SECRET SPOT- THE LEDGE

Way up in the woods behind the house in Castleton there is a cliff of matamorphic shale along one side of a pass, and about half way up that cliff there is a ledge. If you found the place, and it is there quietly waiting to be found, you would see at one end of the ledge a crude fireplace- just a large flat stone surrounded on three sides by tightly stacked rocks to kick back the heat. I first discovered the ledge during one of my frequent wanderings through the woods behind the house. I loved those woods. Sometimes, as I lay in bed at night, struggling to go to sleep, I will wander them in my mind's eye. I can still retrace the old faded logging roads and every turn of the brook as it dropped down into the gorge towards its rendezvous with Briton Brook. It is all mapped out in my mind, not as it is perhaps, but as it was when I was a boy. The pass where I found the cliff connected our valley to the next one. It was an interesting spot. I remember that it was always damp up there. Even during the driest of times it was a mossy, squishy place. In the height of summer ferns grew waist-high and bramble canes grabbed at your jeans and t-shirt as if to say "wait a minute." It was a muddy, squishy place because it was a seeping, oozing place. Water made its way out through cleavage planes in the surrounding rocks. It pooled quietly in the low place between the hills before giving birth to mirror brooks which first trickled, then babbled, then flowed down opposite sides of the pass into the neighboring valleys.

The ledge could only be safely accessed by climbing high above it and then working your way carefully down a steep trail (what animal was responsible for that trail I do not know, but I have always wondered). It was necessary to grab saplings and bushes to check your speed as you went. The trail, which is a generous description, came down to the very lip of the cliff where it petered out. Once at the cliff you were forced to lay down on your belly and let your feet dangle over the edge, slowly lowering yourself down until your inquisitive toes met solid footing below. The first time I did this I was terrified that somehow I would mess up and fall to my death, and even after I had frequented the ledge many times I always felt tense and frightened while my feet dangled uncertainly. Only when I felt the ledge solidly underfoot could I resume breathing. Then I would let the rest of my weight down onto the ledge and slump against the cliff face and take in the view. The view was nothing spectacular. Below was the pass in all of its squishy, muddy grandeur and opposite were the woods climbing up the other side of the pass.

I built the fireplace at the far end of the ledge on a snowy day in March. I got the stones to the ledge by rolling them over the lip and letting them drop down onto the ledge. For every two stones that stayed on the ledge a third one would roll off and crash down the cliff face. By the time I had finished building the fireplace the sun was starting to go down so I had to wait until the next day, after school, to have my first fire on the ledge. After school, the next day, I set out for the ledge straight away. On my way up I stripped bark from fallen birch trees for tinder, but I waited until I was closer to the ledge to gather the firewood because I needed both hands to safely negotiate the descent to the ledge. Luckily, there was no shortage of dry wood in the neighborhood of the ledge. I had many fires up there on the ledge, but none as great as that first one. I folded up my jacket so I wouldn't have to sit on the cold rock. Fat snowflakes were falling through the quiet woods, but I was wrapped in the orangle glow of my fire up on the ledge. It was better than any fort I had known as a boy. It was perfect.

THE GREATEST MYSTERY OF MY YOUTH

When I was a boy I buried a small box in the woods behind the house. The box had no purpose. There was no plan. I just liked secret buried boxes, and although it would have been satisfying to give the buried box some great purpose I had nothing of value to hide and nobody to hide things from. It was simply for the joy of secret buried boxes that I did it. I'm a little embarassed to even confess this one-time hobby of mine. In truth, it was not the first box I had buried in this manner. In the quiet days of youth before the clay of a boy's brain has hardened they sometimes find interesting and frivolous pursuits to fill their days with. With a garden trowel I carved out a hole roughly the size of the box, and I buried it level with the ground so that by lifting up a flat rock the top of the box became visible. The lid was hinged and lifted easily. When all was done I scattered pine needles over the rock so that the whole thing looked as natural as can be. I was alone, and I had told no one about my plan to bury the box.
When I returned the next day the rock had been shoved aside and the lid stood open. I can recall making the discovery. The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I must have been watched I reasoned, but by whom?  Where had they watched me from? I turned around in a circle taking in the woods which had suddenly become vaguely sinister. After I had left they must have come to investigate what I had buried. And why did they not leave the place as I had left it? They must have wanted me to know that they had discovered the box. Why else would they leave the stone shoved aside and the lid standing open? It remains one of the great mysteries of my youth. I buried no more boxes.

