Steep Rock Diaries

Last fall I began work on a new book and I ran into a little snare right at the beginning. I was describing the campus of a boarding school in September, in Connecticut, and I had all the trees aflame with bright russets and golds and somebody was raking leaves. It was still early in September when I was writing this and it dawned on me that the leaves might still be green well into October. I really had no idea. And I wasn’t quite sure when the first frost usually arrives. So I decided to start a journal to document the local flora and fauna as the seasons change.

I also determined that since there is no better place to observe anything than astride a horse, I would trailer my horse Mark to Steep Rock Land Preserve every day, weather permitting, and that way I could see the exact same landscape as it changed with the season. I kept what I called my Steep Rock Diaries from September until December. Then I had to stop because the trails were too icy for horses. I’ve been hiking in Steep Rock this winter and spring, on and off, but am dying to get back there with Mark. My trailer needs a new tire but is being serviced on Tuesday and then I will start up with the diary again.

I don’t even know where to begin to describe the beauty of Steep Rock. First, there’s the winding Shepaug River that divides the preserve:

That’s my daughter Dev on the trail. There’s an old railroad bed that runs along the river’s edge and it’s great for riding.
In places, the roots of great hemlock trees have wrapped themselves, like tentacles, around the rock outcroppings along the river’s bank. This one appears to be testing the temperature of the water with its root, although you can’t actually see the water in the photo:

So we do this big loop, Mark and I. We go along the railroad bed and cross the river and go up to what they call the “clamshell” and enjoy the views and loop back around and across the river again. We go out in the early mornings and it’s often cold riding along the old railroad bed, but when we cross the river, if the sun is out, it shines down on us and sparkles off the rocks below. Mark always stops in the middle of the river at our crossing place and we stand there for a moment.

The damp, dark smell of river always reminds me of my childhood, of a winding creek that ran behind a house in Michigan that we lived in. My brother and I spent our summer days wading around this creek looking for tadpoles and crayfish and watching muskrats glide just under the water (muskrats are cute, if you’ve never seen one – nothing like regular rats.)

Sitting on my horse, at this point in the Shepaug River where the clear water rushes over the rocks, something always comes over me. The coolness, the washing, rushing sound, the smell of water and fish and wet dirt and something else – loam? Silt? It all makes my head light and my muscles – even my bones – seem to go soft. Everything in me seems to dissolve into the horse and the river below and once, when a Great Blue Heron soared above us on that very spot, Mark and I both stared at it, blinking, blinking into the dazzling sun and then the sky was made blurry by my tears and I thought, there is a God. There is a God. Because the bird seemed so hulking and primitive, yet it flew. And the horse, and the river…

But the thing I love most about Steep Rock, because it thrills me, and terrifies me, is this:

The dark abyss, not my sweet daughter about to enter it. But I will blog about that another day. I’m supposed to be working on a book.