Eternal Flame Falls

Sunday  10 July 2011 10am and John and I are on the road again.  It’s about a 25 mile drive – maybe 45 minutes or so – this time out to Eternal Flame Falls in Chestnut Ridge Park. 

For years now, I’ve been hearing about this place.  It’s a natural gas flame that sits behind a small waterfall somewhere in the park.  To this point, I, of course, had never been able to find it, and after a while simply gave up trying to figure it out.  When I’d ask, people would say, “it’s in the park”, but nobody could ever do any better than that.  Yeah.  Over 12 hundred acres and the best they could come up with is “in the park.”  OK, fine.

Well, this Sunday, John presented me with two options:

A:  Skinny Dip Falls – Westfield, NY, approximately 60 miles away and over an hour and a half driving.

B:  Eternal Flame Falls in Chestnut Ridge Park.

Did I mention that I was hung over?  Oh, yeah.  The night before…crimony…I can’t remember, for the life of me, what it was that I had done the night before.  I don’t remember going out, but I know that I don’t generally drink at home….ohhh…I remember now.  Dinner and drinks with a friend and her husband.  Right…so there’s that.  Moving right along.  So, I was good any hung over and the thought of spending more than an hour and a half on the bike, followed by a tromp through the woods, followed by another hour and half back…not real palatable.

Off to Eternal Flame Falls, I go.

John, displaying remarkable forethought, packed a couple bottles of water in a cooler, a flashlight and some bug repellant.  I’d have kissed him…if I didn’t think it was a little gross.  I swapped out my helmet for his; he wired his with mics so that we could chat while we ride, and off we went.

It was not at all an unpleasant ride.  The day hadn’t yet started to get too very hot but it wasn’t cold enough to ride without a jacket.  We chatted about this or that and we pulled up to park the bikes at the southern end of the park.  OK…this is where I’d been going wrong all this time.  Problem solved, as just as we parked the bike, there was a large sign with a trail map of the way straight down to the falls…naturally.

Also, worthy of a “naturally”, John decided that we weren’t going to be taking the main trail down, as he knew a “better” way to get there.  My heart sighed in resignation, and we set off after LIBERALLY coating ourselves (and subsequently everything within a five foot radius) with bug repellant. 

We plunged into the underbrush and started down a hill.  The first thing that I came across was this:

LEAF

After I'd gotten past the heart attack that came with the premonition of fall, we moved on.

Approximately 15 minutes down, I came across this little guy:

And, about the minute I stopped to take the picture with the Nikon (which I’d FINALLY remembered to bring), I realized that I had left my cell phone sitting on my gloves on the tank of the Harley parked on the side of the road.  Fabulous. 

Crashing back up the hill we go.

Turns out it was rather a happy accident, as John realized that there was a better route we could be taking, which, I think, was his way of saying he’d taken a wrong turn right out of the gate
We soon found ourselves on a walked down path that just as quickly lead to a shallow stream.  As we walked, picking our way from rock to rock, we’d stop to take our pictures and try to avoid breaking our necks.

There's not a whole lot that I need to be saying, but I'll walk you down a bit of the path with John and I:

OK...We didn't get as far as I thought we would before I got hung up on the next narrative.  We walked for not too very long before we encountered our first "down":

So down we went.  As most of the walls along the path were slate/shale, we picked our way carefully until we reached the bottom not too very far below:

Ok....so what say, we just walk for a few minutes....?

And then, the second 'shroom of the day:



And a little closer look at his majesty:

And, on we went.  We came to our next down a fwe minutes on...This was the big one.

Not a great shot, but...did I happen to mention shale, slate, loose rock.  Yeah.  I wasn't looking for a quick trip down.  Needless to say, we had to find an alternative...

And there you have it.  The way down.  John led the way, stopping to take a couple shots before he started down:

And, the picture he was taking?  Well...have a look...

OK...kinda glad I didn't see that before I decided that I was "in for a pound".  I sidled over to him and took my own look:

Ah geez. 

With the exception of the camera bag wanting to slide around to the front of me every time I reached for another root, the descent was fairly easy and before I had time to freak out and ask myself what the hell I was doing, we reached the first landing:

Beautiful.

The next level down was a tiny bit more tricky.  It was down the loose rock sides (of which there are no pictures, as it took everything I had not to break my neck) the rest of the way to the bottom...to the eternal flame:

OK....as you might have noticed, this wasn't exactly the most...engaging post I've dropped on you to this point. 