BUBBLE GUM FOR BRAINS

During my senior year of high school I took a college prep course called Anatomy and Physiology because I was told it would look good on my college transcripts. As I have matured over the years into greater self-awareness I have realized that God never crafted me to think as a scientist, but as a teenager I still believed that all paths were still open to me. I could be anything I wanted to be! Who knows, maybe even a Doctor. So, during third period on the first day of my senior year I found myself seated in the back row of Anatomy and Physiology listening with horror as Mrs. Pelletier explained our goals for the year. While attempting to teach me about anatomy and physiology, Mrs. Pelletier would inadvertently help me understand the finite limits of my God-given design. In this she proved to be a good teacher. (It must be said that she was also a good teacher in the conventional sense. She was also a fine human being as well.) 

I muddled along, limping through assignments that other, more gifted, students bounded through with the grace and ease of a deer. Then, one Friday, Mrs. Pelletier assigned the class a homework assignment to be completed over the weekend. She wanted us to create a three-dimenional cross-section of the human brain using any materials we wanted. "Be creative and have fun with it," she said. It was a mickey mouse sort of assignment that some of my classmates thought was just busy work but I finally felt that I was on equal footing. 

By the time I got home I had formulated my plan of attack. My Dad was heading out to run some errands so I asked him if I could tag along. At our first stop, U-$ave Discount Foods on Rt. 4A in Hydeville, I purchased a large assortment of chewing gum. It was necessary for the purposes of my cross-section that I find gums of  different colors in order to differentiate the different parts of the brain. Fortunately, U-$ave had a great variety of gums. I filled a sack with pink, red, green, blue, purple and even black gum. Once back home I enlisted my brother Job's aid in chewing up all that gum. We sat down in front of the TV and chewed and chewed and chewed as we watched Jeopardy. We chewed until our jaws positively ached. The thing about gum, especially the old, expired gum for sale at U-$ave, is that at first your jaws really have to work to soften the gum and then the chewing gets easier, but when all you're doing is working on softening new pieces of gum it's pretty tiring work.

Our first job was to form the cerebral cortex using big gobs of pink dubble-bubble chewing gum. I lined a box with tin foil, and put the cerebral cortex in place. It looked amazingly realistic! "This was going to be the best brain cross-section ever!" I thought to myself. Thrilled by the success of the cerebral cortex I fell to chewing more gum for all of the other parts. The medulla oblongata, the pituitary gland, the cerebellum, the thalamus...these and others were all added and when the brain was fully constructed I had to admit I was very proud of the overall effect. It looked almost exactly like the multicolored, textured illustration in my textbook. Next I took little toothpicks, glued numbered penants to them and stuck them all over the cross section labeling the various parts of the brain, and then created a separate key that listed each part next to their corresponding numbers. It is one of the few times in High School that I finished an assignment as soon as I got home, and for the first time in Anatomy and Physiology I was completely confident of my work. The nicest thing about my brain was that it filled the entire house with the heavenly aroma of chewing gum. Really, is there a more pleasing aroma?

I put a lid on my bubblegum brain and put it on a shelf for the remainder of the weekend. When I got to school on Monday morning I took the lid off to show my masterpiece to a friend, and, horror of horrors, all of the saliva had come out of the bubblegum and had pooled in a slick pinkish puddle all around the brain. "Nasty!" my friend loudly exclaimed, and soon a crowd had gathered around my brain. The librarian, Mr. Luzer (Yes, it was pronounced "loser."), stopped in passing and suggested that I label the oozing saliva "cerebrospinal fluid," which is exactly what I did. With Mr. Luzer's help I went to the teacher's lounge where I acquired another toothpick and a tiny penant of red construction paper. Working quickly before the bell rang I just managed to get it done before first period.

When the bell rang for third period I retrieved the brain from my locker and proudly carried it to be presented to Mrs. Pelletier. As I put my brain alongside the others, and took my seat, I proudly noted that mine was clearly the most excellent of the brains. The only other brain that was any good had been made by a girl named Lindsay who had cooked strands of spaghetti in food coloring and then had arranged them into the shape of a brain and  allowed them to dry out in the oven so that the whole thing stuck together. Still, I remained confident of the superiority of my bubblegum brain. However, as class began, and Mrs. Pelletier walked up and down reviewing and critiquing each brain in turn, she stopped before my brain, and I noted that her face was contorted into a horrific mask of disgust. "Is that gum?!?!?!" she said as though she had just spied a rattlesnake. "Whose is this?" she demanded. Everyone looked at me. "Uh... it's mine...," I stammered lamely,"... it really looks like a brain."  She moved on quickly without commenting further. I was surprised and embarassed! Really, I was completely blindsided and bewildered by her obvious disapproval. 

