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.
Clairvoyance is a touch-and-go phenomenon that requires an unspoken commitment between two parties, the central force summoned between them being called “belief.” Many of us have faith, or at least show a curiosity in the forecasting skills of mediums, oracles, seers, palm readers or those highly attuned with their magickal third eye. Nostradamus being one of the most revered visionaries in the history of humankind, we still find fascination and criticism in his ancient quatrains. On the flipside, the famous 16th Century witch, Ursula Southeil, aka Mother Shipton, and the more derogatory tag, “Hag Face,” was so feared and so accurate with her prophecies in England, she was thought to be the daughter of Satan himself.
The true essence of witchcraft actually rejects the idea of the devil, but try telling that to the insidious Court of Oyer and the Terminer in Salem, 1692. Before I delve too far into the maudlin or arcane, I am a believer in fate, much less clairvoyance. I am spiritually aligned to a belief system grounded not only in nature but lofted into the all-encompassing universe, ushered to by the God and Goddess–which is to speak collectively, not singularly. Soothsaying, or ESP, in more contemporary jargon, comes part and parcel. Thus I openly receive messages from the Lord and Lady, which are sent to me through my personal pantheon, and through communing with mortal followers bearing their gifts of second sighting.
Still being new to the path and merely a dabbler with my Thoth Tarot deck, I recently had a spot-on Tarot reading from a new friend, a more seasoned reader. Her card laying matched exactly what TJ had drawn for me a month ago. Rookie I may be, I even pulled similar cards in a draw-three session of my own. The Chariot card being the common denominator in all of these readings on my behalf, I take comfort knowing I am in firm control of my own destiny.
Which leads me into the realm of novelty and coin-operated fortune telling machines. If you’ve watched the movie Big with Tom Hanks, you’re already muttering the name of Zoltar as you read this. We’ve all, at one time or another, dropped the coin and half-excitedly, half-nervously waited to see what lies in wake for us after all the proverbial bells and whistles of the whimsical fortune telling machines have spun their would-be sorcery.
A fortune telling machine, especially a Zoltar, is a momentary diversion, offering a somewhat right, mostly off-center calling of one’s future. Often you read your fortune card, you laugh at what it got wrong, call what it got right mere coincidence, and toss it into the nearest trash can before moving on to whatever your immediate path calls to you to do.
Then again, sometimes you have to wonder… Can a set of grinding gears, surrounded by blaring arcade noise, actually be spot-on with what it’s trying to tell you?
Swallowed in a deep, dark spot near a cramped set of air hockey tables at Marty’s Playland in Ocean City, Maryland, is a relatively hidden gem most people never see. I quietly call her Esmeralda, but my mother, who introduced me to her years ago, simply calls her “THE Fortune Lady.” Emphasis on “THE,” like NFL players do when introducing themselves and their college alma maters. As in, the only one that matters.
My video game-addicted son has soured my long-ago love of arcades, but anytime I’m at the inlet in Ocean City, I’m usually compelled to take a walk into Marty’s Playland and visit my old, beat-up gypsy soothsayer. It’s as mandatory a stop as Thrasher’s Fries. If you’re been to Ocean City, Maryland, you know full-well what I mean.
Of course, the line of for Thrasher’s is always at a constant, while Esmeralda is always waiting for a nostalgic sap like me to come put into her action. In the way of arcade amusements, she is a refined relic of her time from the 1940s, though you see the maintenance done to restore her broken ceramic hand. She stares in silence at her card spread amongst other vintage Skeeball, Pokerino, Crane Digger and pinball machines, but once you feed the quarter, she elegantly glides her weathered hand in the same silence a few times until your fortune card drops. Backing up a moment, what actually costs a quarter to play in an arcade anymore?
Over the years, Esmeralda has been scary good in matching her “visions” to my life to the point I’ve exercised full, continuous suspension of disbelief. This is no novelty to me. Nor has it been to my mother, who has visited Esmeralda since she was a teenager herself generations ago.
