Journal of our trip   Robert Leverett   Aug 09, 2006 11:49 PDT  Chronicles of western trip of Monica and Bob Leverett: Monica and I would like to share our recent journey to the Rocky Mountain West with our companion Ents (now all 133 of you). We will, hopefully, accomplish our task through a series of essays spaced several days apart that follow our trip, day by day. In our description, we will deal with landscape features, fauna and flora, historical and cultural spots, some exceptional books we bought, and most significantly, our particular experiences and impressions along the way. It will be our impressions that drive the narrative. We will profile our route, the major rivers, plateaus, mountain ranges, and valleys that we paralleled or crossed, the other geological features we encountered, and but of course, the forests and trees. And again, we will concentrate on our individual impressions and reactions to what we saw. Because, beyond the physical composition of the land, there is a psychic component to places that Monica and I often explore. This component has no particular shape or purpose. The psychic component enters as impressions that we get that take on many forms. I’m probably treading in dangerous waters here to bring in a non-physical element, but something compels me to broach the subject and to explore it at least to a degree. For instance, the impact of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming (or the Indian name of Bear Lodge as preferred by Monica and now me) on both of us was more powerful than the feeling we got at any other location. No, we didn’t sense any alien presence at the Lodge, but the impact of this incredible geological formation was substantial, and for us, transcended its purely physical form. What might be the explanation? Both of us have our ideas on the role of the psychic. Perhaps others of you will be willing to enter the discussion at appropriate points. I should point out at the beginning that our trip was a whirlwind car event that took 18 days from July 21 through Aug 7. Not all days were especially significant. So the narrative will not be equally distributed across the days. Having said this, I hope the whirlwind trip was the last of its kind for us. We both agree that the 6,000 miles we covered should have taken 5, if not 6, weeks to remotely do justice to all we saw. But alas, I didn’t have the time. In terms of division of labor, my job was to plan the trip. I unabashedly proclaim myself an expert at trip planning. I pore over maps, and employing Excel, calculate alternative routes with times, expenses, etc. I pride myself at putting together an itinerary with military precision. Of course, it isn’t followed, but the initial planning is there. However, Monica does the car packing. Her sense of spatial efficiency exceeds mine. I get impatient and start stuffing and cramming – not a good strategy for a long trip. I am envious of how she so carefully puts ample thought into what we will need to quickly access, while on the road. I just want to hit the road. So, for the packing phase, I supply the muscle and she supplies the brains. That’s okay. I was well trained by my dear deceased first wife Jani, who was also a superb packer. The ladies planning and putting stuff into the containers and arranging and me doing the heavy lifting works best. In terms of our itinerary, we had a busy schedule planned. We intended to make stops at a couple or three mid-western tall tree sites, including Goll Woods in Ohio, several mixed and tall grass prairie sites, and at least two wildlife refuges before reaching our ultimate destination - the Rocky Mountains, where we have friends and relatives and an abundance of great scenic sites to visit. It will become abundantly clear that our predilection is nature. It is true that we also like historical and cultural sites and events - provided they are not in congested areas. From the start, we mutually agreed that dense urban areas were to be avoided. So, with our car fully packed, on the morning of July 21, Monica and I were set to begin our westward trek. Well I’ve given enough of the preliminary stuff. So, here we go with day #1. Oh yes, I apologize in advance for the inevitable grammatical goofs that I know that I'm going to make. I’m a miserable failure at catching my own writing mistakes. Bob Day #1: At 10:00AM, we officially began our journey by immediately stopping in Northampton, Mass. Monica needed her large coffee latte to go. Unfortunately, the latte machine was down and that spelled trouble for me. An early morning Monica without a large latte is to be approached with extreme caution. Like watermelon for me, lattes are for her not a luxury, but a necessity of life. One can exist latteless for only so long (more on this story to come). However, making the best of the situation, we took I91 south to connect with I90. We headed west across the Berkshires. We chose the I90 Mass Pike route instead of a slightly quicker route following I91 south to Hartford and then west across I84. Our planned route was always intended to keep us in scenic country as much as possible and away from population centers. With