Footloose in America: Dixie to New England (51 page)

A green pickup with blue flashing lights on top pulled up beside us with two game wardens inside. The one in the passenger’s seat said through the open window, “You folks are causing a traffic hazard here.”

I nodded at Della, “She won’t go any farther. I guess we’ll have to go back down.”

The warden said, “We’ll drive up a bit and stop traffic so you can turn around.”

At the bottom of the hill, they pulled into the parking area behind us with their lights still flashing. The wardens were opening their doors, when a state trooper drove up and said, “What’s up?”

“They had traffic stopped on the mountain. Their mule doesn’t want to go up.”

The trooper was in his mid-twenties, and wore a Smokey The Bear style hat. He turned to me and asked, “Where you from?”

“We walked here from Arkansas. We’re headed for the coast of Maine.”

The trooper pointed west. “So you already came up Sand Hill?”

“A couple of days ago.”

One of the wardens said, “If she pulled Sand Hill, this should be no problem.”

“We had to unload the cart and have everything hauled up to Ripton before she could do it,” Patricia said.

The two station wagons with our stuff pulled in as the trooper said, “So should we do that here?”

“We already did,” Patricia said. “That’s what’s in those cars.”

One of the wardens asked, “Now what?”

Bruce got his cell phone out of the glove compartment of his station wagon, and called Howard Kelton in East Middlebury. He had a one ton pickup, and would be happy to pull the cart up to the top. With his wife Linda, he arrived half an hour later and hooked the cart to their truck with a chain. Patricia rode with them as they pulled the cart followed by Bill’s station wagon with our stuff and the trooper with his lights flashing. Bruce was going to follow Della and me up the mountain with his four-way flashers on.

While I was untying Della from a metal sign post, I felt like I was on the verge of tears. I couldn’t believe she was quitting on us. After I undid the knot, I turned to lead her out of parking area. Suddenly, she reared back and yanked her rope out of my hands. Then she spun around and started for the saplings.

Immediately my hurt feelings flared into anger. I leaped for her rope, grabbed it, yanked her head toward me and roared, “You Bitch! Who the hell do you think you are? You want one of those little trees?”

I stomped toward the saplings with her in tow. “Okay, by God, I’ll give you one!”

Pumped up with adrenaline, I jerked a small one out by the roots. Whirling around, I shook the little tree in Della’s face. “Here’s one to go! Now go!” Then I yanked her head to the left and tried to hit her on the ass with it. But I couldn’t do that and lead her too. We went round and round in circles.

Bruce was leaned against the car with his arms crossed watching us. I stopped, turned to him and held out the sapling. “I hate to ask this, but–”

He held his hand out. “Give me that thing.”

When he popped her on the butt it sounded like a firecracker. She literally leaped out of the parking area and onto the highway. From behind us, Bruce yelled, “You’d better keep going, Della! I’m back here with this stick!” With that he smacked the pavement three times with it.

Bruce made a believer out of Della. That was the fastest mile and a half she and I had ever walked. It was also the saddest. How I hated that we had to hit her like that.

“Well, she is a mule,” Bruce said at the top. We were unloading our stuff from his station wagon. “I don’t know a whole lot about them. But I always heard that the one with the strongest will is the one who wins.”

Della never again balked like that.

Up on Middlebury Gap, we almost had all of our stuff loaded back onto the cart when it began to rain. It had sprinkled off and on all day. But this was a downpour. We crammed in stuff wherever we could. Then with our rain gear on, we started down the other side of the mountain.

About half a mile down, we came to a maintenance access for one of the slopes at Snow Bowl Ski Area. The ditches were gushing and dark wasn’t far off. So we pulled in for the night.

After I tied Della out and fed her, Patricia and I climbed in the cart to wait for the rain to let up. The seat in the cab was a tight fit for Patricia and me with just regular clothes on. In rain gear we had to squeeze in. Our baloney sandwiches that evening were soggy and fell apart in our hands.

“This isn’t fun,” Patricia said. “I’m real tired of it.”

I knew what she meant. We were both sick of the rain. Here we were, on the evening of one of the most heartbreaking days of this journey, and we couldn’t put the tent up. We were in the middle of a deluge, on the side of a mountain, with lightning and thunder all around us.

It was not a good situation to pitch a tent, but we had no choice. As the storm raged we bucked the wind, waded through ankle deep water and
eventually got the thing up. By the time we got the bed made, everything was soaked. The only saving grace was that it was not cold.

You have read about many wet nights in this book. So I’m going to spare you this one. Other than to say, of all of them so far, it was the most miserable.