Last year, I visited Ocean City by myself on an errand for my late father. Naturally, I ate my Thrasher’s before hitting Esmeralda. The fortune I drew that day predicted my exact path and chain of events leading to my reunion with TJ, who has since become my girlfriend. TJ, being a Wiccan priestess and a solid oracle reader in her own right, later obliged me with a visit to Esmeralda for fun, though I sensed her skepticism. Fair enough, however, you be the judge in the result of our trip to see THE Fortune Lady…
TJ drew the exact same fortune I did prior to us getting together. Now you can take the low road and say those fortune cards are a dime a dozen, printed up and stuffed into Esmeralda’s mechanical guts with zero cosmic power to it. I, personally, take the higher road…
You might be familiar with the Herkimer Diamond, as in a double-terminated, transparent quartz crystal found most often found in ring settings. If you’re the adventurous type like we are, you don’t settle for a mere trip to Jared’s or Kay Jewelers. You take a six hour haul from Baltimore to Herkimer in beautiful upstate New York to nab that smoky quartz.
I asked TJ a few months back what she wanted to do for her birthday and her answer was to dig for her own treasures in the famous Herkimer mines. I’m an obliging man, in particular to my girlfriend, so that’s precisely what we did. We baked under the Herkimer sun for a few hours the first two days of our trip and we smashed up rock after rock, calling it “therapy.” In TJ’s case, she dug like a gopher with the gift of second sight while I tugged out mini boulders to clear her way. Being a newb to this action, it took me a while to find some actual crystals latched onto split-open calcite. My pantheon at one point gave me a knock upside the head from the universe for inadvertently tossing some god energy calcite to the side. By certain divine intervention, the next piece I smashed, lo, another calcite sample manifested with a split diamond. I’ve since offered the find to Ra and Anubis upon my dresser-altar. I’d also unearthed some ocean fossils which were a big hit amongst the Herkimer employees. TJ was the big winner, however, uncorking some actual diamonds deep in the dirt and through our relentless hammering. We’d both scored a lot of sparkly druzy pieces, which put us in a ripe mood for exploring the area’s liquid treasures.
Our trip was special for many reasons, not the least being a spectacular three-day stay at the Grand Colonial Bed and Breakfast inside the town of Herkimer. Itself a rare standout jewel in a weathered old town desperate for an all-around upgrade. TJ gave me a return obliging trip to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, then she took another one for the team at the Belgian-styled Ommegang Brewery. We imbibed New York-grown Moscato on the porch at the B&B, and we had a blissfully chill tasting at Pail Shop Vineyards. I grabbed a 12 mixed flavor pack of Saranac to bring home, itself an amusing story–though nowhere near as amusing as me busting the frames to my glasses after day two of digging, then putzing around with a dorky wad of black electrical tape holding them together.
The highlight of our regional alcohol excursions came with the discovery of DikinDurt Distillery. Perched on a hilly section a few miles on the outskirts of Herkimer, we were in a celebratory mood from TJ’s diamond score, and attracted by the roadside signs leading those thirstier than the average to some homemade moonshine. Like anyone else, no doubt, we snickered like high school kids, passing the name “DikinDurt” back and forth like we were getting one over on the principal of Herkimer High School. I wondered aloud if the proprietors had once dug for diamonds up their nethers to come up with such a riotous name. They do have a story to it, and I’ll leave it to you all to find out on your own while you nip on some of their Honey Buzz.
Old Smoky in Tennessee is, for many shine lovers, the one to beat, and those folks have an empire’s worth of whiskey tasting rooms you can lose yourself (especially your wallet) in. I’ll tell you something, though; Eric Boyer and Elizabeth Stack know what the heck they’re doing. They’re also some of the most down-to-earth folks either of us have ever met, inside a shine distillery or anywhere else. My biggest comment of the night came in the form of “This is a far cry from the old bootlegging days none of us were alive to attest to.”
