Accidentally shot my schedule in the face today, while at work, and fell into some unintended free time. And while the gears in my head were spinning along with my proverbial wheels trying to come up with something to do, somewhere to go, I found myself pulling over into this old swampy nature preserve that houses some of my very earliest memories from 40 years ago. And what’s interesting to me is how clear they are. Clearer than events that happened yesterday, some of them.
It’s 1986 and my father, towering over me in a leather jacket, is leading the way down a wide dirt path that at first glance seems like it is straight through the woods, but on careful inspection you’ll notice that it follows the border between an non-traversable swamp of stumps and mud and pools of water and a taller, dryer, maple, pine, and cedar forest- somewhat old, and easy enough to walk through- even off the trail if desired.
To the left, the marsh, and to the right, the forest, and in front of me my father leading the way. Our Collie McGee holding up the rear. And my toddler brother Keith bumbling around next to me. It’s October. Everything is covered in leaves.
Eventually we come to a very thin trail that leads off to the left, into the marsh. No bigger than a deer trail, and my father stops to listen.
Something down there. Deep, bubbling noises in the nearish-distance.
So, we follow the path- not far at all- and suddenly the source of the sound reveals itself. An ancient 4” cast iron pipe, full of holes, jutting out of the clay bed- pouring artesian spring water into a rather large pond that must have formed once the cap on the well was broken off.
Who put it there? Why? I’d never find out. I heard rumor that there used to be a house back there somewhere. Perhaps that was the well that served it? My grandmother knew where it was, I heard- a few years after she passed.
But that thin trail, mostly overgrown, was the only path there. I remember half way down the trail two trees converged together and formed a visible wall of foliage one had to shove through to pass. It was this barrier that blocked the view of the pond from the trail entirely.
I touched the water. It was as cold as ice.
It is 1996 and I am riding down the trail on my Huffy 6-Speed. I discover that there is a new way to get to the pond. A couple dozen feet past where the original trail was, someone went in and clear cut all the brush out of the way- so the pond could be seen and heard from the path a little better, and through this clear-cut area, people were immediately drawn.
Stubs of foliage became just a dirty root bed. Wide, and easy to walk on. Us boys would use this new path and play in the pond all the time, year after year, and I watched the original path slowly begin to fade. You could still see where there was a trail, but no one ever bothered with it anymore. Young trees, fallen trees, and bushes began taking it over.
It is 2025 and I am wandering back towards the pond of my youth like a derelict vessel drawn to the only light on the horizon. The original trail is now completely vanished. Not a single solitary trace of it could I discern, even knowing- with crystal clear memory- exactly where it was. The new trail isn’t just an easy-to-walk-on root bed anymore. Now it’s a boardwalk. The path to it isn’t just a single offshoot either, now it’s a 4 way junction with a bench and a map. With another bench next to the bubbling pipe. A few more holes in it than I remember, but the exact same massive flow and sound.
As I am looking at the sign and the map and all the other obnoxious nature trail installments covering my once pristine (except for that ancient bubbling pipe) natural area, I saw a very small sign, meant for kids, at the bottom with little diagrams for leaf identification, challenging them to find a leaf for each of the kinds of trees that grows in the area.
There was something about that, and the thought of a kid looking at it the way I remember looking at things like that at other more scripted nature preserves I had been to, it calmed my annoyance with the intrusive changes.
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