2/13 – 2/20/22
A few weeks ago, with a restless winter gnawing at my heels and a busy spring looming ahead, I decided to take a road trip. This is becoming an annual habit. In February 2020, I drove to the Smoky Mountains. Last February, I headed up to Lake Superior. This year, I decided, I would explore New England.
2-13-22
I arrived at O’Hare about a half-hour before dawn. Not that dawn made much of a difference: the day, when it came, was cold and gray, with flurries falling numbly between the parked planes. My flight was delayed – first by a mechanical issue, and then by the need to de-ice the wings – but otherwise uneventful. After an hour or so of looking down on white fields and ice-covered surface of Lake Erie, I found myself in Buffalo.
Weather-wise, I might as well have stayed in Chicago: it was cold (12 degrees at noon), cloudy, and flurrying. But once I reached my rental car, cranked up the heat, and pulled onto the highway, I felt the old thrill of a new trip. Heading more or less straight east along a series of twisting two-lane roads, I plunged past snowbound towns and deep-drifted fields, hills climbing ever higher up the horizon.
At last, in a gentle snow, I pulled into Watkins Glen State Park. Perhaps unsurprisingly (on account of the frigid weather and the fact that it was Superbowl Sunday), I was the only visitor. The famous Gorge Trail was closed for the winter. But the trail along the north rim was open, and I crackled my way down it for a half-mile or so, straining for a clear view of the curtains of icicles lining the gorge below.
Then – remembering that I had to finish another hike before sunset – I retraced my steps. In the town of Watkins Glen, I stopped to take a few pictures of Seneca Lake, largest of the Finger Lakes. Because of its depth and many submerged springs, the lake almost never freezes. The sun, emerging suddenly from the overcast, shimmered on the thin ring of ice along the shore.
After the requisite pictures, I continued to Taughannock Falls State Park. The eponymous falls – taller than Niagara – were visible from an overlook near the park entrance, twenty stories of ice slashing a stony amphitheater.
After scuffing and sliding an icy mile, I reached the falls’ base just before sunset. Despite the chill – it was in the teens, with a keen wind whistling over the rocks – I stood there for a long moment, the moon ever brighter overhead.
2-14
Northward and eastward. Over the frozen Hudson at Troy, chimney smoke trailing forever in the frigid air. A snow squall near the Vermont border – and then, incongruously, an obelisk looming through the flurries: the Bennington Battle Monument, a grandiloquent memorial to a Revolutionary War skirmish.
The air temperature was five degrees, sharpened by a wind that cut through my coat and sent trails of snow hissing down the road. As I walked around the monument, pausing occasionally for a picture, I began to harbor heretical thoughts about skipping the five-mile hike I had planned for the rest of the morning. After reaching the trailhead and surveying the icy path, I decided that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, returned to my warm car, and drove off without a backward glance.
My next destination was Plymouth Notch, VT, known for precisely one thing: being the native town (hamlet, really) of Calvin Coolidge. It took a while to get there, since a jackknifed truck diverted me over the crest of the Green Mountains on a series of bumpy gravel roads. But Plymouth Notch was worth the wait. Like all my favorite historical sites, it was deserted; besides a snowbound van with a “Stay Cool with Coolidge” window decal, my car was the only one in the lot. I walked up and down the town’s one street, pausing beside the house where Coolidge was born (and where, fifty-some years later, he swore the presidential oath of office). Returning to my car, I drove over to Plymouth Notch Cemetery, where six generations of Coolidges are buried.
Continuing northeast, I hiked along Quechee Gorge, the “Grand Canyon of Vermont.” The trail was icy and the wind was bitter, but the views were reasonably impressive. (Or so I kept reminding myself, hands aching every time I removed my gloves to take a picture.)
I stopped for a late lunch on the main street of Hannover, NH. (Unable to decide between the breakfast and lunch menus, I compromised with chicken and waffles.) Afterward, I walked around the campus of Dartmouth College, which looked like a New England college should.
Although I only had about two hours of daylight left, I detoured to Barre, VT, to check out Hope Cemetery. Barre is home to America’s largest granite quarry, and Hope Cemetery is the resting place of the town’s quarrymen and sculptors. Every headstone is granite, and many are beautifully carved. They were especially evocative in the late afternoon light, which blended the grays and whites of tomb and snow. By the time I returned to my car, the sun had nearly set, and a pale moon was cresting the ridge over the cemetery.
In nearby Montpelier – the smallest state capital in America – I stopped for a quick picture of the state house, which looked like the seat of a moderately prosperous county. Then northward and eastward, the sun setting at my back.