Besides everything getting soaked, and our spirits being low, one of the things that made that night difficult were the intrusions. Each time I fell asleep, Patricia would shake me and say, “There it is again. I’m telling you something is clomping around out there.”

My first thought was that Della had gotten loose. So I poked my head out into the storm with the flashlight and pointed it toward her. Each time, I found her still tied. Usually the first thing I’d see was the shine of her eyes. Then I’d scan around our camp. I never saw a thing. And sometimes I heard clomping too. So I’d get up, go out and look around. The results were always the same. Della was where she was supposed to be and I found nothing else around. Neither of us got much sleep that night.

The rain stopped just a bit before sunrise. When I climbed out of the tent, we were totally engulfed with fog. It was so thick I couldn’t see Della from the tent. However, I did see what the commotion in the night had been. All around the tent and the cart were moose tracks and droppings. I could see where they had ventured toward Della, but then turned back. Why I didn’t see the moose, I’ll never know.

At the bottom of the hill, on the White River, was the village of Hancock. What we needed more than anything, besides a full night’s sleep, was a washer and dryer. But Hancock didn’t have a laundry. So we turned south on Highway 100 headed for Rochester.

About a mile down the road we came to a farm, with the house on the left side of the highway and barns on the other. On one barn was a sign that read “Cobble Hill Stable.” We were about to walk past it, when a pickup truck pulled into the barnyard and a woman in her late thirties go out. She was packed into tight blue jeans and wore high top riding boots.
She strolled toward us as she said, “My, what a beautiful mule! What are you folks doing?”

After we told her, Leslie asked, “Do you need a place to camp for the night?”

She bred, raised and trained Welsh Cob horses and ponies. Leslie, and her husband, also had an organic beef operation. Less than a quarter of a mile further down the highway was one of their farms. On it was an old house that recently had been renovated so they could rent it to vacationers.

“No one is there now,” Leslie said. “You’re welcome to use it. And if you need to do some laundry, it has a new washer and dryer.”

Who says there is no God?

Doing a poetry show in the heart of Rochester, Vermont
.

CHAPTER 21

N
EW
H
AMPSHIRE
A
ND
K
NOWING
W
HY

W
HITE SETTLERS MOVED INTO NEW
Hampshire a hundred years before they ventured into Vermont. Most came up to the Granite State from Massachusetts and Connecticut because they’d been given land patents by the King of England. John Hancock got one fifteen years before he signed the Declaration of Independence. New Hampshire was the first to declare its independence from Great Britain. The state motto is “Live free or die!”

Walking across New Hampshire, we passed many open pits where long ago men with picks, spades and steam shovels plundered the hills and valleys, leaving mounds of spoil behind. Near some of those diggings, and often in the middle of open fields, there were the brick shells of old factories. Long two and three story buildings whose roofs had collapsed and rotted inside those walls decades ago. A few times we saw a tall smoke stack standing by itself in the middle of a pasture. And in many places, the huge pieces of rusted machinery had been there so long, they’d become a permeant part of the landscape.

Still, New Hampshire was beautiful. It’s the second most forested state in the nation – Maine is first. Unlike Vermont, we didn’t see many dairy farms or orchards because most of the time we were walking through woodlands. Like Vermonters, when people in the Granite State stopped to visit us along the road, they seemed more relaxed than folks in New York. And one of the things that really impressed us about New Englanders was how
complimentary they were about each other’s state. “You think Vermont’s pretty, wait till you see New Hampshire.”

And all across the Granite State it was, “Weren’t the Green Mountains wonderful?”

In both states, everyone said, “Just wait until you see Maine!”

We took Highway 25 through Meredith and Central Harbor on Lake Winnipesaukee. A large natural scintillating body of blue with the slopes of the White Mountains rising up all around it. Forested slopes, many of which were capped with ragged granite peaks.

It’s a popular tourist area year round. The summer attractions were the lakes, streams and hiking in the mountains. What brought them in the winter were the ski areas, and the White Mountains had plenty. It was mid-September when we were there, so the big draw then was the leaves. Autumn was beginning to bloom.

One of the things we had looked forward to since the onset of this journey, was walking through New England in the fall–and we were not disappointed. No photograph, painting or film could do justice to how beautiful New Hampshire was right then. Through those mediums you can appreciate how radiant the trees were with their myriad shades of red, orange, yellow and purple. But you have to be there, completely surrounded by it, to truly appreciate a New England autumn. While we walked down the road, it was like we were in a kaleidoscope that changed in hues, shades and shapes with every step. Then there were those moments when we’d come around a bend and ahead would be a maple or hickory whose brilliance upstaged every tree around it. A color so vibrant, that one of us couldn’t help but exclaim, “Wow, look at that!”