914 Nice Drives

Thursday, October 5, 2006

Today I delivered Pilot Logs to an aerospace company in Woodstock. I was looking forward to that, as I had heard a lot about this company, but didn't know where it was. Woodstock isn't a "corporate" kind of place. Sure enough, the plant was tucked back in the woods on its own road. If you didn't have the address, you'd never know it was there.

It was another beautiful day (although a bit chilly), so I decided to find Cooper Lake, a high lake in the mountains north of Woodstock, very pretty, and then I explored a bit. I got "lost" a few times when I took roads that my map said went through the mountains and met a county road further up, but when I took the roads, they turned to gravel, then dirt, then died. But it was a beautiful scenic drive anyway.

Way back in the late 60s, when I first arrived in this area (before moving away, away, away, and finally coming back in the 80s), every guy I dated took me down a dirt mountain road that was absolutely beautiful, and at the same time absolutely terrifying. On the driver's side was sheer rock. On the passenger side was a steep dropoff into a deep valley. We were high up on the side of a mountain, and there were like three other mountains on the other side of the narrow deep valley, crowding close. No guardrails. Barely wide enough for getting by oncoming cars. The road is closed from November to April.

Yesterday, driving route 9W near Bear Mountain, I was reminded of that mountain road. I never knew exactly where it was. All I could remember about it was that it was a back road out of a small hamlet or village. I mentally flipped through all the villages I could think of that might be candidates, and came up zero.

Today, driving through the mountains, I thought of that road again, and how I'd like to find it.

I eventually found a way through to route 214, that goes to Hunter and Tannersville. I headed for Tannersville, intending to take 23A, another very scenic drive, to Catskill. I thought maybe I'd stop at Kaaterskill Falls. I hadn't been to the falls in years. I had forgotten that 23A east of Tannersville is closed for bridge work.

Checking my map again, I noticed that route 16, Platt Clove Road, out of Tannersville, meets route 33 in West Saugerties, and that'll get me home. So I took it.

That is The Road! I found it, entirely by chance! Absolutely amazing! Tannersville as the village would never have occurred to me.

What's really weird is that I have a friend who lives just off route 33, so I've been up that way several times in the past few years, but never went up past her house far enough to recognize "The" road.

This sort of thing has happened several times in the past three weeks. Finding places I'd thought I'd never find again. I'm loving it.

Now, I have a request for whoever or whatever is guiding me: About forty years ago, I was potting around in the Fleischmanns area, took a road through a wide valley, and found a church. The church was a simple box with a squarish steeple on the front, and a steeply pitched roof. Unpainted varnished golden wood. What was remarkable was that it was dripping with hand-carved gingerbread everywhere. It was beautiful. A few weeks after I first found it, I took a friend to see it, and we couldn't find it. I tried several times back then, marking roads on the map and systematically checking them off, but I was never able to find it again.

I feel encouraged to go look for it now. Like if I just head up there and wander, it will reveal itself.