Last year, TJ and I made a trip up to Salem, Massachusetts, one filled with a wondrous blend of magick, solemnity, holiness, frivolity, historical reverence and spirits of multiple connotations–read into that as you will. TJ was able to promote her books, The Healthy Witch and Four Little Witches to many of the esoteric shops and we had the most amusing and corny ghost tour with a skeleton-clad host reminding me of Svengoolie.

We had the best food from our hosts at the Amelia Payson Bed and Breakfast, the most spectacular lobster at Sea Level. The Tavern at the Witch Mall became an immediate favorite, planted next to the fountain memorial on Essex Street, the primary shopping hub for Wiccans, Heathens, Neo-Pagans and magick folk alike. Omen and the historical Crow Haven Corner are mandatory if you follow the path. The drinks, grub and service were so top notch at The Tavern we took a return visit. The Witches’ Brew at Nathaniel’s is highly recommended.

You can read my post here about our adventure through the House of Seven Gables on Derby Street, where we also grabbed superb tea and coffee from Wolf Next Door and a sugar blast from the site of what is reported to be the first American chocolatier, The Chocolate Pantry.

Also on Derby Street, my friends, if you feel inclined to grab some takeout spirits, The Bunghole. The name says it all, and I laughed myself all the way back to the harbor upon spotting it. Cheers, witches and non…

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

My son and I took a much-needed Guys’ Day out to Washington, DC yesterday. Our primary destination, the ever-transitioning Air and Space Museum, was restricting visitors through its renovations strictly via QR code accessed, pre-timed block passes. A shame, since my own father took me to Air and Space faithfully every year and I did likewise for my own until a few years ago. He’d wanted a return visit, yet we passed on the long wait and ended up hiking through raw November winds from the Capitol Building all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, and back to our parking garage.

With a quick stopover in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum where I got to pay homage to my Egyptian pantheon, we had a literal blast through a cold bluster, undeterred. It was one the finest times I’ve had with my teenaged son in the past few years. I scaled concrete risers and jumped off ledges with him and we talked like normal father and son in such a refreshing way it gave us both respite from his teenage angst. At least for a day, we could engage, frolic and carry on like we used to every weekend when he was younger.

Living a mere hour fifteen away, I’ve been to all of the core Smithsonian Museums (the collective sprawl plotted along Independence Avenue known as The Mall) so many times in my life, and I still never get bored of them. I look forward to each visit like I’m one of the countless domestic and international tourists forging a melting pot of people in our nation’s capital city. Yet it stands to reason, even knowing the nooks and crannies of the vast Smithsonian network of museums and galleries as well as any local, a missed gem can manifest itself.

With the Smithsonian expanding to showcase its continuous growth of cultural exhibits, inclusive of new Native and African American history museums, my son brought something cool to my attention on our way back to the car. The Asian Art Museum right next to the original Smithsonian Institute, lovingly referred to as “The Castle.” It’s been since this near-15-year-old was half his age I’d been able to lure him into an art gallery. For me, an instant sell.

Our stopover began as a curious, seemingly short and quick pit stop to thaw out from our venturing up to the marble feet of Abraham Lincoln where my son and I discussed the meaning of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963. We’d covered a lot of ground, including our blitz through most of the Natural History Museum and then the Hirshhorn Gardens before crossing through the flushing fountains of the World War II Memorial and the much more somber Vietnam Memorial. It reminded me of how I do any trip to Manhattan; relentless, on-the-go, pushing onward to see as much in a fell swoop as possible.

We quickly discovered the Asian Art Museum was anything but short and quick. The exterior is deceiving. To enter is to demand more of a commitment than meets the eye. 45,000 objects of art spanning the Asian territories with sacred devotionals to Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam spread throughout. A lot of the artifacts, paintings, crystals, ceramics, silk screening, metalwork and stoneware are stuffed into the Charles Lang Freer and Arthur M. Sackler curated galleries. I was surprised to find a lot of impressionist paintings.