both of us, topographical and botanical features of the land rank high. However, Monica is a birder and a good one. She was trained by the best. Serious birders maintain life lists of what they see and will literally go around the world to bag another bird. Monica is not that fanatical, but she is always on the lookout for a new species. If she spots one, I’d better find a way to get the car stopped – or……However, I completely rely on her to identify interesting avian life along the way and profess a growing interest in birding. In terms of balance, and to be expected, I am the principal tree spotter on our trips. We are both equally into wild flowers, although I still hold a slight advantage on here in terms of quick identification. My edge is fast disappearing. But birds, trees, flowers, landforms, whatever, it is a good partnership that we have. With due consideration for stop-offs along the way, the true focus of our trip was in the western lands, and from the outset, I had images of snow-capped peaks dancing in my head. On earlier western excursions, this was such a preoccupation that I robbed myself of many pleasurable sights along the route. However, I do like to absorb the essence of the changing landscape and just to value the experience of traveling. I like to greet each mountain range, each valley, each river, etc. as we go. Oh yes, and a quest of mine on these trips is a search for good breakfasts. One can find good breakfasts in the rural South, and to a lesser extent the West, but good breakfasts in the Northeast are scare as hen’s teeth. It has to do with the insane pace of life that Northeasterners maintain. So with this introduction, our trip description will begin in the Connecticut River Valley, where Monica and I live. Although, I mention the Connecticut River Valley frequently in my tree e-mails, there is a lot more to the valley to explore than just its abundance of fine trees. There is geology, scenery, history, and culture – too much for this venue, so I’ll deal with the landscape. The Connecticut River valley is technically a rift valley that dates from the time of the ancestral Atlantic Ocean. An old volcanic seam runs up the valley that has left a low mountain chain characterized by basalt. The Mount Tom and Holyoke Ranges are locally famous and provide relief to the landscape. The volcanic features rise between 600 and 1000 feet above the valley floor. The scenery is much more striking than the modest elevations would suggest. From atop Mount Holyoke, famous Hudson River School of Art painter Thomas Cole did his famous painting of the Oxbow. The Mount Tom and Holyoke Ranges were also the destination of many a New Yorker during the 1800s and early 1900s. In terms of general feelings, antiquity is written across the face of the land. One senses the passage of the eons, yet it also is marked by much more recent geological events. The Valley has the unmistakable stamp of the most recent ice age, and indeed, the valley held historic Lake Hitchcock from 15,000 to about 12,000 years ago. At its height, the lake stretched from St. Johnsbury, VT all the way to Rocky Hill, CT, a distance of around 200 miles. The lake was up to 12 miles wide in places and varied in depth, up to about 150 feet. An excellent description of Lake Hitchcock can be found at: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/conn.river/hitchcock.html. The Connecticut River, itself, is a modern geological feature, dating back about 11,000 years. It has a length of 405 miles. Its starting elevation is 2660 feet and it discharges water into the Long Island Sound at an average rate of 19,600 cubic feet per second. The Connecticut is New England’s largest and longest river and establishes the character of the Connecticut River Valley, which in its lower reaches, is New England’s richest agricultural region. The river follows an ancient rift valley that separates the modern day Berkshire mountains to the west from the Pelham Hills to the east. The uplifts are the remains of mountains that were once far higher, perhaps as high as the Himalayas. Leaving the valley domain, as Monica and I headed westward on I90, as we passed, we said goodbye to Westfield, the Whip City, made famous for its manufacture of whips for stagecoaches. My first wife Jani’s cowboy stepfather was well aware of Whip City. I recall learning of that in the 1960s. He had actually ordered whips from the Westfield company when still in business. I periodically encounter such connections and they remind me of an America that has largely passed. After Westfield, one enters the Berkshire country. By formal name, one refers to the Berkshires as the Berkshire Hills. However, they often represent more of a plateau region and distinct hills. The Berkshires only appear in relief as mountains in the river gorges and valleys, notably the Deerfield, Hoosic, Housatonic, Westfield, and Swift Rivers. Where these rivers cut deep into the ancient rocks, the Berkshires take on the relief of mountains, and as has been reported so many times, it is in the mountain ravines that the tallest trees in Massachusetts are found. The relief is generally 500 to about 900 