I'm distracted.  Big.  My brain is full and I need to get what's in, out before I can post something like this again...I'll keep you posted........................................











Akron Falls Redux

When last we (you) saw our intrepid explorers (me), they were out tromping through the mosquito invested brush of Akron Falls County park.  Not that I need to drive the 20 miles to get exsanguinated, as I just sat down on the toilet in the other room to find two new bites on my thighs.  What the hell?  Anyway.  So there we were, brush crashing to return to our bikes after wandering around with no real idea of what were were looking for.  I suggested to John that we, perhaps, do a little more research before we go out lookin' fer stuff.

The following Sunday...OK, look...now, I was almost POSITIVE that the next time we'd gone out was a Sunday, but it, evidently, wasn't.  It was the Tuesday after that.  July 5th.  OK.

I met John at his house where he showed me an Internet page that...well..didn't help me much.  I can't seem to get the hang of that "seeing in my head" thing that other people can do with ease.  So, I looked at a bunch of pictures that, ultimately, didn't wind up meaning a damn thing to me and we hit the road convinced that we knew exactly where we were going. 

OK, so maybe John was convinced that he knew exactly where we were going.  I was convinced that I was in for another day of heat, mosquito bites, and getting snubbed by the caves and mines.  But, hey...I'm in for a pound, right?

We roll right the hell past where we should be going into our first stop at 9:43 am:

Pretty, but we're wrong...for the second time of the morning. Out come the two GPS units, mine on my phone, his attached to his gas tank.  We find that "Murder Creek" is further outside the park and head in the direction we've been pointed.  Nope.  Nothing.  Well, we found Murder Creek, it's exactly where it's supposed to me, just not exactly what it's supposed to be.  John says something about another park entrance that we should try, so we flip a u-turn and head back in the direction from which we just came. 

We enter Akron Falls sports field and ride down a loose stone path (my favorite) to the far end of the field.  I manage not to dump the Harley on it's matte finish and dismount managing not to twist my ankle in the process.  My first real successes of the morning.  45 minutes after our first stop.  I look at John skeptically and he leads us off down a path:

Memorize that path and place it end to end approximately 475 times and you'll have an idea of exactly how far we walked and what we looked at for the next hour.  Occasionally John would break from the path to see if there was something we were missing in the middle or off to the side or cock his head to the side sure he was hearing a phantom waterfall that only ever turned out to be wind through leaves.  Occasionally, I would look off far in the distance and exclaim, "Hey, isn't the street we took to get down here?!"

Once we'd made the complete circuit of the path and its nothingness, we found ourselves back at the bikes wondering what the hell we were doing. I knew that I was pissing and moaning, as I was forced to walk around in an undershirt because of the stifling heat and that I had a pretty impressive blister on my pinky toe because I was wearing leather boots...well, you'll see in a few minutes.  But, in for a pound.....right?

John We decide that we'll head back to where we'd parked the Sunday before and see if we couldn't find something.  I put my SWEATER (it was chilly that morning!) back on and we head back to the car wash where we'd parked the last time.  We park the bikes, dismount, and immediately stride into the buzzing, bombing, biting, stinging ghetto.  Looking down, we find that there is a walked down path through the raspberry bushes, greenery and other pleasantries that house the unpleasantries:

Artsy, aren't I?  Heh.

After only a few minutes of rubbing my blistered toe against the inside of my boot walking, we both stopped and cocked our head convinced that we heard the sound of a waterfall.  We didn't exactly...well, not really, but sorta.  I'll get to that too.  We followed the path to the left and came upon:

The source of the sound of falling water.  OK...so, we'd found something.  I'm not exactly sure WHAT it is that we've found, but it is something.  Now, I should probably interject here, that I am NOT a fan of heights.  Benny Hill used to joke that it wasn't the fall that killed him, it was the sudden stop at the end.  Yeah, well, I don't want to do that falling thing either regardless of the stop at the end, sudden or otherwise. 

John looks at me--he really is good that way.  I know he's DYING to climb down or up or whatever hare-brained scheme he's contemplating, but I know, with 100% certainty, that if I so much as burped in hesitation, he would put his own excitement in his back pocket in order to accommodate me.  But, in most cases, I'll stuff my own hesitations and go right along with him.  I know that the payout will be SO much better than just sitting around nursing my own insecurities. 