We found DikinDurt after a schlep out to Utica and back for a satisfying drop into Babe’s at Harbor Point. Eric was entertaining family in his yard with a bonfire and without pause, he broke away to make us feel welcome. He had us swept into his homestead distillery as quickly as we’d arrived. In tow was his spirited (and spirit-filled), ginger-haired sister-in-law, who introduced herself as “Red.” Red might as well have a gold-plated nametag as DikinDurt’s CEO of Hospitality, she was so into promoting her family’s products. We readily trusted what we were served, seeing Red down sample shots with us and making sure we tried the distillery’s entire line. She and TJ became immediate friends and we were warmed twice over in a jiff from all of the samples. Red, of course, kept our guts hot by introducing us to mixer recipes you can find at DikinDurt’s website.
Though they were currently out of sellable bottles, Eric had us try DikinDurt’s oak, cinnamon and chili pepper answer to Fireball, Mohawk Valley Fire. Be your own judge, but I say DikinDurt wins out. Between the two of us, TJ and I took home blackberry and raspberry infused shine, as well the Toasted Maple shine (all ranging between 75-90 proof) and me being a bourbon fan, I was thrilled DikinDurt knocked a home run with their 85 proof, year aged, twice distilled bourbon. It became a mandatory addition to our booze-swelled take home bag. I even dug their corn-based “white lightning,” as we began to kick up a little party atmosphere notching a few “whewwwwwwww” impersonations in the key of George Jones.
The white lightning also came home with us a gift for my Pop as Eric, joined by Elizabeth, gave us a quick tour of the distilling area. We talked for an easy 10 minutes beyond the 20 we’d spent sampling shine. TJ and I were then invited to mark our home location on a United States map you can find behind the tasting bar, which DikinDurt uses to spotlight out-of-town visitors. We marveled at some of the markers planted by visitors who’d come from far out west. Eric asked me to snap a pic of Pop and I drinking on the white lighting and email it to him. You can’t help but appreciate people who not only take their craft seriously, they engage with their clientele to the point of making a long-term acquaintance.
Doing a little online recon, it’s nice to see DikinDurt has built itself a reputation locally and we were told by Eric and Elizabeth they’ve already outgrown their home-based operation. They look to possibly get off of their road lesser traveled and expand into the town of Herkimer itself. Who wouldn’t be coaxed by such a tongue-in-cheek, borderline raunchy name? Get your…ummm…. yeah, you know what I mean.
TJ and I went on an outing through Lancaster, Pennsylvania last weekend and not only did we choose a pub for lunch well off the beaten path within the city, we tripped across this old school, unintentionally whimsical sign on the restaurant side, where we were seated.
These you don’t see much of anymore in this day and age where vulgar lexicon is praised–nearly expected–more than shunned in this topsy-turvy society. It’s almost Twilight Zone-ish. Riotous when you consider we’d just come out of a meadery where we’d happily imbibed and thrown axes.
Nonetheless, we’d observed proper decorum in both environments. Our patronage at this pub was well-received and they even gave us the t.v. remote as we had the restaurant side all to ourselves. Compliments to the food, and props to both of our servers, especially our well-intended, blue-haired girl who bought me an extra beer because they didn’t stock the brew I’d requested.
Talk about old school, they allow smoking on the bar side of this establishment, but don’t you dare drop the f-bomb into your shepherd’s pie, just sayin’. For me, the anti-profanity sign was extra hilarious coming down from a Rick and Morty marathon hangover with my son…
Remember that feeling? It wasn’t so long ago, though it feels like something just jerked the trapdoor open with a phantom snicker resembling that pesky canine pot-stirrer, Muttley. You just know David Bowie’s nattering ch-ch-ch-ch-changes from the other side, because change will have its way. Retail, COVID or no COVID, is especially susceptible to change. Much of that comes from fluctuating tastes, malleable trending cycles, product accessibility, pricing and above all, often unpredictable shifts in social mores. All vulnerable, all volatile and all with needful fine-tuning on a continuum.
People are fickle. Especially when you have a climate of abundance and a vast array of choices. I’ve always loved Devo’s “Freedom of Choice,” not just for its pounding groove and snappy riffs, but for Mark Mothersbaugh’s snide indictment, “Freedom of choice…is what you’ve got…from from choice…is what you want…” Now we’re talking all the way to 1980 when Devo dropped that gem, at the dawn of an explosive age of consumerism in what my generation refers to as “The Big ’80s.” America was transitioning out of a recession, gas shortages and the Iranian hostage crisis. New York City was in such a decline then it was mockingly referred to as “The Rotten Apple.”