feet. Occasionally, changes of 1000 to 1300 vertical feet occur. Entering the eastern edge of the Berkshires, we slowly climbed to their crest on I90. The climb remains gentle. The elevation changes from about 200 feet at Westfield to eventually reach 1724 feet at the high point. I90 does not reach a greater altitude until Oacoma, South Dakota is reached at an altitude of 1729 feet. Oacoma is near Chamberlain on the western side of the Missouri River. There is about a 1600-mile swath of land in between. When I pass over the high point in Massachusetts, I always puzzle over the highway engineers who were interested in posting the elevations along I90. It is nice to feel that there are kindred spirits out there in terms of interest in landforms. One sees a decreasing number of the elevation signs as the interests of people traveling the Interstates stray farther and farther from any curiosity whatsoever about the natural features of the land. Passing over the Berkshires, we descended into the Housatonic River Valley. The Housatonic heads in the Berkshire-Taconic region and then flows south into Long Island Sound. Crossing the Housatonic Valley,  the ancestral home of the Mohican Indians, we ascend the Taconics,  which form the border between Massachusetts and New York. It is in the Taconics that we find Mount Greylock, Massachusett’s highest peak (3,487 ft). Most Massachusetts natives do not make a distinction between the Berkshires and Taconics, but they are geologically different mountains. The geological history of these two ranges is complex and tortured. Try as I may, I can’t seem to draw coherent pictures in my mind of the march of these geological processes that gave them their current shapes except as embodied in the idea of building up and wearing down. Of course, I get that general idea, but 300 to 350 million years produce a lot of specifics that have to be ignored to go from then to now. Geology is a fascinating science and I think one that requires a particular talent of visualization of complex processes acting over time. As one crosses the Housatonic Valley, one enters the second significant mountain range of Massachusetts – the Taconics. Fore the most part, they appear much more mountainous than the Berkshires. They form the border with New York. Thereafter, the Taconics flatten out into a broad plateau-like region. As a distinct mountain range, the Taconics rise just south of Rutland Vermont and peter out along the Connecticut-New York border. Their high point is Mount Equinox near Manchester VT at 3,864 feet above sea level. At that point their uplift is an impressive 3,000 feet above the surrounding lowlands. In the Northeast, one reads about the White Mountains, the Greens, the Adirondacks, the Berkshires, etc, but the general public is seldom aware of the Taconics as a distinct range. Past their high points along the Mass-New York border , the Taconic country in New York is very spacious and pleasant. It seems almost devoid of people, but the human imprint is seen in the attractive blend of fields and forested hills. The region is interlaced with Dutch names. State Route 22 that parallels the high part of the Taconics was once known as the Milky Way because of the abundance of dairy farms. One then descends from the Taconic uplands into the valley of the Hudson River, the second significant river of our journey. The Hudson is 279 miles long. It has its origin at Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondacks at 4293 feet. Its average discharge at this mouth is about 21,000 cubic feet per second. The Hudson is incredibly scenic and is gradually being restored from a state of extreme pollution. It is a national scenic treasure and it has an abundance of great cottonwoods along its banks that one sees from the bridges. Oh how tempting they are. One day……. West of Albany, we pass through an area of pine plains – pitch pines to be precise. They never cease to impress, but the elimination of fire is gradually leading to a succession to hardwoods. In my mind this is unfortunate. Pine plains can be fascinating places. However, I have been remiss in not exploring the remnant. There are many very mature pitch pines in the barrens and somewhere in there, there may be a champion. From near Schenectady, NY, we turned southwest, heading down I88 toward Binghamton, NY. I88 passes across another plateau west of the New York Catskills. The whole region is technically the Allegheny Plateau – a vast area, with the Catskills being the most prominent part of the plateau. The Catskills are technically not part of the Appalachian chain that emerges from Pennsylvania and New Jersey, although it is usually though of as such. Neither is the Poconos, for that matter, which are also part of the Allegheny plateau. The relief of the Catskills and Poconos is mostly from water erosion as oppose to the aftermath of mountain building processes (If I get too feisty and overstep my bounds on these geological descriptions, our geologist webmaster Ed Frank is invited in to straighten things out.) Heading southwest on the I86 corridor of New York, one is struck by the bucolic, pleasant nature of the landscape. I88 has