Not everything was accessible, the exhibits were more spaced than the National Gallery of Art’s collection, yet, as you can see by the magnificent diamond-shaped staircase splitting the galleries and the 300-seat Meyer Auditorium, there’s magnificence to be found in this museum not every visitor to DC will discover without a proper length of time given to the Smithsonian alone on the travel itinerary.

I’ll leave you these pictures as a teaser with one amusing anecdote to pass… The Asian Art Museum houses a massive Buddhist shrine with a slew of statues splayed in what can only be described as the holiest of devotionals. Much as I gave love and silent offerings to my Egyptian lords and ladies at Natural History with hands pressed in prayer and deference without care to the public’s gawking at me, so too did a handful of the Buddhist faithful here. Would that I had made my son slow his roll, since there is a Ptolemaic Period image of Horus in this museum I’m kicking myself for missing. This spot of meditation was placed for Hindu and Buddhist flock, right down to piped-in ohm music. My son, no stranger to my and my fiancee’s esoteric spirituality, still told me later he’d been creeped out by the entire experience, adding he was at least glad we went inside the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art. That makes two of us, kid…

All photos except for museum exterior by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Once a year, I grind out 7 miles of rugged terrain hiking at Sugarloaf Mountain in Frederick County, Maryland. Plotted within reach of the Blue Ridge Mountains and flung into 20,000 acres of farmland separating the commercial hubs of the city of Frederick and Washington, D.C., Sugarloaf overlooks the winding Potomac and Monocacy Rivers and a leg of the C&O Canal.

The mountain is owned by the nonprofit organization, Stronghold, Inc., named for Gordon Strong, a lawyer and conservationist who acquired most of the 3,400 acre property in the early 20th century. Strong made his residence on Sugarloaf (known as Strong Mansion, still in use today) and he established a trust fund in 1946 for Sugarloaf’s ongoing preservation.

The premises has been open to the public for years, yet I grow concerned reading recent reports Stronghold, Inc. is considering rescinding public access in light of the county’s proposal of future rezoning and land use designation efforts. Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyard is the only viable commercial entity enjoying support near the foot of the mountain entrance. While the plan proposes to protect most of the 20,000 acres in the Sugarloaf area from development, one can’t help but get the impression the planning and zoning board is silently licking their chops with potential. Sugarloaf, after all, is a mere 10 minutes away from Highway 270, a major artery bridging two of Maryland’s strongest business sectors.

Perhaps Sugarloaf’s fate being up in the air is why I felt more compelled than usual to take some time off and hit my favorite hiking destination in Maryland. My annual Sugarloaf hike is a quiet ritual I usually observe by and for myself, though I’ve taken company with me at times. I always start on the orange trail from the east vista up to green, which is a stunning mini gorge to behold. I swing through green to the five mile craggy loop of the blue trail spanning from the west vista back to east.

Hiking Sugarloaf is a time when I purge, breathe, find thanks and connect with the divine in private. These trails are thus sacred to me, and I know they are to others, given the random manmade rock cairns you can find deep on the blue trail.

The full trek may not require you be in peak physical condition, but the Sugarloaf trails done back-to-back will grind you up, gnaw upon your feet and provide challenging inclines with very little flat portions. It’s a tremendous cardio workout where the bears and bobcats stay in hiding for the most part until the lighter foot traffic months. Snakes are abound, so stick to the blaze and you’ll do just fine. The green glacial boulders scattered in pockets along the blue trail are worth the entire jaunt.

There is a yellow trail circumventing the mountain, once popular, yet it appears to me this has become a road lesser traveled, given the unkempt overgrowth I found at intersecting junctions…

If Sugarloaf Mountain does end up closed to the public, I’ll feel a tremendous loss, but I’ll keep my spirits aligned with cautious optimism for next year’s return. For now, have a walk with me at Sugarloaf in picture form…

–Photos by Ray Van Horn, Jr.