We carefully picked our way down, stopping here or there to assess the best way to proceed.  As I have the shortest legs known to man, I have to watch everything John's doing and then see if I can do the same or if I have to find a new way. At one of the one of the assessments, it became much more clear what we were looking at:

Cool, huh? 

OK, so the payout was looking to be promising already.  

We continued making our way down the side, until we reached the bottom and were able to see the cave and all it's glory:

OK...so not quite as glorious, as say...I don't know, a better lit, better focused, better composed shot, maybe?  It's my own fault...no forethought.  I didn't think I was doing anything more than just snapping a couple pictures with which I was going to make friends jealous of my adventures.  And, now, here I am.  Idjit.

Because I didn't stop to take any pictures of the full way down or the bottom once we'd gotten there, you are now forced to look at pictures of John and I hanging out in the cave.  John:

Me:

Please note the UTTER blackness behind us in these pictures.  Needless to say, we were thoroughly unprepared to go spelunking, so we didn't get too far into the cave (though, don't count it out). 

After poking around as much as we could, we took off downstream to see where it would lead.  We didn't have to walk very far across this:

We didn't walk too very long before we reached the end of the road:

That was the view straight across from the last step that we could take.  This one:

To give you a tiny bit of perspective, here is the path we originally took down the trip before:



Those two tiny people?  Yeah, I don't know who they are.  Suffice to say, they are standing on the same path that John and I took down last week to get this shot:

And, in case you're wondering, these are my NOT hiking shoes that I just spent nearly two hours hiking in:

And they, John and I are sitting on top of the overhang:

And yeah, that's my sweater again.  Too damn hot to be playing Indiana Jones.  If you need more perspective, scroll up to the full frontal of the waterfall and look at the rock to the left of where the water is actually falling.  That's where he and I are.  And, as I sit here scribbling, it occurs to me that directly under where we are sitting appears to be another cave.  Yep...I'll be mentioning this to him when I speak with him next.

Stay tuned for next post when I talk about our trek to Eternal Flame Falls and my Nikon D50 that had enough battery to take every picture I wanted right up until we got the the actualy flame itself.

Akron, NY...Caves, Falls and Abaondoned Mines

Let's go back, shall we to the morning of 26 June, 2011.  It is a Sunday, it is sunny and John and I are heading out on the motorcycles to go see the world.

OK...so maybe not the world so much as a small part of our part of it. 

John has gotten it in his head that he wants to go find either the mines or the caves that are located somewhere either in or around Akron Falls, NY.

This is John....

I haven't the foggiest what it is that he is looking at, but it's irrelevant.

John's my buddy.  We've been friends for...ohhh...hmmm...let me count back...17 years now?  Yeah, something right around there.  We met one afternoon as my (at the time) girlfriend and I were coming back from a paddle in our fiberglass canoe down Ellicott Creek.  And yes, the composition of said canoe is relevant.  Incidentally, one of my students--a senior--once asked me what a "can-oh-ee" was.  Until I walked over to his computer, I had no idea what word he was saying and, upon discovering what the hell he was talking about, contemplated, for only the 3,000th (or so) time my career choice.

ANYWAY!

As the ex and I were cruising into our pull out spot, we discovered that there were two men fishing...on our spot...in our way.  Much to our delight, they immediately, and chivalrously I might add, pulled their lines from the water and stood up to help us bring the canoe ashore.

Unfortunately, our delight was short lived as John and his friend Gordy rather dragged the canoe from the water over every rock and branch that, I think, had ever falling into the creek.  Thus, my reasoning behind including the composition of the canoe in the retelling of this little vignette.  Needless to say, the nearly flawless canoe was decidedly less so once it had made it to shore.

Nonetheless, I had a friend for life.

I think everyone has a John in their lives.  That one friend who won't walk away from you (no matter how hard you try some days), who will participate in any hare-brained plan you come up with and who will most likely not be bailing you out of jail, as he will be sharing the cell with you.  He may be a tad boorish from time to time, perhaps a bit over bearing, perhaps downright flee-worthy, but he's genuinely got a good soul and you know that he is true blue. 

Historically, my girlfriends (he has been through 5 of them with me) have not much cared for John.  His boorishness and excitability can be a little off putting for someone who hasn't learned how to compartmentalize.  And, admittedly, sometimes he just wears me right the hell out, but a girlfriend will drop many points in my estimation for saying a negative word about him. 

