Living, looking and listening

It’s the people that we meet that make the difference in our travels. In fact, they matter as much as places. It’s the reason our nation has National Parks and Heritage Areas. Parks celebrate geography. Heritage Areas celebrate people.

That’s why, when we tried to hook up with a travel agent precovid and be sure to see the best sites in Ireland, it didn’t work. Ditto plunking over $12,000 for a Viking Cruise on the Seine River (we never have). We might find interesting fellow travelers but we won’t find the people in your neighborhood.

Fred Rogers put it best:

“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”

I thought of that as I contemplated how to write about our 3rd New Years visit to Cabin Creek Hideaway in Dalton, NY.

We always try to choose the less beaten path when traveling. How else would we find the Roundwood Stores in County Wicklow or the Farmer’s Market in Kinvara, both in Ireland?

The salads and baked goods at Roundwood Stores, the bread at that market, baked by a former engineer who gave up engineering to be a baker?

“So where do you get the flour?” I asked.

It was rich, brown, crusty, wholesome bread, unapologetic, the sort of stuff you can get from Anastasia on Zimmerman Street in North Tonawanda.

“We get it from a farmer not far away,” he said. “His family has been crossbreeding ancient grains and selling flour since after the war.”

It’s why we started 20 years or so ago renting apartments from Realtors before AirBnb or VRBO were a thing. We want the authentic. Rarely does a tourist trap wow us the way the Guinness Storehouse did. It is the exception.

Even there, as much as we enjoyed the tour and making friends with a big Northern Irishman after I almost fought him over a chair, it was the bar with the sign out front advertising “2 toasties for 10” where we found a couple guys day-drinking at 1 p.m. on a Monday. They were a couple beers and a few shots in.

Beth struck up a conversation, always eager to glean nuggets from locals. A couple minutes in, she introduced herself.

“I’m Beth, as in Elizabeth,” she said.

“I’m Sean as in Sean,” he came back. Laughter ensued.

We could have any toastie we wanted, ham, tomato, onion and cheese or tomato, onion, ham and cheese.

The good news is high quality ham, and the bread in Ireland is real, they don’t allow the stuff we accept from most American fastfood chains to be called bread, too much sugar.

After we tucked in a bit, I circled back to the fellows at the bar as the bartender served them another shot and joined them.

“So we’re walking today,” I said, “but I have to pick up a car at the airport tomorrow. Should I Uber or Lyft?”

“Oh man,” Sean said. “Just take a fuckin’ bus. Don’t be an idiot.”

I thought about it and looked at the Internet when we got back to our Dublin AirBnb. I have only ever been a public transportation guy for about a year, in 1999 when I read Harry Potter on the Metro while commuting from Transitown Plaza in Clarence to the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.

Sure enough, there was a bus a few blocks away connecting to the Airport. I put the bus stop address in my phone and went walking. I gave myself time to get lost and goof up.

I looked at my phone and walked. I hate when people do that. Bury yourself in a screen and much around you goes unseen. It showed, I missed the spot. Dang. “Sean was right. I am a fucking idiot.”

Then I took my face out of my phone and looked up.

Half a block away was a knot of people standing with suitcases. Why would they be there if not waiting for a bus to the airport. As Yogi Berra might have said, “if you look around, you see a lot.”

I made eye contact with a 20-something.

“Are you headed to the airport?” I asked.

“Yes” she said in a decidedly American Way.

We chatted a bit and she pointed me in the right direction. Sean was right. She was from Washington, visiting friends she met when studying here.

I picked up the rental car, got oriented to the intricacies of driving left, on a 12-foot, 2-way road at 50 mph with oncoming traffic, and increased my resolve to never drink and drive, even good whiskey like Teelings.

Anyway, after that Irish digression (they are storytellers, I might be too, although I have always identified more as a Newfoundlander. Dang, that is sort of the same thing, Ireland and Newfoundland).

This ramble started as I reminisced about the day we met David Peck.

We were driving a Ford Fusion Sport. It was New Years 2018/19. We arrived a bit later than planned. David was sitting like a Rockwell painting, on the porch of the home he shares with his wife Terry, his dog guarding, and 4-wheeler ready.

