The Curious Sojourner: C&O Canal Mid-Summer 2019

Towpath between MM124-25

The last time I was on this section of the towpath, a thin layer of ice covered the bridge at Lock 52; today, the temperature starts at a humid 80°F. Walking on Independence Day Eve, the temperature will gradually climb over the next few hours. I think of July as mid-summer, but in reality, the season began just a couple of weeks before. Walking the towpath this time of year means hot temperatures, high humidity, and an increasing number of pesky insects. News from around the world, however, suggests that the weather could be worse. Just the day before, France experienced its highest ever recorded temperature, 114°F. It is difficult to imagine walking in heat like that, but I given that most homes in France do not have air conditioning just simply surviving must be a chore.

The walks along the Potomac always provide an opportunity to observe wildlife, but the excitement the night before was in my backyard. We chanced to see a fox, eating apples from our tree. It was a sweet looking animal, but I feared that the many rabbits that inhabit our lawn were to be the second course. Despite our encouragement, none of the cats spotted the visitor. The fox stayed long enough for me to take some choice photographs before sauntering off toward the railroad tracks. To our knowledge, no rabbits were harmed.

Bowles House

Shortly after walking from the Bowles House, a late 18th-century house that serves as an information center, located near the Tonoloway Aqueduct, I met a woman with an excitable border-collie mix. “I have that same shirt,” referring to my rails-to-trail conservancy gratis t-shirt. After admiring and petting her dog for a minute or two, she asked it I had been in the area before. I noted that that I had, but only briefly. She recommended Buddy Lou’s in Hancock for lunch, where “they do food really well.” I said that I would stop by on my way back.

Hancock, Maryland

Hancock, a town of 1500 people, is located at the northern most point of the Potomac River. As a traditional transportation hub, the town features prominently in an oddity of geography and state borders. At this point the width of Maryland is extremely narrow; the distance between West Virginia and Pennsylvania is less than two miles. The towpath runs parallel to the main thoroughfare, Main Street. A steel bridge crosses to canal to allow hikers and cyclists to access the little town. Resisting the temptation to explore Hancock and keep walking, even though a flock of Canada Geese seemed to form a barricade to prevent me going forward. As I skirted the flock, geese were hissing at me, seemingly sticking their tongues out in defiance.

Once I leave the outskirts of Hancock, it becomes a rather solitary walk. I meet three park employees removing down a downed tree that had fallen across the path. I hear a train that is close enough that in the winter I would be likely to see. Walking two miles upstream from US522 my only companions are rabbits and birds. Thinking about a man working the canal 150 years ago what must his thoughts have been? Without hesitation he must have been concerned about his family, friends and loved ones. His future his destiny probably weighed on his mind. There was no radio or iPod to distract him. Just the rhythm of his pace. Would he have confided in his mule? If so, the animal was likely too busy to respond.

Tree trunk: regeneration

Red metal tags nailed into trees, but I cannot help but notice that most of the trees are dead or dying.

On my return trip I stopped for lunch at Buddy Lou’s in Hancock, as recommended by the woman I met earlier that morning. I ordered a chile-rubbed tuna sandwich with apple-jalapeno coleslaw. The restaurant is popular not only with local residents but with those who are traveling along the canal as well. My sandwich was incredible, and I decided that I should bring Angie to Hancock to see the area and have lunch. One of her favorite dishes, lobster rolls, which are relatively uncommon in our area, figures prominently on the menu as well.

In the men’s restroom at Buddy Lou’s there is a photograph of a child being rescued from a house in Hancock dated 3 April 1937. My grandfather had manned boats helping rescue people and delivering supplies during the flood in Louisville that same year. He often talked about navigating the streets of the city just months before he married my grandmother. As a child, 3 April had a different meaning: it was the day that tornadoes ripped through Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.

After lunch I felt refreshed, but my legs did not. I trudged the remaining mile back to Bowles House where the car was parked.

In between walks I made a trip to Massachusetts. While there I had breakfast with my old friend and colleague, John. During our conversations over the years it has become increasingly common to discuss our physical activities and limitations. He told me that he increasingly concerned about falling. His wife Alli told him that when older people fell thy never full recovered. Although I most definitely do not think of myself as older, I take his point that a substantial injury could be life-altering. I take so much joy in walking that the prospect of an injury that might seriously diminish my capacity to walk is disturbing.

