The Desolation of Smaug

When hunting season ended, I returned to the back trails in the little forest.  I think they're still on state land, but I'm not completely sure because of a few artifacts: the Proctors (graveyard), what looks like some sort of stand used for hunting, and the faded torn "Private Property" signs.  Yeah.  Fortunately, the "Conservation Land" or whatever signs look a lot newer.

At any rate, we've been spending more time on the back trails.  The first time I returned to them this year, I smelled burning wood.  This smell doesn't have pleasant associations even though I smelled it most often in my grandmother's kitchen, one of my favourite places.   It also reminds me of miserable Brownie excursions* and of the time our next door neighbours' house was gutted by fire...and it also usually indicates that somebody nearby is burning something, which is usually a disquieting thought.  It's not the most comfortable accompaniment to a jog through a forest of uncertain ownership.

And then I found a cleared trail.  Not just swept, but cleared with equipment past the top layer of sand.  At first, I thought the trail was new and my excitement rose, and then I remembered it as being about ankle-deep thick in debris, barely a trail.  I'd used it only once or twice because it was so difficult to run on, and I couldn't remember where exactly it led.

The burning wood smell was making me uneasy, but I find it hard to pass up a new trail, and there were no footprints on it.  Green light!

However, as we approached a hill, I was halted by the gleam of blue plastic.  Was this a settlement?  I've come across homeless camps before, but not in the States, I think (unless the Port Authority bus terminal counts).  I reminded myself that there were no footprints, and the burning wood smell had become fainter, and we kept going.  The blue plastic was really a metallic party balloon.  At this point, the dog saw it too and became wary, so we had to slow our approach to the balloon.  I felt a bit guilty as though I'd passed him a puck of unease.

Anyway, each time I've run the back trails after that, I've smelled burning wood.  Maybe a not-so-nearby house had a new fireplace put in.

Today, we revisited a few more trails, also oddly stripped clean by machinery and free of footprints, and I discovered the source of the smell: they had done a controlled burn some time ago.   The clear trails were firebreaks. 

Even the Triplet was scoured.  We ran up and down the three peaks and it felt easier than the last time, probably because there was no more slippery wet pine straw. 

So, 1hr15ish total, with some walking and a loose dog slobbering on mine near the end (the run's AND my dog's), and then some resistance exercises at home. 


* I remember cutting tin to make a little stove to cook dinner on, and then bathing in a garbage pail filled with diluted Javex that we all shared.  To add insult to injury, we had to sleep in old leaky Army A-frame tents with wooden beams that we could barely lift up into place.  I guess it was a cheap way of getting rid of a 7-8 year old girl for a week or two, and some of it was fun, but nobody from my troop went with me, and compared to the group camping I'd done earlier, it sucked.  The campfire stories were subpar until I told the spooky one about two friends going to the outhouse in the dead of night and being chased by dragging noises, swish, swish, swish**.  No familiar faces, no massive Capture the Flag games with cool older kids and seemingly without adult supervision--I remember hiding underwater in a creek more than once--no smores, no daring each other to enter an abandoned (?) hermit cabin, no looking for petrified wood, no personal pup tent.  I had my own tent that I could put up myself: I didn't have to sleep in a sieve-like reject from WWII!


** SPOILER

This story wasn't the scariest one I was told, but I couldn't remember the details of the others (some of which revolved around the mysterious and murderous occupant of the abandoned hermit cabin).  Still, it was so scary that I scared myself while telling it.  The swish swish noises get louder, one of the friends disappears in the darkness, and the other girl is left cowering in an outhouse.  The swish swish noises stop, and long house nails are driven through the door, one at the top, one just below, two below that, and two at the bottom.  Nobody wanted to use the outhouse at night after that, and more than one girl wet her sleeping bag.  I should have warned them to pee as much as possible before dusk.  I was a shitty Brownie***

*** I'm still miffed that I was denied a badge for my essay about Terry Fox because I'd written it in crayon.  But it was brown!