Mystery

I was riding my little fold-up bicycle (the one I keep in the trunk of my truck) on the Amherst end of the bike path a few days ago, and decided to investigate a dirt path leading off toward the swamp which lies on one side of the paved path at that end. The dirt was soft and muddy in spots, and with the small wheels on that bike, pedaling was pretty difficult. But I persisted for a ways, and at one point came upon a clearing.

Apparently, there was once some sort of manmade structure there… but all that remained of it was a concrete pad and bits and pieces of rusty metal --something that might have once been an oven... 

... and a few small-diameter pipes.

I looked at the site later on Google Maps, to see if I could get any clues to what it might have been. But it was still a mystery. It seemed an odd place for a house, and also appeared to be too far away from the railroad tracks which run behind the swamp to have been some kind of rail station. It had to have been something… but what?  -- PL

Addendum 02-26-12: Thinking about it some more, I realized that the bike path itself used to be a railroad track... and that might put this mysterious ruin within a reasonable distance to be some kind of station. I should probably ask around and see if anyone knows what it was.

Pre-ruin?

A few days ago I was on the University of Massachusetts campus, stealthily making my way to my wife's office so that I could leave her a bouquet of tulips, her favorite flowers, for Valentine's Day. Having accomplished this task, I decided to take an alternate route back to where I had parked my truck.

I came across a building which I had never noticed before. I don't know if it had a name (like all the other buildings on campus), but it could very well be that most people at UMass have forgotten what that name was, given the dilapidated state of the structure.

With "No Trespassing" signs on every side of the building, broken windows and what appeared to be boarded-up doors, I would venture to say that this building is no longer used for anything. 

And given UMass' propensity for new construction, it would not surprise me if I took this route again in a couple of years and found this building gone.

Is this a ruin? Maybe not yet. Maybe this is a "pre-ruin". -- PL

"No Parking" sign in Amherst, MA

Is this a ruin?

I suppose it could be defined as such.

Look at what the sun, rain, snow, and wind has done to this sign over the years. How many years? Decades? I can't say… I don't know when it was installed in a parking lot in Amherst. 

Whiling away some minutes before an appointment last month, I noticed this sign while stretching my legs on a perambulation of the parking lot. The post to which it was attached was well on its way to being swallowed up by the riotous growth of various entangling plants. I would not be surprised if -- without any gardeners cutting back the growth -- within a year or two the sign would be completely obscured.

The letters and border on the sign appeared to have once been a bright red. Now, they were faded to the delicate pink of certain old roses. Most of the actual paint had peeled away, leaving the voids where paint once had been to take up the warning task of the sign.

Absence becoming presence. -- PL

A closer look at Fort Stark, New Castle, NH

Jeannine and I took a short weekend trip up to Ogunquit, Maine this past weekend after her appearance at the Boston Authors Club event where she received an honor for her book "Borrowed Names". We stayed in Ogunquit, but during the three days we were there, we wandered around the area. One of the places we wandered to was the Fort Stark historic site in New Castle, a place I blogged about on this April 3.

We had gone there in March of this year, but because it was so early in the season, the site's parking lot wasn't open, and we only got a glimpse of some of the outside. This time, we were able to park and walk around the whole place -- well, except for some areas which were fenced off or boarded up. It was still pretty cool, though.

As we walked around, I kept trying to match up what we were seeing to my memories of our original visit there about twenty-seven year ago… and I discovered to my chagrin that nothing there really jibed with my somewhat vague memories of that first visit. It is altogether possible that twenty-seven years ago, the site looked much different. Perhaps it was not as well-tended as it is today. I should do some research on that.

In fact, I should do some research on Fort Stark, because one of the questions I had when we were looking at the now-empty gun emplacements was "What kinds of guns were there, and how did they shoot out to sea?" I was curious about this because there did not appear to be any firing slots through the thick walls of the emplacements, and those walls were high enough that unless the guns were REALLY tall (which doesn't make much sense), they would have had to have had their barrels elevated at a very steep angle to clear the tops of the walls.

You might see in the following photos what I mean. There were two of these large gun emplacements.

In one of them, growing near where one of the large shore guns must have been installed years ago, Jeannine spotted some red flowers, part of the abundant wild plants growing in many places around the fort.

She identified them as Columbine -- here's a closer-up shot of some of them.

This is a view looking south, I believe, from the area atop the wall around one of the gun emplacements. (Please excuse the imperfect stitching of the photos which make up this panoramic view -- I'll try to tweak it later to make it better.)

And these are a few views from the lower levels.

I'm not sure what this little shed in this next photo was for, nor why that huge concrete cylinder is lying tilted on the rocks like that. This was near the end of our visit -- that's Jeannine on the right beginning our walk around the Fort on the rocky beach on its eastern side.

I was glad that we had the opportunity to see more of the fort than we had on our previous visit, but I would like to learn more about it and go back armed with that knowledge, so that what I saw there would mean more to me. -- PL

P.S. Click on this link for a satellite view of Fort Stark via Google Maps -- it shows pretty clearly the two large gun emplacements.