2-15
When I opened my shades this morning, I was treated to a sweeping view of the White Mountains. One summit was crowned by a lenticular cloud, fringed with fire by the rising sun. A plume of snow flying from the summit of another peak confirmed that the wind was already howling. As I walked out into the parking lot to warm my car, I felt the mucus in my nose freeze; according to my car thermometer, the temperature was -10.
The day’s first hike was a brisk three-miler to Champney Falls. The falls were located in a sheltered valley that warded off the worst of the wind, but it was still cold enough for the moisture from my breath to freeze in my eyelashes, fringing the world with halos.
Champney Falls were frozen and all but invisible under two feet of snow. But water seeping from the adjacent cliff had created a shining wall of ice 30 feet high and almost 100 yards long. I took my pictures, hands smarting, and then retraced my steps.
Last night, listening to the wind rattling the shutters of my hotel room, I checked the weather for the mountain I had planned to hike up today. I was faintly horrified to discover that at the time I would reach the summit the air temperature was forecasted to be -15, with a wind chill approaching -50. Having no desire to brave that, I set my sights on a less lofty peak: Mount Willard, my destination after Champney Falls. The trail was sheltered until the top, where it opened onto a spectacular overlook of Crawford Notch. Cumulus clouds dragged over the valley rim, trailing curtains of snow shot through with sunlight.
2-16
From Bangor (where the temperature was a comparatively balmy -1), it was only an hour’s drive to the coast; and after a brief stop in the half-deserted town of Bar Harbor, I entered Acadia National Park. Parking at Sand Beach, I walked down to the ocean. Although icicles hung from the rocks and the trees sparkled with fresh snow, there was – I thought – an almost spring-like feel to the sea breeze.
As I walked along the coast path, snow crunching underfoot, I revised my opinion. The wind was not spring-like – it was cold, and getting stronger. I zipped a windbreaker over my thermal and strode along briskly, pausing for occasional pictures of the rocky shore.
Back in Bar Harbor, I had asked the ranger on duty – who shared his desk with a lady from the chamber of commerce – to recommend the best winter hikes in Acadia. One of his suggestions was Gorham Mountain, a steep hill overlooking the Sand Beach area. He had cautioned me, however, to not attempt the trail without cleats. Naturally, I proceeded to attempt the trail without cleats. This was a mistake. About a week before my arrival, a brief thaw had partially melted the snowpack, which then re-froze. Fresh snow had fallen on top of the ice, disguising it and making it even more treacherous. It wasn’t so bad going up; but going down was a disaster.
When I wasn’t clinging desperately to trees or becoming intimately acquainted with icy rocks, I tried to enjoy the view. The summit of Gorham Mountain, six hundred feet or so above the beach, offered a spectacular panorama over Mount Desert Island. The wind, howling now, sent visible shockwaves through the sea of pines below. A wall of clouds had swept in from the west, and flurries began to whip among the trees as I picked my way back to the trailhead.
Having fortified myself with trail mix, I drove across the park to Jordan Pond. During the latest storm, much of the snow that fell on the pond’s frozen surface had been piled into waist-deep drifts along the shore, making the lakeside trail impassable. After an abortive attempt to plunge through, I walked out onto the ice (reassured by old footprints) and surveyed the surrounding cliffs.
My final hike of the day followed a half-frozen inlet to a peninsula on the southwest edge of Mount Desert Island. The wind was even stronger here – so strong that I sometimes found it hard to keep my footing. At the hike’s end, I staggered over snow-dusted boulders to a point jutting into the sea. Waves thundered into the rocks on both sides, throwing up spray. Just offshore, late afternoon sunlight poured through a ragged tear in the clouds. I took my pictures, gusts tugging at my legs and hissing in my ears. And then, walking fast as I dared on the icy path, I returned to my car, and began the long drive south.
2-17
When I started my car this morning, the car thermometer read 47 – 50 degrees warmer than yesterday. A short drive from my hotel brought me to Lowell, Massachusetts, cradle of the American Industrial Revolution. There, as I often do when visiting a place, I started with an old cemetery. (Nowhere else is a community’s self-regard so conveniently distilled.) Not bothering with a jacket, I wandered among the monuments of the Lowell’s great industrialists in a t-shirt, stepping over piles of melting snow for an occasional picture.
After a brief stop in downtown Lowell, I continued to Concord, where I strolled around the town center. Besides the author houses, the highlights were two more cemeteries. The first, overlooking the town common, was the Old Hill Burying Ground – row on row of colonial headstones, with their death’s heads and angel heads and pious resolutions. The other was Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, famous for the literary luminaries laid to rest on Authors’ Ridge. It was a peaceful place, disturbed only by the rustle of dead oak leaves overhead.