not yet become clogged with obnoxious parade of truck traffic the way that I80 has. In fact, I88 gives little hint of the congestion that one must endure in the southeastern portion of the Empire State, which leads me to a brief digression. I have often marveled at how much open space New York state has and how varied the character of the state is. What is called upstate New York by natives goes against the images held by outsiders of overall character of New York State. In the eyes of nonresidents, New York, like Massachusetts, is often identified with its largest city. If you say you are from Massachusetts, people from other geographical regions assume Boston or a facsimile thereof. Personally, I loathe being identified with Boston or any big city. I'm sure many upstate New Yorkers feel the same way about being associated with the big apple. But it is an identification that follows from our having become largely a nation of city slickers. I suppose that my friend Lee Frelich’s view of population containment in urban areas is the only practical one to keep our species from overwhelming the land, but despite where I currently live, I’m not a city person. Toward the southern end of I86, we entered the domain of our third great eastern river, the Susquehanna. In authoritative descriptions, the Susquehanna is listed as 410 miles in length, beginning at Otsego Lake near Cooperstown NY, at an elevation of a modest 1,180 feet. The discharge of the Susquehanna is a substantial 40,080 cubic feet per second, making it the 16th largest river in the U.S. The Susquehanna exits at Chesapeake Bay. The Susquehanna has substantially more volume than either the Connecticut or Hudson Rivers. One might not guess this fact crossing the lower Hudson River. Because of the tidal backup, the width of the Hudson is substantial and makes the river’s volume appear much greater than it actually is. It is also dredged. I know very little about the Susquehanna other than to mutter its name when I cross it. However, I suspect that it has some fabulous flood plain forests along much of its length with huge cottonwoods and sycamores. From I88, we intersected with I86 at Binghamton in southern New York and from there continued westward across the broad Allegheny Plateau. Along much of its length, I88 which is also called the Southern Tier Expressway, is a vision of loveliness. The countryside becomes rolling with an exquiste blend of sky, forested ridges mixed with open fields. There is a spacious feeling to this country that is reminiscent of places far to the West. One passes through towns with familiar names like Corning, NY, as in Corning Glassware. One place along the route that has special significance for me is Elmira NY. That is the home of the late psychic Jane Roberts who authored the Seth Material – a study obsession of mine and hint to my understanding of the source of the nostalgic feelings that I sometimes get. At Salamanca, we passed through the Seneca Reservation dating back to a 1794 treaty. The town of Salamanca is actually leased from the Seneca Indians, a member of the Iroquois Confederacy and the largest of the original 5 nations. The Senecas were considered to be the keepers of the western gate and the Mohawks, the keepers of the eastern gate. The Senecas were the primary enemies of the Hurons, another historically powerful agricultural tribe, and drove them out of western New York. Interestingly, Salamanca’s lease with the Seneca runs out in 2030. It will be interesting to see what happens then. Monica wanted to drive through the town to see what it looked like. It was pleasant and historic looking, which fits its role as a junction of four major railroads. But, presently, only 13% of the residents of Salamanca are listed as Native American. Still, the Native American imprint is there. The town has a distinctly Indian feeling to it. I had a slightly nostalgic feeling while driving through the town. I didn't mention it to Monica, sense it was ephemeral. More on nostalgic feelings in the future. BTW, “The current name is derived from a major investor in the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad, the Spanish marquis Don José de Salamanca, which in turn took his name from the city of Salamanca in Spain.” As dusk set in on Monica and me on our first day westward, we worked hard to find a decent motel in what is basically a large vacation land east of Lake Erie. The small New York lakes in the southwestern part of New York are surrounded by vacationers. Motel prices, by my standards are high, but Monica was very tired. She had been nursing a cold, so I finally stopped at a Holiday Inn out of desperation. Ouch! I instantly became $104 poorer. Much farther west, I knew that I would encounter motels charging from an occasional $35 to a more common $45 to $60 per night, $104 seemed like I was investing in the darned place. I just wanted to sleep there. However, I was also cognizant of the exorbitant rates that I would have had to pay in virtually any large city, so I counted my blessings and we both slept soundly, ending day #1 of our journey. Robert T. Leverett Cofounder, Eastern Native Tree Society   Home