(PICK UP HERE IS YOU STARTED ON SOCIAL MEDIA)

He checked the tires on our Fusion and then guided us up Delude Hill Road, a seasonal highway, and down a muddy stone drive into the woods, a modern day Will Rogers.

I don’t know how Beth finds these places but she does. A single room cabin with windows around 3-sides, feeling like a treehouse with a toasty propane stove, 12-volt solar power and an ample supply of water. A lobster pot, filled with water on top of the heater, provided hot water for the shower via a 12V electric pump. It was effective and pleasant.

David told us about raising his sons, who are much the same age as ours, in rodeo. “It taught them they can do anything,” he said. “It’s a bit harder when Dad doesn’t pay the entry fees so they don’t do it anymore.”

I knew as soon as I saw the map that the Fingerlakes Trail passed nearby. Sure enough, it actually crosses Delude Hill Road. We resolved to take a walk there Saturday, strolling for about 4 hours across rolling forest and numerous ravines. Interestingly, much of the area was in the process of logging, with felled trees waiting to be skidded, but considerately pulled free of the trail which remained well-marked and easy to navigate. I have seen much more inconsiderate logging.

I have also known inconsiderate hikers, like those that disrespect trails closed to hikers during hunting season. Wreck someone’s day in her treestand, on her land, because you aren’t tough enough for a 2-mile roadwalk and ruin it for everyone. Crossing private land is a privilege.When a landowner offers passage, respect the gift.

Now about David. As he oriented us to the cabin on that first visit, I realized he was worldly and accepting, a church pastor, beef farmer and practicing capitalist.

“Here’s the key if you want to lock the door when you leave” he said.

“I can’t imagine locking a door in a place like this,” I said.

“One time, I came up to check something for someone while they were in town. They left the door open and a handgun right there on the counter,” he said.

“Wow. That’s stupid” I replied.

He had a spot of trouble getting the heater pilot to stay lit, but it did. The cabin was so toasty I put it on low. The flame went out. I spent 30 minutes or so trying to get it relit with no luck. Then I called him. “I know someone who knows more than me. I’ll see if I can get him to take a look.”

He called my phone. “I’ll be there with an expert technician in about 10 minutes.”

Sure enough, we could hear the Gator all the way. Art and Dave each Youtubed what might be wrong and concluded a dirty orifice or ignitor. They are neighbors and friends and cleaned things, got it back together and working.

In the process, me being me, I asked Dave if he was a Trump supporter.

“I am,” he said. “We pray for him every week in church for 3 reasons. 1, he is a sinful man, that he get better; 2, that he listens to decent spiritual advice in his life and acts upon it; and 3, that he become humble and accepting.”

Even a non-supporter of Trump might find wisdom in those prayers.

“How is it we can’t have discussions like this anymore?” I asked him.

“We can,” he said. “If you can’t talk about politics and religion, what can you talk about? Politics are how we relate to one another and define how we treat each other. Religion is what we believe and where our deeper faith comes from. Even an atheist has a belief, even if it is only within, that is their religion.”

I thought about that, gave thanks for the mensch I had just encountered, and bade him a good night.

On the porch was a sign “Prayer is the best way to talk to God. Trespassing is the fastest way to meet him.” I contemplated that while listening to a great horned owl hoot.

With that, Beth pointed to another sign that illuminated the truth. “The will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you.”

There was also the matter of tires. A couple American sedans sat in his drive. If there was a truck on his farm, I didn’t see it.

“I am a firm believer in snow tires,” he said. “A few years ago Terry got it in her head she wanted a hybrid car that got 50 mpg. When she gets something like that in her head she knows what she wants and gets it. I spun out and did a 180. Then I put snows on it. All winter long, I’d go up and down the hill in my Prius past Jeeps that couldn’t keep going.”

I chuckled at that, thinking of our Fusion with its new snow tires and the thousands of dollars people spend on all-wheel drive SUVs they don’t really need as badly as a good set of tires.

It was such a memorable time we decided to do it again 2019 into 2020.

As we arrived, and the dogs barked welcome, David appeared, shirtless, shaving lather on his face. He greeted us warmly, retreated to cover up and left us to find our way. I missed the Delude Hill Road drive to the Hideaway. 5 minutes later I called, knowing better than to try and work my way out and bury it more deeply.