I ran into a beautiful elf hiking in the woods. She cast her charms, claimed me for her own and off we went to the Ren Faire… Shenanigans naturally ocurred.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

We did a couple trips to Chocolatetown, USA, Hersheypark this summer to bust my son’s rollercoaster cherry. The first trip to Hershey, PA in June had its moments, but was at times a miserable affair on Father’s Day weekend due to crowding. Grub lines for Subway and the in-park fast food kiosks alone were taking up to 40 minutes, never mind an hour and a half for the Great Bear suspension coaster. The queue for the easygoing monorail was jammed up and there was as heavy contention for the oldie coasters like The Comet as there was for the newer steel rides. Chocolate World was people packed as well, and we found our consolation at missing out on line-stuffed rides with some of the most outrageous milkshakes we’ve ever had. I myself took down a flight of Hershey’s, Reese’s and strawberry Kit Kat mini-shakes. If that sounds insane, check it out:

For the June excursion, we got in Great Bear and the Sooper Dooper Looper, at one glorious time in the 1980s, the mack daddy coaster as the first looped ride on the east coast. Back then, you rode that sucker and got your “I Survived” t-shirt since it counted as bragging rights of fortitude at school. They still have those tees in their original design available for nostalgic saps in certain gift shops in the park. My son didn’t want the shirt, but he can claim the Sooper Dooper Looper (now in its 45th year) as his cherry popper.

Our second round to Hersheypark was on an August Wednesday, far more lucrative as we were able to hit seven coasters this time and other rides. Chocolate World was far more navigable and no obscene lines waiting to hit the chocolate factory riding tour like the prior visit. A S’mores milkshake was the tasty rage this time.

Finally able to get on board the other rides, we were wowed by the new Candymonium, Sky Rush and Jolly Rancher Remix along with Storm Runner and Fahrenheit, the latter of which takes you straight up and drops you at a 97 degree angle. My kiddo was cool as a cucumber on the rides, though he sweated with anticipation on Jolly Rancher Remix and he confessed to being terrified by Candymonium’s towering descents. We looked at each other with that rare moment of being on the same level, father and son, flat on our backs during the scary scooch up Fahrenheit.

I couldn’t get my son on The Comet, as he’d had the fear put inside of him that a wooden coaster has a tendency to lift you out of your seat. Never mind the daredevil antics of sidewiding, loops, corkscrews and whips we took from the steel coasters. As his father, I couldn’t not let the child experience the speed and adrenaline rush a classic wooden coaster delivers. I had to use some dad intuition and reverse psychology once we found our way to Lightning Racer.

Built in 2000, the Lightning Racer is Hersheypark’s barreling duel coaster, a huge deal when it was built alongside its fearsome wooden sister, Wildcat. To my dismay, Wildcat has been shut down permanently. As the name implies, two trains go out at the same time on Lightning Racer via two different tracks. One green, one red. Winner takes nothing except wind-pummeled hair and ten second braggadocio.

The coasters set off with red taking the higher incline than green, though both come down at 90 foot drops and a 3.6 G force. Paltry maybe compared to the blast launch of Storm Runner or the zip up the first ascension on Sky Rush, this is still a serious wallop for an old school-styled wooden coaster. Lightning Racer can give even the famous Cyclone at Coney Island, New York a good run, even in the brutality department. The Cyclone will leave bruises on you. Lightning Racer batters you around, dropping some happy licks you can pop ibuprofen for later.

The biggest thrill to Lightning Racer, winning over my skeptical son, was the number of times the trains intersect at top speed. The coasters dash close to each other and separate and wind back overtop each other until the rackety soar to the finish line. Bad form playing spoiler, I know, but anybody in the park who rides Lightning Racer will tell you; green always wins.

What makes Lightning Racer a road lesser traveled is one, the fact it’s planted in one of the furthest stretches in Hersheypark and two, the ease in which you can hop on with little-to-no wait.

