it was too low. But I could see all across the forests and fields of Hector, to the heights above Rock Stream and Dresden in Seneca’s west shore… a tremendous view. After the pasture I was back in the woods, and shortly after I reached Blueberry Patch Campground on Picnic Area Road I was at mile 4.9.
When I parked there for my next walk, the day was damp and drizzly, following a night of HEAVY rains. Veteran hiker Ed Sidote had told us that the Interloken was a wet trail. I hadn’t experienced that yet, but on this day I could see his point.
I’d had the sense to wear my L.L. Bean duck shoes instead of my New Balance sneakers, and a good move it was, too! There were long muddy stretches to navigate, and even the boardwalks were wet enough to be tricky and slippery. The brush approaching Foster Pond was soaked, and the little outlet stream swollen where you have to ford.
BUT — I walked the whole way through a yellow wood. The leaves had changed, and even though their trees were various species, they’d just about all turned yellow, together. Now MANY acorns and hickories littered my way as I pushed on to my turning-back point, the northernmost crossing of Backbone Trail. Mile 7.4.
On my next expedition I parked at Searsburg Road, went south to Backbone, and once again doubled back to the car. Then I crossed the road and passed through another gate into another pasture. For that matter, I passed through a herd of black angus, who seemed puzzled by my presence rather than otherwise. Even so I didn’t want to take anyone by surprise, so I kept up a steady chant of ho, boss… ho, boss…though of course it’s very likely that they don’t understand Rhode Island bovine anyhow.
The cattle have beaten so many paths through this pasture that I had to thrash around for a while to find the gate on the far side. When you enter through the southern gate, you’ll see a small grove of trees to your left in the field. Make like General Pickett and angle toward the trees, then the gate’s on the same line at the other side.
After a bit more hiking I was chest deep in brush and flowers, especially aster (both white and blue) and goldenrod, passing along the lovely Teeter Pond, cicadas singing out the summer. Beavers have been active here, perhaps within minutes, to judge from the pile of wood chips. It seems that this one has joined the trail maintenance volunteers, as he’s gnawing through a tree that’s fallen across the way. I have an affectionate feeling for beavers, the more so as my Mayflower ancestor teamed up with Miles Standish, John Alden, and two other guys to buy a monopoly in the Plymouth fur trade.
A few steps past Teeter Pond I found Seneca Road — mile 9.8 — and turned around.
Two days later, back to the parking area on Seneca Road (a washboardy seasonal road), and through the pasture gate into Seneca County. At first the way follows an abandoned road, along a line of maples, but then ducks into the woods — still gloriously yellow. I think of many walks over many autumns with my father, who passed away in April at 87; he’d love this one. The track is now rocky, dark, and tunnel-like, and at one point carpeted with apples. I haven’t seen much wildlife in these trips, but after half an hour or so I scare off a garter snake enjoying a patch of fall sunlight. I greet some horseback riders, and then… Parmenter Road… mile 12.0. The end.
After some water and peanut butter crackers I hoist the backpack again, and thoroughly annoy that garter snake by coming back through. A hairy woodpecker poses perfectly above me. In the long gentle slope up to the pasture I’m in that shadowy yellow tunnel again, but up ahead is the tunnel’s end, an inviting square of bright blue sky. Ten minutes across the pasture, and I’ve done the Interloken Trail, twice (think about it — once each way)… and I even beat bow season. Back to the car. On my way. Home.