A Cross-country Outing

Amanda is shivering outside their neat one-hundred-year-old bungalow on Sycamore Street. She adores the location. She can walk to her teaching job at Fort Stanwix Elementary. The house is roomy enough for her and Philip. The yard is a postage stamp, though. Even after four years, she has not acclimated to the “generous” 40 feet of frontage. It is a far cry from her parent’s dairy farm in Vienna.

The skis are already clamped into the Thule roof rack. Boots, outerwear, and gloves are in the back with a thermos of cocoa and bottles of water. Amanda has prepared as much as possible. Now she awaits Philip, finishing up at Griffis Airport. He has been toiling over the drone project there since his days as a graduate student at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). It was at RIT he met Amanda at a fraternity party. She was a teaching major at SUNY Brockport. As the night wore on, casual drinkers, they were the last two people “left standing”. Six years later, Amanda stands in this driveway, listening for Philip’s barely muffled Corolla rambling down Sycamore from Black River Blvd.

Amanda hoped to be out the door at 6:30, in time for the early bird special at the Forestport Diner. Now it looks like an early lunch at Scooter’s Bar. She is noodling the arithmetic. If he arrives home in the next five minutes, they can be at the bar, grab lunch, ski ten miles to Boonville, have a quick stopover, and do ten miles back before it gets dark. Amanda reflects that they are both in good shape. The mountain biking of summer and fall, quickly morphed into cross-country skiing. This winter sometimes the trails are immaculate, but, as often, they are rough going. She hopes today is one of those well-groomed days. The rumble and snort of the Corolla shake her from her thoughts.

Half the trip is on NY 46 which starts out as Black River Blvd. and then proceeds to change names, for no apparent reason. Each section of the road has meaning to the locals. Not much imagination goes into their naming process. If the road meanders to Boonville, it is Boonville Road, until arrival in Boonville. Then, it might be named Rome Road. If a highway runs along a gorge, Gorge Road is an excellent name. Many of the byways between Rome and Carthage are named Canal Road. One imagines how many elephants Hannibal could have spared if he had a road from Carthage to Rome. But this is Central New York, whose story is shaped not by the Mediterranean but by the Mohawk River and Erie Canal.

Given the practical, matter-of-fact naming of things, one might expect looking out the passenger car window to see the Black River. Or, a distant water's glimmer, peeking through, conclude the same. It is not. It is the Mohawk. The closest the Black River is to Rome is near that river’s source, twenty-five miles to the northeast. From there, the Black River skirts further and further away as it winds northwest for a little less than 100 miles past its eponymous village. It meanders on through Watertown, skirting the airport, finally depositing its Adirondack snowfall melt into Lake Ontario.

Except for college, Amanda has lived in Oneida County. Yet, she has no idea why her home is 100 yards from Black River Blvd, no river to be found. Curious, the least bit of detective work and questions to neighbors reveal the intriguing story of the Black River Canal. One termination point is one mile south of her home, the Erie Canal. The other is Carthage.

They race past Delta Lake State Park, its reservoir lonely and white. At the fork, faced with what might be (for another) a Frostian dilemma, they take the “One Less Traveled By”. A few more miles and a few turns, they find themselves at Scooter’s. Amanda has a chef’s salad and Philip, a cheeseburger. Sated, they make their way to the car park. Fifteen minutes later, the two are ski-shod on their way down the Black River Canal towpath. The challenge for Amanda is keeping Philip on schedule. Amanda lives her life as a rally. A bit of that behavior is her job, which is driven by the clock. Most of it is shaped by growing up on the dairy farm where success is milking three times a day at exactly the right time each day – seven days a week. Philip is more casual about time. He knows enough physics to appreciate that time is relative.

Rochester is the home of Kodak. RIT has one of the best photography schools in the world. Like so many of his classmates, Philip minored in photography. Amanda must rein-in Philip’s urge to find beauty in every panorama and his obsessive need to memorialize. Such is the “yin and yang” of their relationship. Only 7500 feet into their adventure. Philip stops and photographs a plaque marking a historical site. Seems on July 23, 1897, the First Forestport Break occurred on the Black River Canal. Amanda, because of her sleuthing, knows that this bit of the canal was built on a narrow hillside seventy feet above the Black River. For the 19th century it was an amazing engineering feat. Equally formidable, the canal was comprised of 109 locks over its 35-mile length, one every 1700 feet. She also knows that this break was a deliberate act of sabotage.