Located in the park’s Midway, you have to push deep into the bowels of the campus from the main gates near Candymonium. Make your way over to the “Boardwalk” section of Hersheypark and keep veering past Breaker’s Edge Water Coaster. You’ll find the East Coast Waterworks and Tidal Force, themselves an entire afternoon’s worth of wet frivolity. Once you spot the Hersheypark ferris wheel, you’ll find Lightning Racer right behind it.

My son and I got on Lightning Racer twice in a fifteen minute span, riding the red train first, then the green. The lines move so fast, one because most everyone lurks in the ride zones within reach of Chocolate World or at Hersheypark’s ZooAmerica. Also because the trains are loaded with such expedience you’re forced into a split second decision which side to ride. Treat yourself and take both colors at least once, even if you’re on the red side and subjected to sneering faces, mocking gesticulations and blown raspberries from the green train. Hop back on and return the favor from the other perspective!

Wooden coasters may be considered out of fashion to some, but even on our second round at Hersheypark, the line for The Comet was bigger than its dwarfing yellow steel neighbor, Sky Rush, one of the highest and fastest coasters in the park. A classic is a classic.

If an old-time thrill is what you’re seeking, hit the Comet, yes. It’s mandatory. Then grab a packet of Hershey kisses for the schlep to Lightning Racer. You won’t be sorry you did, and you’ll have already finished it long before the Fahrenheit riders get within reach of the loading bay.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

We recently took a trip to Disney World with the primary intent of getting lost inside the new Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge experience in the Hollywood Studios park. My fiancée and I are longtime Star Wars buffs, to the point of publishing Darth Maul fan fiction together in 1999. Galaxy’s Edge was something we vowed to each other when we started dating last year. Now having been, we’d both offer a mixed review of the replica spaceport dropped into a deep corner of a mouse cult far, far away.

Much of Galaxy’s Edge is breathtaking to behold with its creation of a craggy landing zone on the attraction-named planet Batuu. We wandered about the Black Spire Outpost, intimidated more by the prices for swag and refreshment and the excruciating wait times for the damned spectacular Rise of the Resistance and Smugglers Run rides than we were by the random appearances of Kylo Ren and his First Order stormtroopers. TJ had a playful verbal scrum with Kylo, who came no further than his stage as we partook the famous “blue milk,” which you can have laced with rum. A whopping $15.00 a pop each (rum version), we plunked the money like chumps for the sheer novelty of it.

If you’re so inclined, you can shell out a couple hundred to build your own prop lightsaber or you’ll drop a single Benjamin to construct a fully-operational droid. You can read all the recent articles online about the price gouging running rampant all over Disney, and there’s full merit to the claims. Case in point, I was daffy enough to lay out $6.00 for the alien scrawled, globe-shaped Coke bottle made something a mini-rage amongst Star Wars collectors. Considering we rarely drink soda, I had to have one. It was the go-to souvenir (frankly, the only souvenir) we settled on at Galaxy’s Edge, since the heavy lean on merch is stuffed plush characters, Rebel pilot helmets and First Order battle gear, all geared for children.

The true reason for the season to Galaxy’s Edge, however, is its rides. I’m not going to lie; whatever your wait time is for Rise of the Resistance, whether you have a Lightning Lane or you slug through the poor schmo standby queue, do it. It’s a required element that can’t be spoken too much about, because it’s not a mere ride; it’s an experience. It’s a four-level trip from Resistance recruitment to full-on detainment on a Star Destroyer before you’re sent on a free roaming spiral through Hell itself with Kylo Ren hot on your tail.

Then there’s Smugglers Run, also a must-do for your chance to be either pilots or gunners inside the Millennium Falcon. TJ and I were pilots and we wrecked the snot out of Han’s trusty space bird. We brag on it, actually. Here’s a pro tip given to us by the park cast members… Wait until 2:00-3:00 as people are either eating or park hopping, or at the end of the day when visitors are chasing after the fireworks shows and you’ll have far less time to wait.