After class, Mrs. Pelletier asked me to remove my brain from the classroom, which, if you think about it, is a very interesting thing for a teacher to say to a student. The other brains would remain on display, but mine would have to go. I didn't ask for an explanation, but she offered one anyway- "It's kind of gross," she said. "Yeah I know," I said, laughing as though the whole thing had been a practical joke or something, which it hadn't been. 

A week later I got my grade- C+. Beneath my grade were the comments, "Very creative, but unhygienic!" (She was right of course. That I can't deny.)

I felt deflated, but when I showed my grade to Mr. Luzer, he said simply and without fanfare, "It was clearly the best brain," and then he went back to his work. It was the nicest thing any of the faculty at Fair Haven Union High School ever said to me, and his simple words of affirmation were better than an A+. 

Mr. Luzer will always be a winner to me.

M.U.S.C.L.E. MEN

When I was a kid growing up at 816 Somerset Place in Hyattsville, MD all the kids in my neighborhood collected M.U.S.C.L.E. Men. There were hundreds of them, each a unique little plastic sculpture. I loved them. In truth, I love them still. Rich kids had buckets of 'em, but even the poorest kids had modest collections. In that brand of economy unique to neighborhood kids and prisons they became a kind of currency. I recall that certain kinds of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men were considered especially rare and thus also valuable. Many a happy summer afternoon were spent sitting on the sidewalk in front of the house trying to improve my standing within the M.U.S.C.L.E. Man community through some shrewd trades. When I wasn't trading M.U.S.C.L.E Men I enjoyed arranging them on the window sill next to my bed or playing with them in the bathtub.

My parents were neither rich nor overly indulgent and thus my own collection was relatively modest. However, I diligently saved my dollar that I earned every week from helping with the family's paper route. This I stored in an envelope which I hid in various locations throughout my room. I changed the hiding place often, sometimes even several times a day, not because it was in any danger of being burgled but because, like all children, I loved the idea of a secret, hidden treasure.

The day eventually came when I reached my savings goal which was to buy a large box of M.U.S.C.L.E. Men which I had seen on display at a K-Mart down the road. I do not recall how much this cost, but I do recall that it took what felt like several lifetimes to amass the necessary funds. This was my long-imagined day of comeuppance. I drained the treasury, which on that particular day had been secreted away inside my pillow case, and entrusted the entire fortune to my older brother, John, who was going to K-Mart with my Mom. The M.U.S.C.L.E. Men were packaged in a flat box with a thin see-through plastic window on its front which allowed you to see just a few of the men it contained. I gave John instructions to look through the window of each box in search of certain rare and sought-after M.U.S.C.L.E. Men. The biggest prize was to find a M.U.S.C.L.E Man that nobody on the block had seen yet.

After what seemed like hours the family's station wagon finally rumbled back into the driveway and before it even came to a stop I was running alongside trying to discern from John's face how he had fared at K-Mart. He was inscrutable. When John handed me the box of M.U.S.CL.E. Men I dropped to my knees in the grass next to the car and tore it open on the spot. I marveled at my newfound riches. There were no new species of MUSCLE Man for me to name and describe to our emerging science, but there were several sought after specimens including one who was half crocodile and half man. He was one that had only recently been discovered on the block and was a hot commodity.

That night my window sill was crowded with little pink monsters and chief among them was the crocodile man. I loved him.

My school, Ridgecrest Elementary, had a strict policy against bringing toys to school. In fact, if found they were always confiscated and it was my teacher's policy not to release them unless your Mom or Dad came to get them after school. Most kids chose to forfeit their toys rather than suffer a lecture from their parents, and it was rumored that one of the drawers in her desk was a veritable Aladin's cave of abandoned toys. 

Despite the risk, I just could not bear the thought of being separated from the crocodile man for an entire school day. So before shouldering my backpack I slipped him into my pants pocket, reasoning that I would only take him out on the way to and from school and possibly also if I went to the bathroom. 

At some point during that morning my teacher gave the entire class some busy work and then stepped out into the hall to talk something over with the principal. I finished my work early and then, in a moment of weakness, decided to have a brief little moment with crocodile man. I fished him out of my pocket and was admiring him when the door unexpectedly swung open on the quietest hinges that I have never heard. My teacher's eyes swept across her charges with a trained eye and before I could return him to the safety of my pants pocket they locked onto crocodile man. My heart sank.

She couldn't have known that crocodile man was worth all those hours delivering papers, or of the special place it held in my heart, and my window sill back home. In truth, I doubt she would have cared   much even if she had known.

