Like the trail’s own exclamation point, the lonely, weather-beaten chimney stands on a rise not far from the road. Constructed of rectangular chunks of brindled traprock, it’s lost mortar near the top and looks like it might tumble any moment. Entangled in vines, and encircled by young trees, the fireplace hasn’t seen flames in years.
The stone stack stands as an epitaph for the ridgeline cabin retreat of Hugh M. Alcorn, powerful state legislator and long-time state’s attorney over half a century ago. Here at his island in the sky remote from the perilous crosscurrents of politics, I want to eavesdrop through time and listen to tales and laughter that went up the flue with smoke. At this spot he could pause to watch clouds and listen to the singsong poor-sam-peabody-peabody-peabody whistle of white-throated sparrows.
Oases in the woods, I always stop at the old cabin chimneys perched here and there on knolls and ledges along the path. It’s a chance to catch my breath and hear my heartbeat, take a sip of water, or have a snack. Such spots invite contemplation and conversation with companions; stir ghosts of old jokes and stories told around late night fires. I dream of life in the woods even as I resent this sign of occupation and possession where I seek the wild. Refreshed and ready, I hit the trail.
rickety chimney
stories once at a stone hearth
voices up in smoke
(Haibun is a marriage of prose and haiku. It was first practiced by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Matsuo Basho who perfected the form in a journal he kept on a trip to the remote regions of northern Japan. Gary Snyder, James Merrill, and Jack Kerouac are among American interpreters of the genre. Haibun best expresses the spirit of the New England Trail because it combines clear-eyed prose descriptions of people, objects and places along with poetry that awakens the imagination.)
The New England National Scenic Trail, a unit of the National Park Service, runs 215 miles from Guilford, Connecticut to the Massachusetts/ New Hampshire border. The trail is maintained by volunteers of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association in Connecticut and the Appalachian Mountain Club in Massachusetts. For more go to https://newenglandtrail.org/
