Bellingham Walks

We had to walk a mile and one half to rejoin the Erie Canal trail this morning. Our route took us immediately from the busy road our motel was on to a country road lined with fields of bush beans and a horse ranch. Traffic was light and it wasn’t long before we came upon a pioneer cemetary. It was not marked by a sign indictating its name, nor was there an access road to it. There was no where to park. Although many of the stones were toppled or broken, some were standing, with names and dates readable. Most of the dates indicated that the deceased had been born in the early 1800’s and lived till the late 1800’s. The cemetary is mowed by someone and a quick Google search called it the Calvary Cemetary, owned by the Roma Catholic Church of Lockport and set to be restored. The first Erie Canal opened in 1825 making many of the folks in this cemetary first generation canal residents.

This amazing stone house was very near the cemetary and is where the horses lived.

The trail towards Tonawanda/Buffalo begins with rural farming residences, changing to rural residences, giving way to to suburban neighborhoods, with four lane boulevards lined with Home Depots and Rite Aids swallowing it all. We are staying on the latter. Urban Trail Trivia: the number one piece of litter is discarded cigarette cartons.

This is a picture of the trail early this morning. The official fence along the Erie Canal Trail is constructed as seen above. I’ve contemplated the reason behind the design for many, many miles now. These are my conclusions, in order from the least likely to most likely. Initially, I thought they had forgotten to put in the third rung, then I came to a more meaningful conclusion. The open space, where the ‘missing’ rung is, represents the canal and the rung just above it represents the towpath where mules and horses pulled the boats and barges. A more practical reason for its design is that it makes the trail identifiable if one is not sure where they are…this happened for us today when we weren’t sure which way to go; we saw the fence and knew the correct way to go. The last rationale is purely economical. The canal system would save 25% on the cost of the fence runners by leaving one off.

Here are a few other things we saw today.

We experienced a slight feeling of melancholia today knowing that after tomorrow we would be saying goodbye to the canal and trail that have been our home for the last month. The trail has provided a consistent way forward, strewn with a variety challenging challenges, meant to exercise our commitment and endurance, as well as many open, generous, and heartfelt human exchanges, meant to strengthen our belief and trust in the goodness of the human community. We are also ready to be finished and look forward to returning to Bellingham. I will likely post a few times after we finish. I will take no offense if anyone wishes to unsubscribe from receiving this blog after The Erie Canal Walk concludes. My future posts will likely be focused on walks closer to home.

With many blessings,

Ann