Down the Road in the Finger Lakes

On some mornings I just like to take my truck and go down the road. I don’t have any particular destination in mind, I just want to go down the road and look at something else. It was a beautiful spring morning today and after all of the wind and dark clouds of last night, it was a treat to just see the sun once again and the beautiful cumulus clouds floating high above the Bristol hills.

I am always intrigued by the ancients that used to live in the vicinity of Bare Hill in the town of Middlesex, NY. There is a New York State sign which was erected on North Vine Valley Road just before you get to the Vine Valley Indian Campground declaring the site to be an Indian Burial Ground. According to the “History and Legends of the Town of Middlesex”, Theodore McCombs discovered the site in 1904, but when workers were working on widening Vine Valley Road (now called North Vine Valley Road), they discovered “a half sitting up Indian with a pipe in his hand”. Dr. Parker who was director of the Rochester Museum of Arts and Science spent the summer of 1921 cataloging the remains and sent them to the Rochester Museum. “Several burials were discovered including remains from tree or scaffold mortuary disposals, bundle burials and flexed burials.”  “Throughout the area were the remains of fire or feast pits.”

Today the site is now entirely overgrown with brush but there were some forsythia and a couple of flowering trees nearby on the site. Even in death, these ancients wanted to be outside, not buried in the ground, but hunting in the woods, sitting around a campfire, or fishing in Canandaigua Lake.

Today I am taking the time to enjoy this same springtime scene. It’s like magic when all of the bushes and trees begin to awaken to the warmth of the sun. It’s a time for ancients and for moderns to awaken and start thinking about going fishing, or perhaps tilling the soil in preparation for the planting season.