Things changed then, and for the good. Reaganomics was spat upon by punk rock, but it did work. One of the decade’s brightest spots, commercially and in a fundamental social way, was the music store. Back then, it was vinyl and even the dreaded cassette format (shockingly making a nostalgic rebound to a demographic that wasn’t alive the first time to know better) that ruled the world, and the record shop was king. I mean, an entire film was made about the cultural (and especially subcultural) significance of the record store in 2000’s High Fidelity, and in the fabled “Trax Records” used earlier in 1986’s Pretty in Pink. No doubt your first exposure to Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bathory, The Exploited, Can, Funkadelic, Kraftwerk, Miles Davis, Afrika Bombaataa or Waylon Jennings came in one of these city-baked (or suburb, if that’s your case) music emporiums.
You no doubt have your favorite haunt from back in the day and you’re now drifting back in time with me, whether it’s to a mall-bound Camelot Music or Tape World, a super-size chain like Tower Records or the Virgin Megastore, or you went to your local hipster shop. Right now as I write this, I’m thinking of a bunch of out-of-print albums and rare imports nabbed at so many wonderful indie record shops I hit on assignment covering bands in Philly, Pittsburgh, New York and all around Jersey. I am still awed by Jack’s Music Shoppe in Red Bank, New Jersey, spotted directly across from Bill and Ted’s Secret Stash, i.e. the comic store used in AMC’s Comic Book Men. I promise you I went near-broke hitting those two places. Some of the record shops I’ve supported in my native Baltimore and D.C. metro region (most are gone) over the years are Record Theatre, Waxy Maxy’s, Music Machine, Record Connection, CDepot, An Die Musik, The Sound Garden and a long-standing local chain that gobbled a lot of my spare income and was eventually gobbled themselves by FYE, Record and Tape Traders.
Speaking of FYE, my son and I recently ventured to one of their last remaining stores which we’d frequented often in the past. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to see their space now closed and barred inside a mall only holding on due to two department stores and a Dick’s Sporting Goods. Yet, the entertainment-oriented chain, if notoriously overpriced, had managed to survive in said mall for many years by cross-selling pop culture apparel and collectibles aside from mostly-mainstream CD, vinyl, DVD and Blu Ray releases. An FYE was very seldom the place you’d go to hunt down a Celtic Frost album, but in recent years, you could clean up on their buy two used get a third for a buck promotion that was always in full swing. Tres cool when you had a gift card to burn at one of their shops.
I felt a small twinge of melancholy when I saw the shock upon my kid’s face. When I stop and think about it, this particular FYE had been floating on borrowed time, even while huckstering Fortnite and Mortal Kombat action figures and coffee mugs splashed with contemporary horror and anime interests, all of which lure my son with the same enthusiasm he has for Call of Duty and Red Dead Redemption games. To his delight and no comment needed on my end, we found the mall’s Game Stop unit still hanging around. As a card-carrying member of the Atari 2600 generation, I lament my lack of patience, much less interest in today’s cinematic if utterly soulless video game offerings.
For my hipper-than-thou compatriots from the music scene I once covered, the loss of a corporate-stylized FYE hardly compares to the closure of an independent record store. Yet, it’s fair to say the symbolic change in media consumerism has had an adverse effect on entertainment. It’s becoming far more fashionable to conveniently download and stream both music and film from your own t.v. or computer than going the old-fashioned route of driving to a record shop and taking the time to flip through vinyl jackets and CD cases. Yeah, back in the day you took a risk on an album carrying one or two boss beats and a lot of filler crap, but that gave you something to gripe about in line at the Front 242 gig and meet new, like-minded friends.