Well, when this latest relationship hit the ocean floor, John realized that he had his play buddy back again and we started to do things.  Somebody might want to just kill me now before my mother spends the rest of her days agonizing over whether or not they will ever recover my body.  John takes some foolish chances from time to time and I am always ever so happy to traipse merrily along beside him.  He's going to get me killed because neither one of us has any sense.

The first thing that John decided that we were going to take the motorcycles out for a ride one Sunday morning.  He asked me if I'd ever been to Akron Falls, which I had.  He said that he'd been doing some poking around online and wanted to see if he (read we) could find the abandoned mines that he'd read about in a couple of blogs.  Never one to turn down any of John's stupid ideas, I said that I was in. 

We met at his house and from there, drove the 20 miles to Akron Falls County Park in Akron, NY.

Having only a vague idea of where we were going, we parked the bikes at a nearby do-it-your-damn-self car wash and walked into the park.  Being John, he took no real notice of the fact that we were crashing through the pavilion of some family's day at the park.  We eventually excused ourselves and continued onward.  Until we reached a trail...and this fence:

Since I was forced (by my incessant need to travel as unencumbered as possible) to use my camera phone to take all of this trip's (and next one's too, if you must know!) pics.  For those of you who can't read what the signs say, how about this:

I'm sure I don't need to tell you that we ignored both of them.

But, if you will, allow me to slip in an aside here.  I was raised a good Italian Catholic in a long line of good Italian Catholics...Sicilians, if you want to be a stickler.  Even though I haven't stepped foot in a church (other than when I was curiously poking around or attending a concert in a reused space) in more than 20 years, my heart still does a little clutch every single time I break a rule.  Stupid Catholic Guilt!  Moving right along...

John and I jumped over one guardrail, slipped under another and went crashing through the brush until we discovered a well worn walk down to the water:

Don't worry right now about how I got that picture, I'll get to it next time, and don't worry, at all, about who those people are; I have no idea.

Once we made it down to the water's edge without killing ourselves or breaking anything, We were about to take in our surroundings:

Being the people that we are, we (of course) felt it was necessary to see just how close we could get.  Incidentally, I believe this the the Lower Falls.  Don't quote me on that, as we never have a map or anything more than a vague, general idea of where we are going. 

So...closer, we went:

 And closer:

And closer still while John stopped to contemplate god knows what:

The closer we got, the more slick the rocks got:

Until we couldn't go much further without taking a dip:

Which is what I decided to do so that I could get the next two shots:

And:

Eventually, John and I made our way back to the top, taking (of course) a much more treacherous route than we had down...just because...well...why not?

Unfortunately, I couldn't take pictures, as I was too busy using both hands to stop a bone breaking fall back down to the bottom of the ravine.  We made it back to the top uneventfully, climbed on the motorcycles and headed for home.

Next Time:  Akron Falls Redux



Beginning Again and Moving Forward

So…I’m in the process of getting left.  It would seem that I have been for a while now, but the official date of the “I can’t do this anymore” conversation was 24 June.  Yup.  Irony abounds.  At about the minute they were passing NY’s gay marriage bill, I was having the talk.  Hardy har har.

Now, here’s the thing, this was a LONG time in coming.  I mean years long, long.  So, I’m not exactly what you’d call heartbroken.  I’m not going to go into the whys and wherefores, as the story is excruciatingly complicated, but it should suffice for me to say that the both of us were miserable and I was waiting for her to put this dog down.  Which she did.  Thankfully, as I would probably never have told her that it was time for her to go. 

So, why am I sitting here telling this little story?  Because if I don’t sit down and write through some of the anxiety I’m feeling right now, I may wind up going downstairs and pushing her Craigslist perusing ass right the hell out of her chair and onto the floor. 

And also, because it’s sort of the background to the things that I am doing and the life that I’m starting over…again….this time, at 40.

The relationship went for five and half years.  But, it never really got off the ground right…or well…or easily.  It was difficult almost from the start and despite our squabbles being part of what she called “growing pains,” ultimately we never really fixed the squabbles, so much as we kind of ignored the elephants in the room until walking around them became more an exercise in labyrinth maneuvering than problem solving.  If we weren’t catching our clothes on their tusks, we’d be face deep in their asses.

Before we struck up the relationship, I’d had—what I considered—a pretty ok kind of a life.  I had a stable, albeit difficult job, money to afford everything I needed and some of the things that I merely wanted, I went places with friends and was able to find myself time to do what I wanted to.  The only downside was that my lifelong struggle with insecurity and shyness kept me in a rather…mmm…chaste existence.  But, even that was tolerable.