With all of this hoopla of Galaxy’s Edge comes a bit of a sacrifice, depending on how you look at it. I’m talking about Star Tours, built first for Disneyland in 1987, then added to the Florida hub in 2011. It’s been around a long while with interruptions in service, most notably during the COVID breakout.

Compared to the new thrill rides Galaxy’s Edge serves up, it’s sadly last-gen, even if it’s still a great time. They’ve even updated the theme to Star Tours to reflect the concluding trilogy of films and it’s a total hoot. Again, I’ll keep a tight lip, but just everyone who’s ridden Star Tours will tell you it’s a bumpy, raggedy 3-D adventure that can ding your hips or lower back a little bit. Still worth it.

The biggest point to be made about Star Tours, at least the Disney World version, is how easy it is to get on. The average time we saw for the standby wait on Rise of Resistance was two hours, getting as bad as two-and-a-half. Smugglers Run, the worst case scenario was an hour-and-half. Our waits were 75 and 55 minutes respectively, going by the suggestions of the Disney staff.

Star Tours, the longest wait time we saw either day we were at Hollywood Studios was 25 minutes. It’s a misnomer. The line flies, and we were on in 10. Now, anything Star Wars related is bound to draw serious crowds, unless you’re talking a nostalgic theatrical run of Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure. Yet you get a flavor of Endor in the approach to Star Tours, including a badass AT-AT towering over Ewok Village. It’s a tasty display that whets the appetite for a ride that once took up to three hours’ wait and at one time, reserved riding times. When it first opened, it was as eye-popping as the new rides and the Avatar: Flight of Passage ride at Animal Kingdom.

I don’t know about you, but to me a road lesser traveled related to anything Star Wars seems funkier than Bespin-mined tibana gas at Cloud City.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

photos by Ray Van Horn, Jr. except where noted

The demise of the American shopping mall over the past decade-plus has been well-documented. Closed, gutted, abandoned, defaced, obliterated, repurposed…use whatever action phrase suits you. It’s gone beyond syndrome, more than just a tag of “dead mall,” which used to belong strictly to the Monroeville Mall outside of Pittsburgh, the filming location of George Romero’s 1978 horror classic, Dawn of the Dead.

I suppose I saw the proverbial writing on the wall as far back as my visit to Monroeville Mall nearly 20 years ago for the purpose of making a pilgrimage to horror hallowed ground. Even then, retail stores were dying and this was before Amazon and Ebay started putting standard brick and mortar shops out to pasture. To my dismay, the famous interior clock tower had been removed from Monroeville Mall and the skating rink turned into a food court. Only a shell of the rink could be found beneath a table outside of an Arby’s we’d eaten at. Worse, the SunCoast Video (remember them?) had no copies available of Dawn of the Dead, nor were the staff at the time knowledgeable of the significance where they worked. I hummed “The Gonk” (as in the drippy, corny carousel-styled mall music ushering the zombie march in Romero’s film) and lurched around SunCoast in a deliberate shaming maneuver. Really, it was self-shaming. Semantics.

If you’ve been on the planet longer than the past 22 years, you no doubt left you heart at a certain mall in your area, even if there were six or seven within drivable proximity as we had around the Baltimore suburbs and its rural outskirts. Chances are, if you lament the great mall kill-off, you spent much or all of your teens in a mall, like Rat, Jeff, Stacy, Linda and Damone did in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, still in my top-five favorite flicks of all-time. To understand mall culture, sure, you can dive into Jay and Silent Bob’s goofery in Mallrats and Season 3 of Stranger Things did an excellent job capturing the mall phenomenon of 1980s. To get it entirely, though, is to submerge yourself in Fast Times.