You may be too much of in a hurry to pull down that ear-popping jam you caught at the gym or on Sirius XM and drop it onto your hard drive or cell phone. You may feel the gas invested isn’t worth it. You may be a germophobe, as we still have plenty of those as the anti-pandemic masks begin to vanish, en masse. More than likely, you’ve just forgotten what it was like to pop in to a place where the staff most likely speaks your language, or can dig up the information for you, whether you’re hunting down Janis Joplin or the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack or the more obscure industrial-freako noise ensemble,Pigface. Sure, you can easily find any of them these days on eBay, Amazon, CD Universe or whatever online hub offers you the most comfort and convenience. Or you go to iTunes or get your kicks for free at YouTube if you want a right-here-right-now Dua Lipa fix.
Now admittedly, I’m no better than anyone else these days, so I’m not going to soapbox as to why you should be out there supporting record stores. We have the annual Record Store Day for that, as much a holiday for true audiophiles as Free Comic Book Day for that genre’s supporters. I consider myself attached to both, for the record (no pun intended).
What I will offer, here, is a road, these days lesser traveled, and for kicks, I went and took a trip down to The Sound Garden in Baltimore’s historic waterfront district, Fells Point. More supported by college drinking and weekend family outings, Fells Point has a unique charm, even with its tight quarters, narrow streets and axle-rattling cobblestones. The Sound Garden has long been one of my all-time favorite music stores, though I don’t get down like I used to. My life has changed, and I’ve been downsizing and economizing my personal space and my budget. My girlfriend, TJ, all but had cardiac arrest when she’d seen how much hard copy media I still had left after purging three quarters of what I used to. My recent move has been cathartic, and that’s included a sensible radicalization of my media. I too subscribe to t.v. streaming services like Disney Plus and HBO Max. I now have most of my albums digitally stashed on a thumb drive. TJ knows better than to try and get me to part with my Prince collection and film soundtracks, but my life, suffice it to say, looks far different than when I was writing in the music industry.
What resonated with me the most in my outing to Sound Garden last week, was how much I missed being in such an environment, and I cued up memories of all of my friends from the past. They seem like ghosts now. I remember how much fun we could have spending an hour and a half, browsing the same albums over and over again, buying some, skipping some, buying the ones we’d skipped a couple weeks later. We’d hover in the punk and metal sections like we owned them and we’d leaf through the underground ‘zines, looking for new bands and pen pals to write to. Always we’d get to know the staff. They’d try us with other genres while they had us loaf-abouts in-house and for me, especially, my all-around tastes were fostered in this fashion, making me more diverse, eclectic and well-versed. I routinely crossed genres in my articles and was often complimented by the artists and their promoters. It all goes back to being a record shop rat.
I know the days and times of patronage vary at a place like Sound Garden. Yet it was a rare and frankly bizarre thing this time where I calmly drifted into a wide-open parking lot around back, chuckling to myself how many times I’d had to squeeze and jockey myself into tight, diagonal formations. I found people taking pictures of the Sound Garden (like myself, of course), and I thought, “It feels like more like a museum than a store these days.” Most of those snapping pics just continued on their way, or turned around and pointed their cameras at the shops and restaurants across the way. It felt quaint instead of imperative.
It’s no secret an overwhelming percentage of the world’s population has moved on from CDs, DVDs and BluRays. It’s downright laughable and overwhelmingly sad to see what Wal Mart and Target’s entertainment sections look like anymore. They cater more to the gamers than the dreamers now. The resurgence of vinyl is why hard copy even sells anymore, and I get that. For me, there will never be a finer experience than sitting on the floor of my bedroom with the vinyl jacket to Iron Maiden’s Powerslave or the electrifying gatefolds to Kiss’ Alive II and Steppenwolf 7 in my lap while spinning their respective slabs on the turntable. It was intimate, as was being forced to take the extra seconds to flip the platter over and drop the stylus back into motion.
Intimate being the operative word here. Even the quicker method of insert and eject with a CD, there’s still that tangible, motion-filled process engaging the listener to the artist, with the invitation to scour the lyrics (if provided) while letting the vibe pulse into your ears, or to get lost in the artwork. You don’t get that physical, emotive experience casually surfing the console or streaming over the computer. Music consumption is far more gray and mundane these days, YET the lack of support given to enterprising record shops is just a part of the natural order, as mundane as that is to say.