The skiing to Boonville is uneventful, a compromise of staying the course and pausing for scenic moments, which includes a large stag. Amanda welcomes some of those breaks, alternating cocoa for warmth with water for hydration. In Boonville, they grab a snack and survey a couple of tourist shops. Then, she cajoles Philip back to the towpath for the return trip to Forestport. More uphill sections on the return trip, but most are gradual. They already know the conditions, which today are good. Most of the photos have been captured. Only the snaring of waning light against snow or trees requires a photographic breather. At the end of their trip is Alder Pond. They unbind the skis and Amanda starts carrying cargo to the Subaru for the trip home. Across the pond, Philip spots an American Bittern. There is little about this encounter that makes sense except for the presence of marsh, albeit frozen, and dusk. In February, this member of the heron family is supposed to be in warmer climes. Even when they are in Adirondack New York, sightings are rare. He carefully steps on the pond. The snow covering the ice makes for quiet and sure footing. As he approaches a spot where he can shoot photos, he feels the ice give way under his left foot, and then his right. The weight of his boots is carrying him down towards the bottom of the pond.

Philip emerges at Scooter’s, staring over the stoop to the front door. Since lunchtime, the owners have removed the Scooter’s sign. The new sign says Hotel Doyle. He notes that it looks a bit worn. “Likely, akin to prewashed jeans, it is an attempt to make the sign fit the Forestport tourist themes.” As he surveys the street, right and left, taking in most of the village, there is no sign of Amanda. Philip walks into the establishment. It is packed for dinner. He knows almost immediately that Amanda is not inside. There are a few women serving meals and a few more leaning on the bar, but otherwise every table is occupied by men. The scene is one he might imagine a logger’s convention. The smoke from cigars, pipes, and cigarettes is pungent and stings his eyes. His tearing obliterates what little he can discern through the fog. Suddenly, he hears a booming voice with a thick brogue. “I be Mike. This is my place. Where do you hail from, and do you have a name?” Taken aback, the reply, “I am Philip, up from Rome.” Mike gives him a curious look. He has a few more questions for this city-slicker, but first to business. “No way you can get back there tonight. I have a room for $2 or only $3, dinner included. Dinner comes with a beer.” Mike needs to close the deal before Philip heads next door to Hotel Albert or across River Street to Jim Rudolph’s Saloon. Business is tightening once more. The second economic stimulus package is running out of steam. The fire that took out much of the village this past February accelerates the urgency for action. The dining room is full tonight, but only because most of the men in the community have come out to discuss this year’s program for stabilizing the village’s prosperity. The past three years have been good ones and although lumbering is on the decline, Forestport thrives. Mike continues, “Why don’t you head over to the bar. Get your beer and then ask for Louisa. She will take good care of you.” Philip detects a bit of a leer in Mike’s smile. He admits a beer sounds pretty good after today’s exertions. He needs to reenergize. He is certain he misheard the $3 “Groupon” room and dinner offer.

As he observes the crowd from his perch, he perceives some organization to the chaos. The men have pulled tables together to form factions, populated by like-minded occupants. From one group, he hears regularly and loudly, the phrase, “too risky”. This group seems concerned a “third time in two years” will defy coincidence. Opposite is another cadre. This clique is led by a burly Scotsman, who appears to have had his first dram hours ago. He has no proposals but is loudly deriding some politician. The object of his scorn is, “Black, appropriate name, that blagyird (blackguard). He and his cronies are always the first to the trough. All that is left for the workingman is scraps.” In the middle of the room is a small table of men trying to maintain peace. One of them speaks out, “No question, Frank Black was a bad egg. But Teddy is going to fix what is broken.” With an engineer’s grasp of history, he has no idea who Frank Black is, but he is pretty sure “Teddy” is Theodore Roosevelt. Odd, they are talking about him in the present tense. Philip narrows down his temporal whereabouts to the 19th century.

Just as Philip is getting his bearings, Mike Doyle, and an equally menacing figure, who is named “one-eyed” Mike, grab the floor. “Enough talk!” yell a Mike. “We have taken care of this before, and we will again. Survival for Forestport at any cost.”

With that, Philip shakes off the cloud of tobacco smoke. He sees Amanda and a young nurse. He blurts out, “Mike Doyle and “one-eyed” Mike are going to do something ne’er-do-well, likely illegal. They must be stopped.” The nurse smiles and softly replies, “Too late for that. The deed is done.” She leaves the room. Amanda squeezes his hand tighter. He realizes that she has been holding it since who knows when. “Sweetheart, it was just a bad dream. You will be okay, only a little frostbite.” Philip, agitated, replied, “No, I was at Scooter’s Bar, but it wasn’t. The men of the town are demanding action, and the Mike’s, apparently have a plan executed previously and are going to do it again.” Amanda picks up a book from the hospital room nightstand: The Forestport Breaks: A Nineteenth-Century Conspiracy along the Black River Canal by Michael Doyle. “This is the true story of his great-grandfather. Lots of copies here in town. Makes for a good mystery read. Punchline: The local men would sabotage the canal. The state would pay them to fix it. Everyone in Forestport prospered. It worked so well they did it the next year, with the same outcome. The third time they got caught and several ended up in jail.”