There’s a path in my town I’ve been driving by for years, that I’ve always wondered about. There’s no trail sign for it. There’s no designated parking lot for it either. But every time I pull up to this one intersection, I can see down this path and it looks like it runs for a mile without any indication that it interferes with anyone’s private property. Some day, I always think to myself, I gotta check it out.
Well, some day came. On Friday, after spending too much time sitting down all day, I was getting a little antsy as my wife drove us home from Boston. She had seen this situation before and knew just the remedy for what ailed me. She’d also been curious about that mysterious trail for many years and thought this would be a perfect time for me to serve as a guinea pig. So, when we got back into town, she stopped the car at the path with no name and kindly told me to “get out.” Actually, I think she said, “go check it out,” but we hear what we hear.
The start of the trail was as encouraging as it has always appeared from the road. Someone’s clearly been mowing the grassy sections near the beginning, and it was looking like I had made a wonderful new discovery. After a few minutes, I came upon a single house where there was a little trestle footbridge of sorts, with white railings to boot, and I thought it can’t get any more welcoming than this… Unless, of course, someone created this private footbridge for their own use, and I’m considered a trespasser. I decided to move a little more briskly before anyone was aware of my presence.
This looks great! Wait… a little too great.
But it didn’t get any better. After I cleared the private residence, the trail became grown-in with ivy and a lot of undergrowth obscuring much of the way. I could still tell where the trail was, but the lack of maintenance didn’t give one the warm and fuzzies. It felt like whoever owned the land was trying to encourage things to go back to their pre-trail state. As I approached a pond, I saw another house in the distance and decided it was time to hurry along.
Even though I had never cut through this area before, I knew where I was and had a sense of what road I would pop out on when I finally reached the other side of the path. There’s a long-condemned house where local teenagers used to drink and hang out—maybe they still do, I don’t know, but I had a feeling I would be seeing it soon enough. What I wasn’t expecting was to come upon an abandoned food delivery truck first. Or maybe it’s an ice cream truck—gasp! Anyone who is familiar with the likes of Stephen King or horror movies in general, knows that all abandoned ice cream trucks belong to psychopathic axe murderers, and it was only a matter of time before I found myself in a grisly fight for my life. Okay, I’m outta here.
Ahead, I could see the road on the other side of the trail now, and I jogged through the brush until I was standing on pavement. Phew. Looking back on the woods where I came out, I spotted the condemned property, off to the left. The abandoned truck no doubt belonged to the same people that owned the house. Obviously, nobody was there, so hiking through that portion of the woods would likely not be a problem for anyone, but I no longer felt the need to explore that path ever again. And who knows—maybe some deranged ice-cream-loving slasher was in fact there, staring at me through the boarded-up windows, just waiting for me to come back and explore his little delivery truck of pain. I didn’t want to stick around and find out.
Nope, when it comes to trails in the more populated, southern parts of New Hampshire, I think I’ll be sticking to the paths that are clearly marked from now on. Lest I want to become someone’s next meal or take some buckshot to the keester from being somewhere I shouldn’t be, I think that’s the safer play. I prefer my hikes to inspire more harmony than dread.
Fair enough? Yeah, I think so too.
Looking for more of this…
Less of that.