A mile or so outside Concord proper, I visited the site of the famous Revolutionary War skirmish, and braved slush and mud to reach the Old North Bridge, where the unlikely adventure of American nationhood began.
Onward, then, to one last cemetery – a windswept place just outside Marshfield, where Daniel Webster lies in a small plot ringed by a wrought iron fence. This has always been my favorite sort of historical site: no hoopla, no visitors’ center – just a place to commune with the past.
My next stop, Plymouth Rock, would normally have been on the opposite side of the hoopla spectrum. But since it was February, there were only a few visitors around the canopy that covers the famous boulder.
I arrived in Newport about an hour before sunset, and parked by the beach. Fog had rolled in from the sea, shrouding the city in a ghostly haze. As I followed the cliff walk – the seaside path behind the famous mansions – I was blasted by a gusty wind, which hurled heavy swells against the cliffs.
I reached the Breakers – vastest of the Vanderbilt’s vast summer “cottages” – at a moment when the wind had torn a gap in the fog. The house glowed in filtered sunlight, but only for a moment, as streamers on the lawn heralded a new fog bank, and the world faded back to gray.
2-18
I woke to heavy fog, pelting rain, and that same howling wind, which tugged at my car as I crossed the long bridges out of Newport. The wind persisted, but the rain stopped as I headed west, and the skies were clear by the time I reached Hartford. I spent the morning at the Mark Twain House, where I was the only member of a tour.
Afterward, I drove to downtown Hartford to visit the Wadsworth Athenaeum, whose collection includes a figurine of a Spartan warrior (once owned by J. P. Morgan) that I plan to feature in an upcoming YouTube video. After speaking with the head curator – who had agreed to appear in my video segment – I wandered around the galleries, and was surprised to recognize several well-known period pieces.
Then, the long, long drive to New York. A few weeks ago, on a whim, I had decided that my hotel for the evening would be in Downtown Manhattan. Prices were – by Manhattan standards – fairly reasonable. But I had not fully realized just how difficult it would be to drive to the tip of Manhattan during a Friday rush hour. In the end, what should have been a two-hour drive took more than four.
The sun had set by the time I finally pulled into the Battery Parking Garage and checked into my hotel. But I was in Manhattan – albeit for one night only – and I was determined to make the most of my stay. So I put on my winter coat, bought a subway ticket, and headed to Midtown. After satisfying my appetite for fine cuisine with a few hot dogs at Gray’s Papaya, I bought an enormous cookie from Levain Bakery, picked up a hot chocolate, and strolled through Central Park, where the lights of impossibly thin skyscrapers shone on the quiet surface of the pond.
Returning to the subway, I got off at City Hall, and walked to Brooklyn Bridge. A full moon was rising over the Hudson, and the lights of the city were arrayed in all their splendor – downtown, midtown, and everything between. A train thundered over Williamsburg Bridge, a tug throbbed along the river, cars hurtled by underfoot, and planes sank earthward overhead, drawn irresistibly to the center of things.
2-19
It was windy but clear this morning; and in welcome contrast to yesterday afternoon, the streets were almost empty as I drove out of Manhattan. I was thankful for the light traffic as I navigated the bewildering series of interstate exchanges that brought me to the Bronx, and to Woodlawn Cemetery.
I’ve always liked Victorian garden cemeteries, and Woodlawn is probably the most impressive one in the country. Its rolling lawns and groves are dotted with the most spectacular mausoleums that a robber baron’s imagination could devise. Within and between them rest the whole cast and crew of Gilded Age New York (I made a special trip to the modest headstone of Herman Melville).
The sky clouded over as I left the city, and snow began to fall – gently at first, and then with blinding intensity. As snow covered the pavement faster than the salt could melt it, the road became increasingly treacherous. It was only after an hour and a half of white-knuckle driving that I reached Hyde Park, and Springwood, the birthplace and lifelong home of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Arriving just in time for my tour, I joined seven others on a walk through the grand but pleasant house of our longest-serving president.
By the tour’s end, a tentative sun was shining on the fresh snow. The hills to the north, however, were hidden by another snow squall, which struck almost the moment I returned to my car. Snow showers alternated with sunshine as I continued into the hills of central New York, car shaking in the inevitable wind.
2-20
A cold bright morning. I brushed a coating of fresh snow from my car and set out for Niagara Falls. When I arrived, I discovered that a lake effect storm had struck the day before, leaving a blanket of ice-coated snow. The falls, however, were worth the inconvenience of harrowing roads. I spent the better part of an hour watching ice floes bump downriver, poise on the brink of the falls, and topple into the freezing spray below.
And then it was over, more or less. I returned to Buffalo, stopped for a beef on weck across the street from the airport, and plunged back into reality.