“Dave. I’m mud stuck.” “Does your vehicle have a tow point?” he asked. “I think so.” he said. “I’ll be there in a few with the tractor.”

We had moved on to a VW Passat from the Fusion. It had the same size tires so we had the same snows even if we had to buy Ford rims.

I pushed our gear forward, dug into the spare compartment and found the tow hook just about as we heard David’s John Deere dieseling up the road. The tricky thing was the hook (a really big screw eye) is reverse threaded. Damn Germans.

He hooked the chain to his tractor, checked for twists because that’s good advice his daddy taught him, and pulled us out.

“You missed the turn,” he said. “I only maintain the road to the turn for the Hideaway.” He pointed. I saw. Comeuppance cheerfully accepted. I resolved to do better next time. Apparently the town maintains the seasonal road beyond his driveways and not well.

The turn was, at best, discreet. The drive is longer than remembered. The cabin was as beautiful as anyone could imagine. As I wrote this, tepid whiskey sour in hand (next time, bring ice), Beth was reading next to me. I was contemplating Aldo Leopold’s Sand County Almanac and wooly bear caterpillars, blissfully melancholy, understanding why.

Years ago, when the barista in the Ithaca Community Coffee Shop said “How are you?” and I replied “Good. How are you?” she said “thankful.” It all made sense. As Marv Levy said, “where would you rather be than right here, right now?”

I opened the window because the stove, on its lowest setting, makes it warm but to have the window open is to listen to the music of the rain. The sound on the tin roof above is bass. The comfortable slash of the rain on the fallen leaves is a tenor drum. Somewhere we will find tomorrow, a streamlet plays like a tambourine. Oh yeah, what the barista said in Ithaca.

Glad I never asked why she was thankful. “Yahweh rocks,” I am pretty sure she would have said. I agree but I’d rather be with Beth, where the rain falls, the sun shines, the rainbows happen and there is a caribou just across the horizon. We paid David a fair amount to stay in this cabin. It was worth every penny. We resolved to return.

Life went on after that year. Covid happened. Late in 2020 I sold my financial services practice and thought I’d go to work for a bank. The idea seemed good on the surface, a 40-hour week. Company-paid health insurance. 3 weeks of vacation. What could go wrong?

Beth and I took a weekend off to visit an off-the-grid cabin on a wildlife preserve on the Vermont/New York border. It was a beautiful place built as part of a reality TV show, perched on a deck over water. I paddled a canoe there and saw an otter for the first time. As it swam toward me, curious, I got scared because I didn’t know why it was coming toward me or what it was. You know what they say, “if it’s not one thing, it’s an otter.” It was not Cabin Creek.

I returned home and headed to work at the bank. My Jetta GTI barely made it to work on the first day. The turbo was shot. Repairs were too much so I sold it and bought a TDI Jetta Wagon.

The death of a vehicle, and the stress of finding a new one, never merited an ounce of curiosity, empathy or compassion from that soulless bank branch.

It was all about numbers and appearance and keeping your mouth shut. I was a square peg in a round hole. The bank branch was on lockdown and I got scolded for not wearing a tie to work. I still have nightmares about counting the vault at the end of the day.

I was only there a short time when we parted. I somehow talked my way into the position of “regional news editor” for CNHI after 6 separate phone interviews. I was going back to journalism 20 years after leaving a newsroom. I took a significant pay cut but wasn’t worried because, as good as I am at math, I am a wordsmith.

The first warning came 3 months in when I received a tersely worded email letting me know I should be “group news editor.” “Regional” was a corporate title. As my late friend Dave Koch would say “mistakes have been made, blame will be assigned.” I had nothing to do with the title I was given when hired.

My pollyanna nature led Beth to wax optimistic and suggest to sell our home in Clarence and move to Niagara Falls. We house shopped, found great value, agreed to sell our Clarence home and moved.

The WNY aesthetic is that Niagara Falls is a shithole filled with horrible crime and poverty, the result of a 20-year branding campaign by the Niagara Gazette sending police reports weekly to the Shredd and Ragan morning radio show so they can read crime reports and yuck-yuck about dirt bags and Falls chicks.