A few weeks later, we were visiting Angie’s family in the Finger Lakes region of New York. While I generally associate the Finger Lakes with cooler summer weather than Pennsylvania, the sun was particularly oppressive as we walked along the southern edge of Lake Owasco. Cody, the silly dog he is, remains fearful of water. Once, when he was a puppy, he and I were walking one late afternoon in winter. The temperature was in the 20s and, being silly, he ran up to a bridge to indicate his preferred path. It was in the opposite direction of where we were going. I called him back and told him we were not going over the bridge. Although dogs have limited facial expressions, I detected a mischievous look on his face, and he sprinted toward the bridge. He turned to look over his shoulder just as he slipped between the railroad ties of the bridge and fell into the creek a few feet below. I could not help but laugh. The look on his face when he realized that he was about to fall is ingrained in my memory. I often describe it as if it were a cartoon, like when the coyote runs over the edge of the cliff before gravity take hold. Although the water was cold, Cody was none the worse for wear. To this day, however, Cody is leery of bridges and bodies of water, presumably worried about falling in.

On this hot day, though, I was trying to coax Cody into drinking some water from the lake. I pointed out the other dogs, much more diminutive in size, who were taking a cool drink from the lank to no avail. O reach to get some water in my hands from the lake, stepped on a slippery rock, and began to fall backwards with my legs in the lake. There was that moment of realization that I was going to fall into the lake. I reached back to catch myself with my right hand and heard John’s voice in my head, “…never fully recover…” Although I sprained my right index finger pretty badly, after about six weeks it seemed as if I had recovered.

The family vacation in Central New York, a trip in which the three cats came along, with all the joys and challenges that come with it, afforded me an opportunity to walk on different trails and explore. Despite my misgivings, all three cats did very well and the five-hour trip each way passed without incident. Over the past year and a half, they have become integrated into our lives. I find myself endlessly removing cat fur from my socks because, for some reason, it tends to ball up on the heels. It is often the case that I find a strand or two of fur floating in my coffee in the morning as well. These are inconveniences, but it is difficult to imagine a life without cats.

As I was driving to the canal, I saw a barred owl as roadkill on Interstate I-81. Interstates are corridors of no-go zones for wildlife and pedestrians alike. I am amazed by how many dead animals line the sides of interstates. While there far fewer people killed on the interstate, roads create a no-go zone for pedestrians as well. We are a society that values travel by automobiles over travel by foot.

When I tell people that I am a political scientist, the standard reaction is that it must be interesting to teach the subject in current circumstances. I have always found political science, if not politics, interesting. But in the current state of media and politics, I find the current discourse tiresome. The news and podcasts are too argumentative to consider on a tranquil morning that promised to be hot. Instead my soundtrack for the drive was The New Jazz Orchestra’s Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe.

The Potomac at Cohill Station

My walks are beginning to take me to more remote parts of Maryland. I exit the Interstate I-70 at the western most interchange in Maryland, before it creeps north into Pennsylvania and onto its terminus in Colorado. I accessed the towpath at Cohill Station, a remote access point, to walk downstream to where I had left off a couple of weeks before. It is secluded place to start with; it was already 81 degrees as I started according to my car thermometer. Frogs and an Eastern Swallowtail greet me at the river’s shore. The cicadas of late summer have begun since my last walk, portending a seasonal change. But at this point it is still very hot.

At the Leopards Mill Hiker-Biker camp, I saw three bikes leaning against trees; the picnic table had a tablecloth, but no people could be found.

For a mile and a half stretch prior to mm130, the canal is intact and full of stagnant water. Turtles, of all sizes, crowd onto available logs, and swarms of mosquitoes buzzing around my face. In Sunday school, a popular song was, “God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall,” a song that explains to children that if God loves little creatures like the birds, then he must love us too. I love animals as well. On the backroads that get me to the canal, I do my best to avoid butterflies lapping up the moisture from the road in the morning. But the mosquito? It is hard not to instinctively kill the pest. I recently smashed a mosquito on my dashboard and drove twenty miles occasionally glancing at the mangled carcass at intervals. He sees the little sparrow; does he see the lowly mosquito too? Mosquitoes are particularly dangerous to humans. Security, in the modern world, often focuses on the military, guns and borders. But it is estimated that of all the humans who have ever lived, half of their deaths have been caused by mosquitoes. In the nineteenth century, mosquitoes along the towpath would have been a nuisance and a danger. My modern bug spray would have been an inconceivable luxury for those who worked the canal.

Devil's Eyebrow

Near Round Top, a noticeable hill that juts up from the landscape near the river, the ruins of an old cement mill are visible from the trail. The Round Top Cement Company was one of the most prominent companies of Washington County during the nineteenth century. The mill experienced several fires, including one in 1909 that permanently put an end to the business. Nearby are unique geological formations in the side of the hill, including the one known as Devils Eyebrow at 127.2. I like the imagination it took to create interesting monikers invoking evil spirits; there seems to have been many sites that elicited the images of the devil’s doing in the century the canal’s construction. I was too busy admiring the Eyebrow to notice a doe and her fawn stealthily trotting down the towpath, about fifty yards ahead, trying to escape my attention.

