If you hike as frequently as TJ and I do, chances are you’ll find gutted threads of sediment erosion running downwards and parallel to a blazed trail. These are commonly called cross slopes.

These water bar types of gullies are natural depressions, often utilized by park systems as downhill drainage ditches for surface water runoffs. While effective against excessive sloughing, the dense and sometimes jungly vegetation and brushing create frequent impediments inside these fall lines I’ve jokingly referred to as backwoods half-pipes.

Instead of using berms of dirt or rock to cordon off one of these eroded, beat-down gullies, we see more parks letting nature take its course. You hit cross slopes on active trails more often than grade reversals, depending on the extremity of the system. If you’re not watching yourself, you’re likely to slip haphazardly into one of these grungy dips.

Suffice it to say, most hikers will take the literal high road above a gaping outslope and that’s often the case for TJ and I, depending how far out we’ve gone. Sometimes, though, if there is no discernable ivy, foot-snagging rocks, bisected tree limbs or worse, snakes, only a few miles into our hike, the giddy call to adventure may strike us.

This particular cross slope spilling next to the blue trail at Oregon Ridge, Maryland, was so stuffed with debris we swerved onto the safe course while going both up and down this system out of sheer fascination of it.

I’ve been in cross slopes so deep they were chest high on me, and I’m 5’9″. In those instances, I wanted to feel the engulfing sensation, reminding me on a smaller scale of the Tatooine pod racing canyon course in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The only price I paid was dirt-clogged hiking boots.

Encountering a cross slope on your path is representative of both a figurative and literal life choice. Often we’re called to query the unknown and perhaps take a curious, further step toward it, while others are often compelled to stay clear away. It comes down to a combination of personality and sensibility.

Taking a more philosophical stance, a well-developed cross slope is functional to Mother Earth’s perpetually-moving ecosystem, while a poorly maintained one can cause unnecessary backups and even gluts. Consider that a parable to our very own being.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

TJ and I recently had a spectacular trip to Salem, Massachusetts. While the emphasis of our journey was to learn more about the nefarious witch trials and to plunge our feet into the city’s esoteric culture, one spot captivated us more than the others.

I’m not talking about the lobsters we’d salivated over with each bite at Sea Level in the Pickering Wharf section. If you push on down Derby Street past the harbor inlet, the coffee shops and The Witches Brew pub, you’ll land at the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion, more famously known as The House of Seven Gables. The multi-gabled home was the inspiration to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Gothic supernatural novel of the same name, originally published in 1851.

If you’ve read the story, you know Hawthorne set his tale during the time of the Puritan-led witch trials, staged within the corrupt Court of Oyer and Terminer from 1692 to 1693. Hawthorne’s second cousin, Susanna Ingersoll, owned the home while he wrote the book. Their ancestors had connections to the trials which saw the arrest of more than 200 accused of witchcraft, 19 of those men and women hung and 81-year-old Giles Corey brutally pressed to death.

New England maritime merchant Captain John Turner built the timber-framed House of Seven Gables (branded as a National Historic District Landmark) in 1668. Turner’s descendants and future purchasers of the mansion added sections to the estate through its later owner, Captain Samuel Ingersoll, whose daughter, Susanna, inherited it upon his death in 1804. Expanding the property to include its namesake seven gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne frequently visited the Ingersoll-owned property while working in the Salem Custom House. The mansion was later lost by Captain Ingersoll’s adopted son, Horace Connolly.

Today, the House of Seven Gables is a popular tourist attraction for history, architecture and literary buffs alike. Philanthropist and preservationist Caroline Emmerton founded The House of Seven Gables Settlement Association, adjacent to the famed estate. The intent was to help immigrating people to the United States find work and shelter to get a one-up on their new lives. Even now, the House of Seven Gables grounds serve in the same function for new immigrants.

A tour of the mansion and garden grounds will take you through a recreation of colonial life during Salem’s maritime trading heyday and the groups are often packed. So why write about The House of Seven Gables as a road lesser traveled?

Be on the lookout if you take the tour for a surprise brick-fortified entryway that was seldom used even by the house’s flow of occupants. The narrow, spiraling passage is challenging, even for folks of yesteryear; perhaps even more so, given the layers of clothing men and women were heaped with during the 17th to 19th Centuries.

Your tour guide likely won’t give you advance notice. In fact, ours acted as if she herself had just discovered the slim, challenging ascension that leads to a tiny, sweltering attic room, also accessed by another, wider entry. The feigned dupe of this “discovery” by our tour guide whetted TJ’s and my appetite for adventure. Without hesitation and full permission, TJ led the charge into the unknown with me behind her. A few other people followed suit, but most of the tour group stayed with our guide and showed up to join us minutes later.

Taking the shoulder-hugging, attenuated stairwell felt briefly claustrophobic, and the surrounding view of bricks had me thinking more of Poe than Hawthorne, but it was a giddy experience nevertheless.

Use discretion depending upon your body type, but if you can hack and squeeze it, it’s well worth taking the secret stairwell at The House of Seven Gables.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Safe and sure…or adventurous with a risk element?