The result is a real estate market with homes valued at half what they should be anywhere else in Western New York. We said “damn the torpedoes,” moved and our lives have been better ever since even if the Gazette job went kerplunk.

I took a summer off, started the Niagara Express website and became a tour guide. Then I signed on with Allstate as a financial representative. One year stretched into two. I crushed it in 2024, making Million Dollar Roundtable for the first time. In November, when we talked about Christmas gifts. Beth said “a cabin in the woods for New Years.”

I looked up Cabin Creek on AirBnb. The cabin we previously rented was not showing available before April, but I had Dave’s number so I texted him. Dave said they hadn’t been renting the cabin during the winter season.

“Since you know what you’re getting into, I’d be OK renting to you” he said. “We had too many problems with people so we stopped renting that cabib in winter.”

Entitled city folk often don’t understand tough phrases like “off grid” and “seasonal road.”

I reserved it for the New Year on my word.

“Call me in the morning when you know for sure you are coming and I will make sure the heat is on before you arrive,” he said.

It was an entreaty to check the weather forecast and bail if we didn’t like it, but we aren’t like that. There is no bad weather, only bad gear.

We drove in the rain Monday for Cabin Creek. He called shortly after we hit the road to ask when we would arrive.

“Four or so but we have a couple stops,” I said.

My plan was to hit Thorpe’s Organic Family Farm on Route 78 in Strykersville, south of East Aurora.

We didn’t see meat we liked in the freezer case but grabbed a quart of lentil soup with tomato and potato as well as a couple organic grapefruit and a bag of lemons. They aren’t actually organic but raised in natural groves with no pesticide and none of the wax found in grocery store produce. Those lemons will yield zest and flavor for limoncello.

Dave, and dogs, greeted us on arrival. He had his ATV ready to go and admired our Subaru.

“It has all sorts of funky features I don’t fully understand,” I said, “like a knob that sets the transmission for snow and mud. It gives a false sense of confidence.”

“Better to have a false sense of confidence than none at all,” he said.

He led us up to the cabin on his Gator. I put the Forester in “Snow and Mud” mode. The middle data screen lit like a Christmas tree, showing us the 15-degree uphill grade and that we were leaning 6-degrees left at one point. The road was greasy. The Subaru took to it like a poodle after a duck.

Please note, as much as Gord would love Cabin Creek, dogs are not welcome.

Once inside, Dave pointed out the key we wouldn’t be using and showed me the newly installed wood stove, a $400 investment from Tractor Supply.

“The door handle gets hot so we have this tool to open it,” he showed me after donning insulated gloves. “When you open it, use this tool to pull the coals forward. It burns from the back. I had to split the wood smaller to fit.”

“How was hunting season?” I asked.

“I got a case of the ‘mes’ and didn’t get anything,” he said. “I had a clean shot on a buck a couple times but it wasn’t big enough. I had a bear near as well but I thought about it. I’d rather it be here to look at than in my freezer.”

“Isn’t bear a bit tough and greasy?” I asked.

“Terry got one a few years ago. We liked it. But it’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I left it for the next guy.”

Indeed Terry’s photo with the bear is on the wall in the cabin.

He left us to our common sense. I kept the fire stoked all night. We had snacks for dinner, cheese and crackers and such and resolved to cook a big breakfast with home fries and eggs.

Looking around outside, Beth asked “what are those berries?”

Small evergreen plants tight to the ground clung to peppercorn-sized red berries – wintergreen. They are giving a pleasant minty flavor to my lemon water as I write this.

I stoked the fire and we went walking for a couple hours and found our way into the woods where a brook charged through a ravine and roared over a small waterfall.

We returned to the cabin and decided to go exploring in our vehicle, finding our way to Rattlesnake Hill Wildlife Management Area where a bald eagle posed in a tree for us.

This time I hadn’t stoked the fire enough and we returned to some coals but not enough to rekindle without more work so I turned on the propane.

That soup went great with a grilled gruyere sandwich.

New Year's Day, we packed up and headed out but I stopped to see Dave before we went, both to soak up some more Will Rogers and to get some ground beef from his happy cows.

“I work some as a tour guide in the Falls,” I said. “You get to meet all sorts of interesting people. I had a guest over the summer who was from Indiana.