I was deep in contemplation when a train on the other side of the river interrupted my thoughts. It reminded me of an incident a couple of days before while walking on the Appalachian Trail with my brother and nephew. Christian was trying to get Liam to appreciate the tranquility of nature by asking him what he heard. Liam, annoyed with the question, replied “birds.” Christian asked if he heard the airplane flying overhead. My brother’s point was right, the sound of airplanes blends into our everyday lives that we cease to notice. Christian tried to explain that it did not take too long to get away from the sounds of everyday life before surrounded by nature. Liam was more interested in getting the walk done, so that he could get back to the house and resume playing whiffle ball and tossing the football.

Northern Rat Snake

On this day nature seemed to overshadow the modern world. After turning around at MM127, walking back to my car at Cohill Station, my mind was wandering in several different directions. I was not paying as much attention to my surroundings, but instead decompressing from a busy month of travel and work. But before I left the towpath it revealed more wildlife. Within a mile of my destination I saw what appeared to be a dried pod from a northern catalpa tree, laying across the trail. By this time in my walk I was hot and tired; I was more driven to finish my walk than to observe interesting features. But for some reason, I looked at the pod carefully. Although it did not move, the pod turn out to be a northern rat snake. If I had really considered it, catalpa trees were introduced this far and north and no likely to be found on the towpath. I stood an observed the snake for several minutes, taking pictures and speculating where it would go. When it finally made a move toward the canal, I left it, thinking that I had seen something new on the trail today.

But a half a mile farther, a deer and I startled each other. Typically, deer are skittish and prone to run at the drop of a hat. I fumbled with my camera half-heartedly, I have lots of deer pictures, but this deer did not seem particularly upset or startled that I was near. Being comfortable around humans was probably not behavior that would engender a long life for a deer. Then, to my surprise, the doe squatted and urinated about twenty-five yards from me. She really was comfortable sharing the towpath with me.

Moving from Williamsport, to the further reaches of the towpath, the travel time to new sections of the canal increases substantially. Angie kindly offered to drop me at one point and pick me up at another so that I could avoid some backtracking. Yet, Angie may have been motivated by other things as well. The following weekend, after my previous walk, I took her to Hancock to have lunch at Buddy Lou’s. She ordered the lobster roll but took a bite of my tuna sandwich and was instantly enamored. I think it no coincidence that the following week she offered to drive me to the towpath, explore Hancock and pick me up, and then, “Maybe we could have lunch at that place.”

Lock House at Lock 56

We drove to west from Hancock on I-68 to an exit for US40 Scenic, which my GPS system pronounced as “US40 cynic.” A winding backroad led us to the village of Woodmont, past abandoned school buses, to a parking lot for the Western Maryland Rail Trail. We walked about three quarters of a mile to Sideling Hill Creek on the rail trail, and then a short way back to a campground where a small path led to the canal near Lock 56. We saw a man near the path doing some maintenance work. Angie left to go to the library in Hancock, and I walk seven miles, in near isolation.

It was an overcast morning, and it had recently rained. It was humid, and the trees on this section of the towpath had a thick canopy, making for a dark and gloomy walk. Initially, the path ran parallel not only with the Potomac but also with Pearre Road and the Western Maryland Rail Trail as well. The rail trail, which is asphalt, attracts far more cyclists than the more rugged towpath here. Consequently, the grass grows high on the towpath.

Green Heron

I walked for five miles without seeing another human being; the roughly ten deer and a green heron were my only visible companions. Unseen animals, no doubt sensed my presence. I heard a pileated woodpecker, first pounding on a hollow tree and then calling as it flew away probably as it detected me. But I know many more animals go undetected. They remain an unknown to me, something that I do not experience. For the final two miles of the walk I had no service on my mobile phone. As I move deeper into the remote parts of Western Maryland this becomes more common. For the most part, I do not find it a problem; unless if there is no emergency, I suppose. I told Angie that I would send a message when I was two miles from the pickup point. Apparently, a message did eventually get through because she was there just in time to pick me up. When I did meet her, she asks if it is creepy to walk in the woods, all alone. As a woman, she senses her own vulnerability in a situation like this. I realize this is one of the privileges of being male, I think about my safety in these terms far less. I love the isolation, but in a world of constant surveillance we have become inured from constantly being observed. In “the Adventure of the Copper Beeches,” Sherlock Holmes explains that he thinks the country is more dangerous than the city because there are thousands of prying eyes to watch for evil in the city. While in the country, evil can occur with impunity. It is different from how most of us see the world today; however, when one is walking alone it is easier to see Holmes’s (or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s) perspective.