Since the relationship, I didn’t much socialize, money for play things was nearly non-existent and money just for survival was…well…you’d think I was trying out for a professional spot on the US Bill Juggling Team.  They say money can’t buy happiness, and I suppose, for some, that’s true, but money can buy a certain amount of security that brings a sort of happiness with it. 

But, again, I don’t want to rehash this relationship, so much as I just want to say that I’m’ doing some stuff now.  I’m going places again (though, it’s hard to feel comfortable out and about in the world when you spent the last five years of your life stressed out thinking that you had to get home before there were consequences, big or small).

So, I’m going to try to get some of them in here from time to time.  I’ve done a couple of interesting things in the past few weeks, and I guess I’d just like to share…

So…next up, Akron Caves in Akron New York.  I’ll bring you a little bit of that, the next time I sit down with you here.

A Protein Shake with Strangers

OK....so it's been a while since I've been here.  I'm not convinced I am letting down a single soul (other than myself), so I'm not exactly penitant. 

On a side note, my girlfriend of five and a half years is in the process of leaving, so things 'round the old homestead have sort of taken precedence over coming here to hang out.  Naah mean?  (read that as "You know what I mean?"  City slang attributed to teaching junior high/high school English for way too many years)

Anyhoo...

I met two guys this morning.  Town workers who happened to be paving in the area and happened to be walking toward the entrance of the grocery store coffee shop at the exact time that I happened to be exiting my Jeep to do the same.  The younger guy--somewhere in his early to mid 20s--was dressed in a chartreuse town shirt and jeans and the older guy dressed similarly in an orange town shirt.  I smiled at them as I exited the Jeep...y'see...here's the thing.  The red Jeep--the (ex?) g/f's--has been lifted approximately six or so inches.  Not much in the big scheme of things, but considering that Jeeps already sit a tiny bit higher than cars, that six inches might as well be a mile.  Where as I can exit my own Jeep sideways, one leg at a time, this Jeep, I sort of have to hop out of.  If I try to slide out one leg at a time, I end up having to hold onto the steering wheel and sliding out like an infant trying to get off the couch.  What I have chosen to do, instead, is turn myself sideways in the seat so that both legs are hanging out of the door at the same time and just hop out.

Here's the rub.

Depending on how far forward I've ratcheted the seat, sometimes the distance between myself and the steering wheel isn't exactly great enough for me to make a smooth egress.  Yeah...It's not real graceful. 

So, as I ungracefully made my way out of the Jeep, I glanced up at the two guys that were looking at me and grinned. 

Arriving at the entrance door at about the same time, the older of the two guys swept open the door for me in a chivalrous gesture. 

Fast forward to our simultaneous approach to the coffee counter where he, once again, chivalrously offered a "ladies first".  For the next few minutes, we made small talk as we waited for my drink and his turn to order.  He told me that he'd eaten WAY too much seafood the night before (and, in rattling off his fare, I couldn't do anything but agree with him) and I told him of a recent weight loss that a meal like that would have destroyed.  Younger guy rolled up at that point and stood to the side listening to our conversation, but not adding anything of his own.

When it came time for older guy to place his order, he went with a "Mango/Pineapple Protein Smoothie" with a banana thrown in for good measure.  I thought he was joking, and wound up looking at him like his was joking. 

He wasn't.

And he told me that I now had to wait around until it was finished so that I could try a taste. 

I gotta admit; I was a little stressed about the familiarity of the action with such an unfamiliar person.  But, as I am 40...and recently singled, I informed myself that I would be doing a lot more things than I have historically done.  Add to that mix that I really hate telling people "no," and well...there you have it.

We continued to make small talk for the next few minutes...about his job, flying and motorcycling (which he doesn't do because he fears "blue-haired old ladies in the welding goggles, late for their hair appointments - which were yesterday--that were going to be the ones to take his leg off."  Point taken.)

He peeled the end wrapping off a straw and extended it to me and when he dropped the paper on the floor and I bent to pick it up, he, in a friendly way, jostled me out of the way and told me not to dare.  I jostled him back and let him pick the paper up.

Evidently, the girl behind the counter was listening to everything we'd said, as, when she handed him his drink, she handed me a small one of my own.  It was a tasty as he said it would be.  And, at this point, the younger guy spoke up and added, "They have strawberry/banana too," and nodded.

So, there's the story.  I'll not comment, and leave you to your own comments on it.  Suffice to say, Western new York really does have some really nice people.