“Where you staying?”

“18th Street” he said.

“How is that neighborhood” I asked.

“Pretty rough,” he said, “but my family is safe. I carry.”

“Good for you,” I told him.

I said to Dave “you can’t ever tell a guest what you think or you won’t get a tip but if things went wrong for him, he’d have a serious problem with Aunt Kathy.”

“Let me tell you about our communist governor,” Dave said. “When she unnecessarily locked us down for covid, my church trustees called and said ‘we can still worship.’ Even the sheriff didn’t care.”

He led me down to the barn. His ATV was within. Beef cattle mooed out back. A rooster crowed in the distance.

He opened up the freezer and rummaged for ground beef packages. I had a $20 bill and wanted 3.

“We were checking prices and talking about it last night,” he said. “It’s cheaper in the store. Why don’t you take 4.”

I looked out at the hill across the highway. It was zig-zagged with trails.

“Are those logging roads?” I asked.

“Yes but not my land. The trees on that side of the hill are diseased. I saw something remarkable recently,” he said.

He has a spotting scope of the kind birders favor.

“I watch in the distance,” he said, “not too long ago I watched a coyote on one part of the road stalking a deer on the other, pushing it downhill. Eventually, it chased it into a pack of about 16 coyotes. It was definitely pack behavior.”

We drove off into Arkport for a quick and luscious breakfast at Maddie J’s. Every seat in the place was full, in the front where you could see into the kitchen and upstairs where we were seated and could watch the dishwasher. Our server was overwhelmed but pleasant. Everyone was congenial, smalltown America at its finest. We were trapped in a John Mellencamp song, “ain’t that America? Home of the free.”

A crowded table adjacent to us ordered more food than it seemed humanly possible to eat. They talked about overindulgence on New Years Eve, laughing about tumblers of rum and a bottle that died a fast death, gossiping about money loaned and debts unpaid and not calling out a fool who had is priorities crooked, having fun, talking about wanting to quit cigarettes but not being sure because it’s hard to drink without a smoke, and quitting for pregnancy only to backslide as soon as the baby came. Real world problems for a bunch of hardworking people who work hard and pay their bills.

Our breakfasts were perfect. Eggs, toast, Beth had hash browns with peppers and onions, I had homemade corned beef hash. Good service, simple food served quickly, unpretentious in the best way.

As we left, a well-intentioned young woman from the chatty table adjacent, (who earlier talked about training to be a dental hygienist because it paid so well), rose from the table and walked to the counter.

“I’ll cover the whole table,” she said.

“Someone else already did,” the server answered. It was a table of 8 and I have no clue of the dynamics. It was New Years day in a small town, “little pink houses for you and me.”

We headed back on Route 70 to 436 and headed to where it crosses the Genesee River near Portageville. There is a small parking area just north of the bridge on the west side of the road. Yellow blazes head into the forest and are joined by markers for Trail 7.

About a mile in, the trail turned right, uphill from where we wanted to go. I know the old trail well so we followed that. Just past the middle falls there is a tricky downhill with muck at the bottom.

We walked under the train bridge along the former Genesee Valley Canal. The blue blazes of Trail 7 came to an abrupt halt right where I expected with 3 vertical blue lines.

Down below, what was previously muck at the base of a steep incline looked now to be a 2-foot-deep swamp. It was the reason the trail was smartly rerouted.

We were enjoying the gentle snow, the sound of the raging river, a train rattling across the bridge, and the promise of a New Year.

We returned to our Subaru and set the GPS for home. It wound us across backroads and hilltops in ways I never anticipated, warning us of lake effect snow.

We were on a hilltop on Townline Road in Bliss, moving 30 mph in 6 inches of fresh snow when the Subaru, in snow and mud mode, started to test my false sense of confidence. Hey, it was better than none at all.

We fishtailed without cause or warning, drifting quickly right. I took my foot of the gas and steered left. It didn’t initially respond but I held slowly and it caught, and stayed straight, course corrected, knuckles white but in a bit, our heartbeats slowed.

We took a quick stop at the Iroquois National Wildlife Refuge and then headed the last 50 minutes back to an excited poodle who spent 3 days loving Barbie, the best dogsitter ever.