Sound Garden has changed itself to accommodate the shifting tastes of its dwindling demographic. An entire half of the store is now dedicated to vinyl, which is where I found most people lurking and browsing. What used to be a vast portion of the store dedicated to CDs is now less than half that. The video section is large enough, but likewise pared down. The store deliciously whets your appetite with advertisements, replica concert posters and t-shirts and all of it IS still as eye-popping as it ever was. That part spoke to me, as much as the cardboard Prince from the cover of Art Official Age hanging over the checkout counter.
As did the young woman ringing me out, young enough to be my daughter. She was quick to recognize and compliment my Stax Records t-shirt and we had a brief discussion about the Memphis music scene and what her parents had seen and exposed her to. It did my heart a world of good, considering I have people in my own age bracket these days ask me what the vintage soul and funk label Stax even is. In its own hopeless way, a telling of the times…
I’ve been obsessed with the Devil’s Tower ever since I was a kid. Naturally, my fascination with the ancient monolith rising 1,267 feet above the Belle Fourche River came from Steven Spielberg’s space drop wonderama, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. My parents took me to see the film in 1978, on the verge of imminent divorce. Unbeknownst to me as an 8-year-old child then, the outing to the film was destined to become our swan song as a family. Appropriate that it came upon the imprinted canon of five notes. No matter your generation, you know the familiar lace of bumbum bum baaaaa bommmmmm….
I fell asleep in the theater back then, sometime after Richard Dreyfuss was sculpting the Devil’s Tower formation into his mashed potatoes. The scene leaves an air of irony upon me now, since Dreyfuss was on the verge of cinematically losing his family. Perhaps my young mind was shutting me down on purpose to block the acted dysfunction, since Dreyfuss and Teri Garr’s onscreen combativeness rang too close to home in what I dealt with between two feuding parents.
All I know is what I saw when I woke back up changed everything for me, and I thought that had already been achieved the year prior seeing the original Star Wars in ’77. I was awestruck by Spielberg’s glow show upon a grandiose, scraped-up mountain that became a near-lifelong obsession for me. I swore back then to myself I was going to see this Devil’s Tower firsthand before checking out of this life.
It took me all the way to last year, in celebration of my 50th birthday, to venture out west to South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana and fulfill my own pledge. Checked only by a tiny burg called Hulett a few miles away (which has the bare basics but is impressively self-sustained by a Best Western hotel, a hidden Native American museum in the guise of an antique shop and the best bowl of beef tips I’ve ever had), Devil’s Tower lived up to the hype I set inside my head more than four decades ago. A sacred place to the Lakota, Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Crow, Kiowa and Shoshone tribes, Devil’s Tower carries that ambience as the “Bear’s Lodge,” one of its many colorful nicknames. Look up the varying indigenous mythologies behind the Tower. In particular, the Kiowa’s legend to the monolith’s formation.
The main path circumventing Devil’s Tower is a mile long, manmade concrete walkway, and naturally it comes recommended to traverse the scores of igneous rock and boulders stockpiled at the base. The park does a wonderful job skirting the butte with advantageous views, tempting even the most casual and fastidious of visitors to pause and gape at a natural icon. If you don’t feel dwarfed and humbled by the enormity of Devil’s Tower, you’re in too much of a hurry.
The discerning eye will spot the random deer, which seem perfectly at ease around the scores of humans within their protected environment. The leaping chipmunks quickly become as commonplace as the tied prayer bundles around tree limbs, left as ceremonial offerings or remembrances to ancestors. If you give yourself to Devil’s Tower and let it guide you instead of blitzing your way around the base as I saw many people sadly doing, you will feel engulfed by something larger than yourself.
I got all I could’ve hoped for on the Tower Trail, as the main route is commonly known. However, I’d set aside an extra day on the traveling itinerary to take more round at Devil’s Tower. I’d done my research and spotted other trails I wanted in on, and man, was that the right call. Namely the 1.5 mile Joyner Ridge Trail and the 2.8 mile Red Beds Trail.