Without saying a word she crossed the room until she stood in front of my desk and then she held out her hand demanding that I hand over my newly acquired M.U.S.C.L.E Man, my precious. My classmates were enjoying the show. All eyes were on me, and I was blushing.

''Uh...it's an eraser,'' I lied.

''Show me,'' she said, beckoning toward a piece of paper.

I took crocodile man in hand and with a lump in my throat began rubbing his head against the busy work I had just completed. To my teacher's surprise, and also my own, the M.U.S.C.L.E. Man erased beautifully.

''Oh,'' my teacher said, apparently believing my lie. Then she turned and went back to her desk without confiscating my toy. Crocodile man went back in my pocket.

The kid who sat next to me said, ''That's sick! I didn't know they made M.U.S.C.L.E. Man erasers! Where'd you get that?''

''K-Mart,'' I said.

THE PAPER MAN- A KINDLY SOUL

One night in college I was sitting at my desk thinking longingly of my long-distance girlfriend, Sarah, when I heard a slight rustling sound behind me, and as I turned I saw a little paper man.

 The little paper man is a very knowing and sympathetic sort of person who visits the loneliest people in the midst of their misery. Perhaps they are imprisoned, or maybe homesick at summer camp or long-separated from their girlfriend who lives 3000 miles away in Southern California. Maybe you've been visited by the little paper man. If so, then you know what a kindly fellow he is.

 He stood about six inches tall from the soles of his paper shoes to the top of his paper hat. In fact, every inch of him was made from a single piece of white, college-ruled paper- the sort with faint blue lines and three holes punched along the left hand side. He could spiral his entire length like a tight needle so he could slide through a key hole and he could also flatten himself out so he could slip beneath a door. Like an origami master he could take the shape of a heart, flowers, the profile of a loved one or really just about anything. Most often though he took the shape of a dapper little man in a white suit with faint blue pin stripes who made a distinct rustling sound as he moved. His voice sounded vaguely like the scratching of a pencil.

 He asked me to lift him up onto the surface of my desk, which I was at first too frightened to do. Afraid of a paper man? Yes. If you are ever visited by someone so unexpected as a paper man I expect you would also be a little cautious. However, as I already stated, the little paper man is a kindly soul, and although I can't say how I somehow felt this. I quickly overcame my apprehension and carefully lifted him up onto my desk. Being made of paper he cautioned me to be gentle as he was easily torn. I set him down and he immediately set about kicking the clutter this way and that until he had cleared space enough for an 8 1/2 X 11 sheet of paper to lie flat. Then in a flash he simply unfolded himself into a crisp, clean sheet of college-ruled paper. There on the top line, much to my surprise was written in Sarah's unmistakeable handwriting, "I love you! XOXOxxx Sarah"

I stared at the paper for a few minutes, feeling quite overwhelmed and also a bit confused as to how I should respond. Then I heard a little voice instructing me to take up a pen and write out a reply. I looked in vain for a mouth from which the voice had come, but couldn't find one.

As I put pen to paper and began writing out a response I distinctly heard the paper giggle as though it were being tickled. I wrote, "I love you too." and "This is strange, isn't it?," before signing my name.

After putting my pen down I watched in amazement as the paper wrippled like the surface of a pond before twisting and folding itself once more into the shape of a dapper little man in a pin stripe suit. He saluted me smartly and winked his eye before running toward the edge of the desk. I heard a thin, scratchy voice yell, "Geronimo!," as he threw himself over the edge. However, no sooner did he jump then he transformed into the shape of a paper airplane that caught an upward draft off the radiator and floated out through the open window.

THE CANNIBAL CAVE AT CHIPMAN'S POINT

In the summer of 2000 I found the following passage on page 12 of Ralph Nading Hill's, Lake Champlain: Key to Liberty:

"In 1938 Dr. John H. Bailey, reporting for the Champlain Archaeological Society, described a site at Chipman's point below an overhanging cliff where from time immemorial a shelter had existed for at least two types of Indians. In the ashes of their campfires on a floor made from chips of limestone that had fallen from the cliff were found a polished stone dagger made from a large animal and the graves of a young child surrounded by large clam shells and of a pet dog under limestone slabs. Long after these people had departed, perhaps several hundred years, another group with arrow-tips of triangular points, and pottery jars moved in, spreading fallen rock over the old habitation to make a new floor. Along with stone arrowpoints they used awls and fishhooks of bone. They, too, lost a child whose remains were unearthed near the wall. And they were cannibals, for the bones of a woman, perhaps a captive, were buried in a pile with her skull placed on top."