Fort Stark on Google Maps

Ruins on a river

It's finally, really spring here in western Massachusetts, and I am very happy to be back on my bicycle. One of my favorite rides -- which I took this week, for the first time since freezing temperatures and snow forced me to put my bicycles away last year -- is a street and then a dirt path, both of which run along or within sight of the Mill River in Northampton, ending near Smith College's Paradise Pond. It's a winding, tree-shaded path, slightly bumpy in spots but almost always pleasant to ride on. I encounter walkers, parents pushing baby carriages, runners, and occasionally (though not too often) other bicyclists. Occasionally, some bicycling friends and I have taken hand saws with us to cut up trees which have fallen in windstorms and blocked the path. In the fall there is one stretch of the path which has these small trees, or bushes perhaps, with leaves that turn exquisite shades of pink.

There are also some ruins along the way -- nothing terribly dramatic, but they catch my eye every time. On this ride, I stopped to take a few photos. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with the great zoom lens on it, nor did I clamber down a few slopes to get a better vantage point for photographing one spot… so these are not the best photos.

(I should point out here that this Mill River (probably one of dozens if not hundreds in this part of the country so-named) is the same Mill River featured in Elizabeth Sharpe's wonderful book "In the Shadow of the Dam", which recounts the terrifying story of the collapse of the Williamsburg  reservoir dam and the horrific flood that caused. Ever since I read that book a few years ago, I wonder if the ruined things I see along this stretch of the river have anything to do with that incident.)

This first ruin is a little hard to see through the trees -- and I suspect that in a month or two, when the trees are dressed in their green finery, it will be almost impossible to see. This is now visible from Riverside Drive, which (per its name) follows the river for a ways. I stopped to take a few photos when I spied these ramparts across the river, high up on the far bank. I do not know what they are, or perhaps more to the point, what they were.

On my side of the river, almost directly across from the ruins on the other side, was this partial stone wall.

Could these have been two sides of one dam spanning the river, perhaps providing power to a long-vanished mill? Possibly.


About a mile further, the path begins, and not too far down that path is this:

Two slightly boxy, three-sided concrete structures, the far one with a large chunk taken out of it and bearing two sizable cracks, sit on either side of the river. Between them runs a curved concrete ledge, battered and cracked and eroded, and barely visible under the water for the most part. You can see the exposed portion of it on the left, to the right of the tree in the foreground.

And over to the right in this panoramic image, there is an odd little doorway in the bank of the river. I have always wondered about this thing -- it seems, in its construction, almost primitive.

As I stood on the river's edge, taking these photographs, I looked down into the water and gravel near my feet and saw chunks of brick, some with broken corners smoothed -- I assume by years of erosive action from the river water.

Could these possibly be from the homes and mill buildings washed away by the flood on the Mill River in 1874? Or are they from some more recent bout of destruction, probably more limited in scope?

 I don't know. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable in the history of brick making could tell at a glance.

About thirty feet to the left of the concrete structure on the left in the above photo, just off the dirt path and almost buried in last fall's leaves, there are these:

To my eye, they appear to be robust concrete and steel mounting plates… but for what? What was secured here? Did it have something to do with those aging concrete structures on the river's edges? I suppose I could ask the Northampton DPW, or perhaps someone at Smith College… and probably someday I will. But for now, it if more fun to speculate.


Moving down the path another tenth of a mile or so, I spied these on the far bank of the river:

I would guess that this tumbled pile of cut stone blocks is not the remains of a building which fell on this spot, through action of the river or inaction and neglect by its builders, but rather were pushed here, down the bank from the dirt road above, to get them out of the way. Not too far away from this location, on that side of the river, is the site of the former Northampton State Hospital, an institution for the mentally ill. Did these blocks of stone come from there? Why were they disposed in this way? Again, I don't know. -- PL

Ruins in New Hampshire and Maine

A few weeks ago, Jeannine and I took a small vacation (three nights) after she did a presentation for a group of teachers in Danvers, Massachusetts. We drove from there up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for our first night, and the next day I told her that I wanted to try to find a local ruin site, similar to Odiorne State Park in that it had abandoned shore battery emplacements from World War II. I could not remember what it was called, or where, exactly, it was -- all I could remember was that it was near the southern outskirts of Portsmouth, and the street where'd we'd parked, probably about twenty-seven years ago when we'd visited the site for the first and only time, had something either floral or fruity in its name.

I did a little web searching in the hotel before breakfast, and quickly found it -- Fort Stark, at the end of Wild Rose Lane in New Castle, New Hampshire. After checking out of the hotel, we headed there, and found it easily (thanks to the car's GPS, that is!)… but it didn't look much like I'd remembered it. That first time, as I recalled, we'd parked on the side of the road, and had to make our way through some thick bushes before we came to the site of the abandoned fort, where rusted circular steel rails -- the mounts for the long-gone shore artillery -- basked in the bright sun and salty air.