I always like to refer to the original Hunt Valley Mall as my “Fast Times.” We had many malls available to us as far as our parents felt like driving us and each shopping complex had its own special “thing” separating them from each other (a prefab Gucci store, a more aromatic water fountain, see-through elevators in the middle of the doings, a maze of walkways), yet Hunt Valley Mall was my mecca, my mojo, my verve. Whether it was with my folks, my friends, a girlfriend or all alone, I came of age at Hunt Valley, shy of losing my cherry, which later came in a more idyllic setting.

Today stands Hunt Valley Towne Center, a next-gen “Avenue” type of sprawling commerce built overtop a splintered fragment of the original mall you only recognize if you’d been there through the mall’s closure in the 1990s. Instead of the Hunt Valley Mall food court where a gazillion teen romances were plotted, you have a more upscale hibachi grill to get cozy with your date. There’s a couple of sports bars, a California Kitchen pizzeria, Outback, Carrabba’s and Mediterranean grub, along with chain eateries having nothing to do with the burger wars. A Dick’s Sporting Goods and Wegman’s grocery store dwarf the old Sears location and one-ups to the old days, there’s a movieplex that’s had both prosperous and difficult stretches. Peet’s Coffee awaits if you need a kick start or a secondary jump.

Do I miss these goofball shenanigans? Absolutely not, but it is a little funny, as in the shaking my head brand of funny, to think about how shallow we teenagers were across the board. Today they do it more inconspicuously through texting and Snapchat, even standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Nearly none of it done in the shadows of a Burger King or Pizza Bob’s kiosk nor an arcade with quarter-to-play video games. Those latter things, I do miss.

X-box and PlayStation may be ten times more advanced in graphics, concepts and interfacing, yet no virtual link to some screaming eight-year-old being outdone by his thirty-year-old father after getting vaporized on Fortnite compares to physically being amongst your peers in a live arcade setting. Anyone growing up in Hunt Valley Mall will utter the canonized name of “Space Port,” where moms and dads could dependably drop their kids off while they got their shopping done. Space Port was its own rite of passage, much as I’m sure any American kid of the 1980s would wax about their own arcade.

I can still see myself frantically twisting the joystick commanding those light cycles of Tron to mash the MPC’s guard to bits. I can feel my wrist getting tired hammering the snot out of the cannon fire button on Galaga–twice as fast during the bonus stages. There I go, dropping piledrivers, clotheslines and suplexes as Dynamite Tommy against video game wrestlers dubbed “The Piranha,” “The Insane Warrior,” “Coco Savage” and “Golden Hulk,” winning the championship belt in Mat Mania and defending it so many times I had to give my game up to some other kid when it was time to go.

Anyone habiting Space Port is wont to remember the days Punch Out! and the fully animated Dragon’s Lair arrived. Video gaming the Eighties wasn’t the same afterwards.

I’ve since loaded most of my music library onto a USB thumb drive, but Camelot Music will always have a special place in my heart. Yeah, mall music stores all around were overpriced. Yeah, they were often lacking depth as far as underground music goes, but Camelot was usually more on the dime than its mall-bound competitors of the day like Music World and Tape World. Maybe not as diverse and rich in selections as a Tower Records emporium or your local specialty music shop where punk, alternative and metal ruled, the mere name of Camelot Music brings automatic glee to any mall rat blowing his or her allowance on vinyl and cassettes of the day. Best album I ever bought from Hunt Valley Mall’s Camelot branch? Testament’s The New Order. In fact, I blared it as loud as I could push through my cheap speakers in my ’81 Escort in the Hunt Valley Mall parking lot. Two of my headbanger buddies joined me in a three man slam pit until the mall security chased us lunatics off.