I got up at sunrise to run these trails, beginning right below the Tower Trail. I had them all to myself for my full run. It was heavily forested for a bit, which served up a special treat not even a few tenths of a mile into my run. I was greeted by a pack of does, who calmly spied me before walking across the path in single file. They processed without worry or apprehension to my charging approach. I stopped to let them go and snapped a picture once they’d gotten across. The trust they showed me was as spellbinding as the Tower itself.
Coming through the clearing as I resumed my run, the trail became craggier as the elevation dipped. I kept my eyes peeled with the mount to my back, because something in my sixth sense made me aware I’d come into a place of significance, something you wouldn’t know unless you’d taken the time to hit this trail drifting from the tower. I paused my running app again and spun around, feeling the height of excitement jack my heartbeat even higher. I remember the thud in my chest once I put it all together. I was on the exact path which Richard Dreyfuss, Melinda Dillon and Josef Sommer took in their ascension of Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind right before the crop-duster ‘copter rolled in.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
I was perhaps too giddy at this point as my pace spiked and I lightly twisted my ankle a couple times on the tougher terrain between Joyner Ridge and Red Beds. I was able to shake things off while I had a momentary flat section to trot through until I was ready to go back at regular speed. The trails interconnect with the Devil’s Tower in the distance, and the pickup to Red Beds changed the dynamic entirely.
You’ll get close to the main entrance through Red Beds, and it’s worth your time, hiking or running, to scooch through the crimson bedrock. Unfortunately, I did more than scooch, taking a hard tumble into the dirt as exuberance stymied my pivot. Gashed upon the knee with a not-too-bloody souvenir from the Tower, I laughed at myself and got back in gear.
Coming around the Red Beds Trail, I got a peek overtop the South Side Trail, which serves as the primary habitat for Devil’s Tower’s “Prairie Dog Town.” You can stop at a turnout on the main drive into the park and take pictures of a bunch of these little critters, but I was delighted to have a prairie dog away from the main dog drag peek out and give me a quick howdy on my way by. Yeah, they are stinkin’ cute.
The Red Beds Trail will kick your butt, intensity level ranging upon your endurance. It ascends right back up to Devil’s Tower on the opposite side of where climbers prefer to roll the bones up the hexagonal columns. I have a very good command of my cardio, yet even I needed to slow down to a trot again and regulate my breathing with the uptick in altitude and the rising temperature of the morning sun.
As you can see below, however, the upland cliffs on the final leg of the Red Beds Trail does offer a spectacular incentive to push yourself through them.
There’s another trail you can drive down from the main parking lot which is also worth your effort to grab a more distant view of Devil’s Tower. All told, I’d put in 4.8 miles on these side trails before taking a hypothetical victory lap mile around the Tower Trail again. I felt so cleansed afterwards, even with the dirt, sweat and dried blood upon me.
I’d spent two days at Devil’s Tower and for my own personal reward, grabbed one of my many accumulated six packs of Moose Drool beer (one of my absolute favorite brews in the entire universe) from the gift shop and more magnets than I probably needed.
They don’t have much in that dinky town of Hulett and you can’t imagine how the Sturgis bikers manage to cram themselves in there each year, but it has a lot to offer in its miniscule stage. They embrace the Close Encounters emanations as a profitable marketing tool, Devil’s Tower being whimsically called “Area 18.” All I know is that the Tower and its prairie dogs will see me again in the not-too-distant future. Bumbum bum baaaaa bommmmmm….
The term “road less traveled” is often misinterpreted from Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” but the intent remains the same. Frost’s poem posits an alternate path to his lyrical hike in the woods as “having perhaps the better claim, because it was grassy and wanted wear.”
Now Frost is using environmental allegory in “The Road Not Taken” to make the point that we have a choice in our lives, to follow the proverbial beaten path and automatically do as others would do. Or we can peel away the blinders and open our eyes and minds to another way to get where we’re going and where we’d like to be in life.
When was the last time you took a chance on something? Maybe you played 5 to 1 odds at the track or you might’ve shifted some of your portfolio toward a few large-cap tech stocks because you smell growth potential. You took a chance on a British murder drama on PBS instead of settling for network t.v.’s offerings or the latest critic’s darling on a trendy streaming service. You might even have tried a draft pint of crafted microbrew instead of ordering that everyday bottle of Miller Lite. In my case, you might take a huge leap of faith, not only by going out on my own and unexpectedly finding new love, but, more materially, ripping more then 800 CDs and storing them digitally onto a thumb drive before purging the hard copy.
