A Walk into 6,000 Years

It was a roundabout walk that the wife and I and our four-footer took last Sunday in Rockport. We ended up in the dim-dim past, muct too dim even for us. The day was perfect though gray overhead, not so good underfoot, as we headed in the buzz-wagon for the neighborhood of Thacher Road. There we walked where the wife has planned to go for a long time, into the new colony of homes.

Ridgewood Road, they called the first one leading off Thacher Road. The wife recalled that hardly more than a dozen years ago, the area was just plain unbroken woods. Before us were at least 20 bright looking homes with cars parked outside and many other signs of folks living there. Rockport has moved out in still another direction.

In the distance could be heard the dismal boom of the fog horn as if we didn't know that winter was still with us, what with the forever falling white flakes. Even the sheer white birches looked winterish amid a background of laurel.

For our lady boxer, it was a new world to conquer. My heart was in my mouth for fear we would meet up with all manner of wild-eyed canines resenting her intrusion into their province. I was walking as I thought on eggs but instead found it was just sheer thick mud.

As it happened only one woofer sounded off and the pride and joy of our family kept up her reputation of being a snob and paid not the slightest bit of attention. Apparently the homer was more than eager to share her realm with others, big or small for he (or was it she?) let it go with a bark.

The sight of lobster pots piled high in a yard gave us notice that this new colony was still Rockport at heart just as did the clear musical sound of a brook in the distance. This the wife recalled from a walk up through there 12 years ago with her den of Cub Scouts. Sure enough, going beyond the settlement, and down a yellow muddy slope we came upon the spirited tumbler on its way from Cape Pond to the ocean. Winter or no, that brook is still glorious to behold. It was worth the trouble. This was Rogers' Ramblers' terrain, and we could just picture him and his scrambling into it, over snow-spilled rocks and tripping vines. The wife remembered a quaint low wooden footbridge that once spanned this pond. It had probably gone the way of civilization. But no one is going to halt that brook, it would seem.

Scars of time were seen farther into these woods as we noted heaps of junked car bodies and also of gravel pits in the making. Ah me, progress is progress, we suppose, but we can take just so much before we choke up and would prefer reversing the picture.

At this point, the wife espied bright red checkerberries amid their green leaves, and promptly ate a berry much to the annoyance of her husband who never takes chances on woodland offerings, though the day may come when he will have to.

As for Molly, her nosy ferreting in the brush showed us where pussy willows had again come to life. That's a sign of something or other, but if it is of Spring then we know that in this Spring at least, all signs fail. However our 60-pounder wasn't concerned about human signs, for her concern in that excited pawing was without doubt a fox scent.

Once more we came onto Thacher Road, where the view of the ocean was fabulous, sparkled by a ridge of lobster pots along the edge of the beach. Continuing on, we came to the beach of Henry's Pond to see what the wife had viewed a few days earlier. It was the yellowed bole of a tree that had emerged from the sands at low tide these past few days and on which by laboratory tests, Harvard had stamped an age. That age was why the wife and I claim to have walked into 6,000 years. Scientists had said it was that old. But the tides were agin us and the sight denied us. It was a good walk just the same. And what does Molly care about the days before man walked in volume.

J.P.C., Jr.