I remember flirting with girls at The Gap and Big Sky clothing stores as I was just starting to build my confidence through my grit appearance. I remember eating at Friendly’s more so than the food court, sometimes with my family, other times with my girlfriend’s family, sometimes with a mixed group of friends from school who looked past my headbanger guise and welcomed me to the table. We bonded over Friendly’s famous “Happy Ending” ice cream desserts before taking anywhere from eight to ten laps around the mall, always right up to closing time. Store owners and security guards hated us, but we all played our roles and knew our boundaries, even if we would sometimes dash beneath lowering store gates daring to close a minute early like Indiana Jones inside the dropping temple barrier in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

I remember a tobacco store I didn’t care about other than to stop and look at their Laurel and Hardy statues in the front window nearly every single time. My stepfather, a diehard Stan and Ollie fan, eventually landed that set and they’ve stood watch over his bar for nearly forty years. Not a time escapes me when I pull up with Pop for a beer downstairs that I don’t think about those statues’ original location. There was also Sir Walter Raleigh’s, one time more important than Macy’s and Hecht Company for the mall’s sustenance. One of the swankiest restaurants in Baltimore County, my father’s side of the family were frequent haunters of Sir Walter Raleigh’s and I relished any time I was invited along.

The days of rad are nothing you can teach future generations, but you can tell them about it, assuming they’re willing to take their AirPods out of their ears first. You were a mall rat or you weren’t, but most of us were and it’s not unheard of to hear mourning amongst many Gen X’ers over the death of their local mall as they would a best friend. A Five Below at the revamped Hunt Valley Towne Centre is cheap pacification, but it’s just not the same.

Time and tide, so the saying goes. Fact, traditional retail has lost tremendous ground to online shopping. Today’s specialized tastes and service wants and needs are seldom able to be fulfilled in a mall, whereas most people would rather click for sales in their pajamas instead of slugging it out for a parking spot. I’ll be a hypocrite and say I’m a frequent flier at Amazon, Ebay, Etsy and other electronic retailers for the simple fact I can find, more often than not, things you just can’t get in a hands-on store setting. Change is inevitable, change is often convenient. Sometimes change is for the good. Other times, change has you saying “gnarly” a lot, not as an embellishment, but as a twilight holding-on habit.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

From time-to-time, I’ve posted these photos from what I consider the best assignment ever to this point in my writing career.  Until the site had been recently repurposed and monetized for the public as “Crystal Lake Tours” (only given at certain times of the year, caveat) I’d been granted private access to the location most horror fans would give an appendage or two to see:  the Boy Scout camp doubling as the most notorious patch of woods the horror genre’s ever seen in the original Friday the 13th.

Camp No-Be-Bos-Co has been around since the early 1900s and continues to operate as a functioning Scout camp today.  I’ll never forget this trip as I was given a green light by the camp’s management to do an article on the site in 2008 when it was announced a remake of Friday the 13th was on its way.  Ranger Tom, the only official presence on-site the day I went up, gave me some terrific stories but advised that, just like the deputy in the original Friday says, they don’t stand for no weirdness from unauthorized uber-fans trying to sneak onto the camp.  I consider myself blessed for being allowed to photograph “Camp Crystal Lake” to my heart’s content.  It really does have a creepy ambiance, in particular around the edges of Sand Pond, constituting the movie’s “lake.”

I later ventured into Blairstown, New Jersey to see the town used in Friday the 13th’s establishing shots where the ill-fated hitchhiker cook Annie tramps through.  To no surprise, I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me about the film for my article, but I did find a jewelry store owner with the last name of Voorhees.  As it turns out, Voorhees is a common last name in the Jersey region.  Later, we ate at the Blairstown Diner used in the film, but our waitress vanished as quick as the doomed counselors when I tried to kick up convo about the film with her.

Nonetheless, the piece was a success and it was capped by an interview with the late Betsy Palmer, another personal thrill.  Betsy was the sweetest woman and she’d called me after our interview ran, telling me I was the first writer to ever quote her 100% accurately.  I still feel proud about that.  She’d invited me to a future lunch date in Manhattan, which I’m sorry to say never happened, even when I made the attempt to follow up a couple years later prior to her unfortunate passing.  RIP Mama Voorhees.  