My girlfriend, TJ and I are avid hikers and we’ve come to the realization in our travels that often it’s the side trails, the paths straying from the main flow where everyone else filters, that lure us and, so long as we keep our sense of direction, the payoffs are, more often than not, far more satisfying.
I came up with the idea of Roads Lesser Traveled following a recent getaway TJ and I had in the mountains of Deep Creek Lake. In particular, the Swallow Falls system, one of the area’s biggest attractions. Instead of catching the falls from the main entrance at the top, we discovered another way in via the bottom of the system. While there was a a fair handful of people heading onto this same unmarked trail, we took a chance on it after talking to some in-the-know local youth. At a certain point, we had this trail mostly to ourselves the deeper we ventured. We were treated to a spectacular show of rock formations, water rivulets, mushrooms and an abundance of moss you wouldn’t get on the man-made, crowded paths circumventing the high side of the falls.
TJ and I went about two miles deep into the narrowing splendor, tap-dancing around many muddy spots, but the air became more pristine from the collision of the rushing water below us and the natural seepage from the rocks at our sides. TJ thanked the earth fairies showing off for us and compared much of what we saw to the Middle Earth realm in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frankly, we didn’t even bother making our way to the main gate after such an exhibition.
Stepping out of your comfort zone and looking at another way to reach your destination, gives most people unease. Yes, TJ and I usually stick to color-coded paths in the woods, especially in the deeper forestation of the back woods zones. Still, you never know what’s waiting for you off-the-beaten path, because it’s ingrained subliminally that we shy from we can’t see or know with full certainty. It’s often said in life itself that people fear what they can’t understand. In some cases, that creates hostility, prejudice and even nihilism. What an unhealthy way to live.
Consider, this, though; what are you missing out on by taking the same route as everyone else? Sure, popular vote often bears justification. If you’ve been to Yellowstone, it’s a guarantee a cluster of people banded together at any random spot inside that vast park is something worth joining in on, i.e. a view of some bison or a grizzly. It so happened in our Deep Creek adventures that taking a barely-blazed, grown over trail yielded TJ and I a treat in the form of a young fawn lying on its belly. It held its position a long time before taking off, and we turned direction so that we could leave the fawn in proximity of its distant doe mother. This year, we’ve been graced by up-close deer contacts on four out of our last five hikes. It would seem Cernunnos or even Lugh have been reaching out to us during this vernal equinox through their earthly horned avatars. It’s been a thrilling Beltane for us, to be sure.
I’m taking a chance by opening a new blog after a few years of inactivity. In the past, I’ve blogged about music, horror and comic books and I had very steady followings. My defunct blog, The Metal Minute was awarded Best Personal Blog by Metal Hammer magazine years ago, one of my proudest achievements. I’m excited to be writing Roads Lesser Traveled and look forward to interacting with you all, pardon the pun, down the road.
The vibe here at Roads Lesser Traveled will be to take you on journeys. While travel and hiking will have their places on this blog, I’ll also be talking metaphorically about roads lesser traveled in life, love, writing, etc. My hope is to inspire and motivate through the bandwidth uniting us here. It’s all about embracing what this world has to offer without inhibitors. It’s about going upward and onward with an adventurer’s spirit, while taking the necessary pauses to reflect, appreciate, analyze and even grieve where appropriate.
So take that plunge, that leap of faith. Overcome that faint uncertainty, all within reason, of course. Assess risk sensibly, take any necessary precautions, but don’t let that gnawing trepidation against the unknown rattle you. Take a chance. Explore a new option. It’s very much the same as life itself. Taking the road lesser traveled often yields spectacular results. Or, to paraphrase Robert Frost, of the roads that diverge in the woods or elsewhere, taking the less traveled makes all the difference.
I thank you for taking the less traveled path bringing you to my fledgling blog and hope that together we may blaze it in good company…
Roads Lesser Traveled 