Moved by curiosity, I consulted a map of the lake and was surprised to find that Chipman's Point was located just four to five miles (by water) north of my family's house on the Vermont side of the lake. Years later I would find reference to the same site in a book owned by some family friends, that described the bones of the captive woman as having been "boiled, cut, and gnawed upon."

From that moment on I experienced a growing desire to find that overhang and stand in the place where cannibals had once stood. I'm not sure why this hardened into a goal, but it did.

I told my brothers about it and together a few of us drove up there to see if we could find the spot, but the helpful proprietor of the Chipman's Point marina, a foreigner of unknown European origin, told us that the site was only accessible by boat.

It took some time before weather conditions cooperated with my days off to provide me with an opportunity to seek the place out. I didn't have a motor boat so I would have  to paddle the four to five miles in my row boat. This meant having to wait for a day when winds were favorable.

On a Saturday morning, with a slight breeze out of the southwest I decided to give it a go. After packing a lunch, and saying goodbye to my folks, I shoved off from the shore and began rowing north. With the lake calm, the rowing was easy. The oars rose and fell in a steady rhythm and the boat's wake trailed out behind like a long widening scar.

Rowing long distances is a boring, mindless thing. The shore is too distant to make out much, and after a while, the mechanics of rowing requires no conscious thought whatsoever. The muscle memory in your thighs, back and arms takes over and your mind is allowed to wander. My mind, however, always seemed to wander off completely, and afterwards I could never recall having thought of much of anything particular. Occasionally, when rowing, something would come along to break up the monotony, like the time my line intersected with a deer that was swimming across the lake or when I found a dead dog floating with its leash still attached, but mostly it was just heave-ho, heave-ho, heave-ho.

Eventually, I drew within sight of Chipman's point.  Reeds whispered against the underside of the boat as I entered shallow water. Dragon flies skimmed the surface, mosquitoes whined in my ears, and a Great Blue Heron lazily lifted from the water and landed again further down the shore. Following the directions that the foreigner had given me, I made for the shore beneath an imposing limestone cliff.  There was no beach to speak of. All manner of shrubs and downed trees crowded the water. The mossy trunk of a downed birch tree, which ran horizontal to the water, looked to be the best place to pull the boat out. Within a yard of the tree I kicked off my shoes and stepped out of the boat into the water. Then hoisting the bow up onto the trunk I was able to get the rest of it out of the water by walking around to the back and giving a push. The keel slid easily over the back of the tree trunk.

After retrieving my shoes and lunch from the boat I battled through the dense underbrush towards the base of the cliff, and when I found the spot I had to admit that it was not as impressive as I had imagined. It was a rocky ledge, possibly ten feet across at its widest and overgrown with weeds. The cliff, which provided only a slight overhang, rose 40-50 above. The cliff would have protected the site from the elements to the north and east but it was open exposed to the south and west. I imagined trying to make a home out of the place and even on a warm, summer day it looked uncomfortable. The original inhabitants must have leaned posts up against the cliff, I decided, and closed it off with hides or something.

The spot afforded you uninterrupted views of the lake in every direction, and could only be accessed by water. The indians must have been dependent on boats to come and go except in the winter when the lake froze. I think perhaps the only reason to make a home in such a spot would have been if they lived in constant fear of attack. They certainly would have felt safe there where the only possible approach was by lake, and they could see any visitors coming from a long ways off.

I sat on the limestone chip floor of the overhang and swatted mosquitoes as I ate my lunch- a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a pepsi and some raisins. "Far cry from captive woman," I muttered to myself, "...but it'll have to do."

As I sat there, the wind changed and came blowing out of the north. A north wind would be in my favor as I rowed back south toward home. Part of me wished for a storm that would force me to spend the night under the cannibals' overhang. That would have made a great story. I looked around for building materials. There was no shortage of downed trees and driftwood. I felt excited, like a little boy, as I contemplated constructing a crude shelter beneath the overhang. However, a storm never materialized, and I returned to my boat and shoved off again- this time for home.

Home- to think people called that place home. From my vantage place in the boat, I tried to squint my eyes and picture the spot as it would have looked in antiquity. A collection of crude shelters, little better than tents, crowded above the water with campfires reflecting against the sooty cliff. The place must have smelled awful. Unwashed bodies, rotting animal carcasses, and human waste.

It made my scalp tingle to think that other boats and other men had idled in the same spot and looked on a very different scene. Part of me wished I could peak through the veil of time and share in their story, or at a minimum witness it, but the very thought made me feel soft and unprepared- too spoiled by the age in which I live to think of going toe to toe with such people. Like a lap dog running with wolves. My bones would doubtlessly have ended up boiled, cut, gnawed upon, and piled in a heap with my skull on top.