I was later approached by Allentown, PA writer David Zernhelt about my “Crystal Lake” photos I’d posted around the web.  He’d put together a few small booklets about the Friday the 13th series and asked to use some of the photos you see here.  Some were featured by him and I thank David for his exposure of my work.   

Ki ki ki kiiiii…ma ma ma maaaaa…

All photos (c) Ray Van Horn, Jr.

Even with the purist of hearts and intentions, intimacy between couples often gets thrown on the back burner in deference to “the job.” The unfortunate end result spells fatigue, forgetfulness, impatience, occasional resentment and ultimately, burnout. We stay home more, we do less for ourselves and all for our kids. Without meaning to, we risk losing focus on our commitments of interpersonal love as a couple while forging a family unit. Often the essence of being a couple is sacrificed to give our children the best upbringing we can. More often than not, it’s nobody’s fault; it’s the nature of the beast. Yet in its own way by attrition, this becomes a road lesser traveled.

It’s a special thing when adults choose to produce a child. Even more so when they give up their freedom in service to a child, particularly one not of their own DNA. My son is adopted and currently in my full-time care. Man or woman, being a single parent is bloody taxing and frustrating, especially to an apathetic 14-year-old electronics addict. I’m fortunate to have proposed to a woman who’s been in it to win it with me, inclusive of becoming his future stepmother.

For Valentine’s Day this year, TJ and I decided upon an unconventional route. She surprised me with flowers at my job on the 11th, while I served her a return favor on the 14th. We agreed ahead of time that this year, we would make time for ourselves, by ourselves, to find a romantic corner away from the kiddo, who is such an integral if demanding part of our evolving lives together. She and I tend to make the most of what little time we have alone anymore, thus we entailed a different modus operandi than roses, chocolates and an expensive dinner to make this Valentine’s weekend a memorable one.

TJ took me to Magoobies, a local comedy club outside of Baltimore, to see HBO’s Ryan Davis on the 12th. A total riot, especially by the emcee and warm-up comic out of North Carolina. We went home that night, energized by laughter, lighter on our feet, if heavier on the wallet. The following day, I took TJ to Kraken Axes and Rage in the Power Plant Live! entertainment complex in downtown Baltimore. The axe part should be self-explanatory. The Rage part is turning yourself loose in a room full of discarded machinery, scraps and other flotsam, all for the smashing. Coddling the id to a barbaric extreme.

I’d already taken TJ axe throwing a couple times before to Meduseld Meadery in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Here at Kraken, we were bowled over by the Celtic and Viking decorum and the care put in by the owners who not only deliver a stress relief session, they create a sense of Old World pagan escapism. You do kind of lose yourself at Kraken, despite the blaring tracks of Aerosmith, REM, Michael Jackson and Mary J. Blige–the latter of whom performed the same night at Super Bowl 56 in a high-octane hip-hop reminiscence halftime show.

The axes were bigger than the ordinary hardware store hatchets we’d been tooling around with (pun intended) in the past. So much that our muscular mentor, Axe Master Moore, would patiently correct our forms beyond the first few throws that plunked against the bottoms of the wooden targets without sticking. Moore’s forceful, singlehanded throws slammed into the wood like the drop of a toppled tree. He inspired us both with his skills, especially when he was whirling blunt instruments underhanded.

TJ’s Viking blood was especially determined to land those axes and Axe Master Moore made sure of it as you can see by her bullseye…

I quickly got to 19, but TJ soon revved up, and with my going over by one, we had a score on the line of 16-15. A few flubbed rounds and then we were at a tie, 20-20. One of many things I value in my relationship with TJ, we’re only competitive enough to feel we’re succeeding. Otherwise, we cheer each other on as we do in all aspects of our lives. We are for each other.

I wanted her to win and badgered her to come take the last point from me, but I ended up tagging the blue border for the win. All said and done, though, we’d both won, because we had two wonderful Valentine’s weekend excursions. We’d made it a point to do so.

–Ray Van Horn, Jr.

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.