Still Wicked Cool

The view from Lost River; Clare McCarthy photo

  

When the British Car Gal and I trekked north early last fall, we were headed there to tour the Poore Farm and the Weeks Mansion - both historically and visually fascinating and well worth the trip - with side-stops to cool our feet in the Basin, have an early-morning snack at the Falls, and stand on the 45^th Parallel. But on the way up, we decided to do something neither of us had done since we were kids: we went to Lost River.

Lost River is a place in Kinsman Gorge where a river tumbles downhill and creates pools and basins and caves and caverns through the granite rocks. The Society for the Protection of National Forests has owned it since early in the 20^th century, and there are paths and lookouts and towers and bridges and – gulp! – caves and caverns and twisty places that kids scoot through with glee, and adult humans of a normal size look at with alarm and trepidation. Which is exactly why we decided to go back there. 

Lost River; Clare McCarthy photo

The Gal and I are women of a certain age, and we’re built like that, no longer the skinny young things we once were.  I have photos dating from 1953 that a skinny, crew-cutted Dad took of tiny, terribly cute Mom before they were married, climbing the outdoors stairs and crossing the cool wet river bridges ‘way up high on a trip they made to the mountains with my grandparents. And I have memories of my dare-devil Gramp squeezing his way through the “Lemon Twist” when I was a little bit of a thing and Brother and I could zip through the dark places mostly upright, and he was about my current age. The Gal visited the River when she and her sister were a little older, but still young enough to be fearless and able to slip easily into and out of the tight spaces.

So it seemed perfectly natural that we, two very cool chicks with adventure on our minds, should revisit the places of our youth. Besides, it was a hot day and women of a certain age always appreciate places that are, without fail, cool and cooling.

We were there on a day when there weren’t many children and actual young people to make us feel ---well --- old. We were able to mosey along and stand at each cave entrance and contemplate the world, our sense of mortality, carefully read the descriptions on the markers about how narrow and low each cave was, think about our knees and backs and how they were feeling, wonder whether the car keys were firmly enough secured in the pocket (no we did NOT take our pocket-books along like a couple of old grannies!!) to still be with us when we emerged, clear our throats, gaze off into the distance, check out other, younger adult human beings emerging from the exits to see how pale and terrified they looked, test our view of the entrances against our feelings of claustrophobia, think about what might happen if we got stuck, wonder why on earth we were even thinking about dipping down into dark, narrow, low, wet unknown spaces, weigh how wimpy we’d feel if we passed the cave by, and finally take a deep breath and head down, saying out loud that if it was too claustrophobic we could back out again.

Deb emerging from a cave; Clare McCarthy photo

 

Which we never did. Instead, we went on hands and knees, ducked our heads low, bent far over, twisted to the side, once even squirmed along on our bellies, groping for the hand-and-foot-holds in cool, dusky, stone-smelling small spaces, following each other’s heels and giving each other directions when we couldn’t see where we were headed, and we came out of each cave with wet bellies, skinned knees, cave dirt dusted along our backs, moss in our hair, pounding hearts, and big grins. I haven’t had a skinned knee in decades, and I ended up with two.  Man, it was fun.

Full disclosure: we did skip the last two caves. We watched a guy trying to figure out how to emerge from the Lemon Twist and having to disappear and reappear several times turned different ways and decided that, despite my Gramp’s ancient example, we’d had just about enough of that kind of excitement for one day. The cave right next to it looked equally ominous and we agreed claustrophobia had finally kicked in. But, by gawd, we did all the rest of them! And proved we are still wicked cool.

We fully deserved the poutine we ate at supper.

Carved bear in a tower at Lost River; Clare McCarthy photo.


For the blog alone; May 18, 2017