THE PLACE:
The Buxton Loop begins at the "Four Corners" in the center of town, where West, East, South and North Streets meet at "the Green." This is the location of the Congregational Church, and erstwhile Victorian Inn now privately owned, the Historical Society, Town Clerk's office and a defunct gas and service station which burned to the ground this past summer. At the eastern corner of the Green is the only active store-- a General Store known by the name of its past proprietor. The other retail operation on South St. is a now-defunct deli that opens on Wednesdays only, to sell pizzas in the evening. The owners provide a catering business that makes ready-to-eat food for the small retail businesses in the area and the General Store. The Buxton loop also includes home-based businesses providing clock repair, antique lamps, braided rugs, and an adoption agency, none of which have street traffic. There is one remaining dairy farmer on West St. and a milk hauler who parks his trucks on South St.
Heading south on South Street, the first intersection on the west side of the street is with School Road and hte 1904 vintage school building stands at the end of a short road with a circular drive, parking area, playground and soccer field. The second intersection to the west is at Buxton Avenue which parallels West Street for about a mile. At the end of Buxton, the road curves to meet Coy Hill Rd., and then a right turn onto West Street (heading east) will take the walker back to the Four Corners about a mile away. The total loop is about 2.6 miles according to the site walkjogrun.net. A map is posted here.
THE BODY:
I walked the Buxton Loop this evening (9-28)under a grey threatening sky. I was never sure whether it would rain so I told myself I would just start out and see whether the weather would change as I walked. I didn't want to be a mile away when the rain came, and in this valley the weather changes quickly.
I am hyper-aware of temperature and weather changes here, in ways that would never have concerned me where I grew up in New York. There, I could duck into a cafe or hop on a bus if the weather got bad, but there usually seemed to be sufficient warning and it wasn't something I thought much about. Here, weather is a constant companion, and I have learned to watch for the leaves to turn over before a storm, for tiny orange newts before rain and woolly bear caterpillars that are supposed to foretell how hard a winter we will have. I check to see what time sunset will be because the roads are dark at night in a way that seems to absorb all memory of light, and I am less sure-footed than I was when I was younger. And I connect the phase of the moon and the cloud cover with the air temperature over night. Clear skies at the full moon will mean a killing frost. The farmers around here say that the 4-H kids always had to break the ice off the animals' water buckets at State fair in September. It's been a long time since they had to do that, the farmers say-- an indicator of global warming.
I was more aware of the sounds today as I walked as well. There are leaves that crisp under foot, and West Street has been newly paved with "chip seal" which means it is less potholed than before, but the texture of the gravel is uneven and I nearly twisted my ankle several times. The dust of passing cars made it harder for me to breathe and I was anxious to take the short cut back to where I live, across dirt paths behind the church, and through a newly mown field with vestiges of milkweed mixed in with the dried grasses. I dragged a fallen log back with me; it will be chain sawn into logs for the wood stove.
So the tactile qualities of the walk included changed textures of pavement and dirt under foot and they were clearly linked to the degree of stability I felt as I walked this familiar route. The road rises from east to west and there are two substantial hills along Buxton, but only one on the parallel West Street. The topography slopes down to the south as well, though the substantial rise in elevation begins at the School Road and heads north from there, ending on the mountain known as Spruce Knob. I like to walk east to west at dusk, so that I am coming into the sunset, though tonight the weather was humid and the sky grey, and I was very aware of the coming chill that would require the fallen logs that I have begun to glean. Such windfall will warm me three times as the saying goes, when I carry it back to the house, when I saw it into appropriate lengths, and when I sit beside the wood stove on a winter night.
As I walked, I heard a cow "blatting" from the last remaining local farmer's field. It was milking time and they were probably walking across the main road to the barn, though I couldn't see them from where I walked. I also crossed the river twice and walked beside it for a short distance. The sound was muted under the South Street bridge, where I was higher and further away from the stream bed, and the openness of the street muted the sounds of the water over the rocks. Along Buxton, the stream was quite loud, and the sound changed to a kind of bubbling as I approached the second bridge and crossed over it once again.
I have little sense of smell and there was little other than road dust to taste. I'd sip some of the water from the stream but the cows have occasionally used it as a watering hole, and I'd prefer to avoid the possibility of giardia. But on some of the upper stretches, there are fiddle head ferns and I have gone there in Spring to collect them to eat with my dinner. One of the old timers around here says that fish taste different from the upper stream because it is deeper, colder.
So there's not much room for anthropometrics in this, other than the width of the road which accommodates two cars passing at 50 mph on West Street and 35 mph on South Street and Buxton. There are no sidewalks or shoulders, but there are places where it is possible to pull off the road if you are careful. There is enough room to park a pickup truck with a collecting vat under the old road-side maple trees that are still used for sugaring (the making of maple syrup) although now they are all connected by gravity fed plastic tubing which makes collecting easier in a time when few families have enough people at home to collect the sap twice a day in February or March.
I can feel the rise of the road and the hard paved surfaces in a stiff lower back and a pulling of the ligament behind my left knee, but it is somehow less arduous than the Cambridge walk, perhaps because it is a more varied route and I am more mentally involved in what I am seeing and that distracts me from the stiffness in my legs and back as I walk. But it is clear that no one considered ergonomics when they laid out these roads for the farmers who lived here in the 19th century. And frankly, the only ones walking these roads were school kids on their way to the big proud building on School Rd. (built in 1904) just off South St. They would leave in the afternoon to walk back home for the milking and farming chores, and few would have considered the texture of the road under foot. The town itself however, was founded in this valley between mountains, as a middle place, where citizens of the surrounding townships could meet to conduct business and go to church, reducing the strain of an arduous trip across the mountain ridges in winter.
Now with cars the mode of transportation and the roads improved, the community has little commerce. South St. has most of the small home-based businesses and the Post Office and the telephone company switching station. The Post Office is a place that people meet, catch up on the local news, and there are posters with local meetings and announcements about school activities. Most people drive here, and the parking lot accommodates about 6 cars though the only time there would be that many cars is on "dump days" when people take their trash and recyclables to the transfer station on North Street, just behind the church. While there is a ramp at the Post Office (to comply with ADA guidelines), there are no wheelchair bound patrons (yet!). Like most other buildings of its vintage (19th century), it is set back from the street, but not by much, and the driveway is short enough to make snow shoveling something less than an all day activity.
More to come...
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