I think I may have misremembered this, because when we got to the site this time, there was a parking lot (unfortunately closed, with lots of dire-looking "NO PARKING!" signs around the area in front of it) and a large, open area between the parking lot and the fort, which sits near the edge of the ocean. Because I did not want to risk having our car get towed (which would have put a significant damper on our enjoyment of our little vacation), we only stayed for about ten minutes, and never got out of sight of the car. But I did manage to get a few interesting shots as we walked on the shore for a bit, on what I am pretty sure was the north end of the fort.

There was a large, curved concrete wall at the edge of the ocean, with large chunks missing from it's edges, very likely from the erosive power of the sea and the effects of many a New Hampshire winter. The wall was surmounted by a large mound of earth, from which grew a profusion of scraggly, slightly-stunted trees, grass, and tall weeds. And in the middle of the mound atop the wall, there was some kind of squarish concrete structure -- what looked from our vantage point like the entrance to a bunker. I took several photos and later stitched them together into this small panorama.

And here are two more shots of the wall, one a close-up of the wall showing the damage to its underside, where the waves hit it…

… and the other a medium shot from the other end of the wall (that's Jeannine strolling across the beach rocks in the distance -- I think she's trying to soak up as much of the March sun as possible).

The Fort Stark site was not open for visitors when we went there this time, but I hope to get back later in the year to give it a more thorough look, and take more photographs.

We got back in the car and proceeded to meander to our second destination, the White Barn Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine. Neither of us had ever been to Kennbunkport before, even though we have spent a lot of time in southern Maine over the years. We had reservations to stay in one of the Inn's small cottages, and this one overlooked the Kennebunk River. 

Walking to the end of the short, dead-end street on which the cottage stood, I noticed that tide was out, and some old rotted piers, long-collapsed, had been exposed. 

This is something I have seen in various places, mostly near the ocean, and I have often wondered why these large hunks of wood are just left to rot, possibly interfering with boat traffic, snarling anchor lines and so forth, instead of being pulled out and perhaps recycled. Do people think it's just not worth it? Or do they calculate that, for tourists, the sight adds some kind of visual flavor to the shoreline when the tide is out? I am inclined to think it is the latter, because they do offer -- especially to the ruin fancier -- an intriguing, if literally and figuratively murky, glimpse of history.

Later, during our second day, while Jeannine was hard at work writing in the cottage, I took a stroll to the center of Kennebunkport to see what kinds of interesting shops and such might be found there… and saw another group of abandoned, rotting piers, again exposed by the low tide.

I wonder if anyone is still alive who remembers what these once represented? Or maybe these things are not as old as they seem, and there are many locals who know what they are (or were). Perhaps next time, I will ask. -- PL

Concrete reindeer

During the months of January and February, when we were still getting regular sizable snowfalls, Jeannine and I would go out and do a little cross-country skiing in the woods near our house. She was more adept at it, having used her skis like this for many winters, whereas I had not gone out on skis for at least ten years. 

So when she wanted to try a different route than we usually travelled, one which went down a long and pretty steep slope, I decided to put on my boots with their slip-on ice cleats, and walk along with her (at least until she started down the hill, where I would have to watch as she receded into the distance). It was a nice day, all snow considering, and the walk by myself through the woods was pleasant and quiet.

The route we took was one I'd been on many times in previous years, back when I would go dirt bike riding with my friends. It was what they call in these parts an "unimproved road" -- meaning that in certain areas it was mildly rutted and passable by just about any car, but in other sections you would need a gnarly off-road vehicle, a dirt bike, or something with feet to safely make it through. It was a nice five or six mile loop around a small mountain to the north of our house, and Jeannine only skied on the first mile or so.

So maybe if I had been on my skis, and trying to keep up with her, I might not have noticed this odd little artifact off to one side of the path, behind a single strand of barbed wire:

I am not completely sure what it is meant to be, but it sort of looks like a very stylized reindeer, rendered in concrete, between three and four feet tall. It is cracked in places, and the paint on it is faded and peeling. It looks as if it was created in a mold -- if not, quite a bit of care was taken to radius the edges for a smooth, rounded look. A large capital "M" protrudes from one side (there may be one on the other side too -- I did not look when I took the photo), chunks of the letter broken away, revealing in one spot a metal reinforcing bar (or "rebar" in the vernacular of the construction trade).

Near this artifact, there is supposedly a hunter's cabin or something of that ilk, back in the woods. I have never seen it, and have no idea who owns and/or frequents it. But I wonder if whoever has the hunter's cabin brought this strange thing into the woods for some reason. Perhaps the letter "M" is an initial for the owner of the cabin… or maybe it has nothing to do with that person -- maybe instead this reindeer was built as signage for a long-dead business, and someone found it in the trash and hauled it back here.

I have no idea.

But in its decrepit, decaying state, this odd little beast fits my definition of a ruin. -- PL