Mountain Home, August 2023

THE OUTDOOR RECREATION ISSUE

M O U N T A I N

HOME Sailing Takes Me Away

Pennsylvania & the New York Finger Lakes

Our Staff Sailor Makes Finger Lakes Lovers Out of Landlubbers

By David O’Reilly

Winey Dogs Allowed E-Charging on the Pine Creek Rail Trail Walking on Water in the Twin Tiers

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Volume 18 Issue 8

5

The Last Great Place

Sailing Takes Me Away

By Lilace Mellin Guignard When the stars align.

12 E-Bikes: The Good, the

Bad, & the Easy

By David O’Reilly

Our staff sailor makes Finger Lakes lovers out of landlubbers.

By Jimmy Guignard

Use your noggin along with your legs.

14 All Roads Lead to

Big Falls

By Karin Knaus

Wellsboro gal-pals take an epic swimmin’ hole tour.

18 Listen to the Lake

6 Trailblazing Through Life

By Mary W. Myers

An old favorite, reprinted from August 2008.

27 Field Notes

By Phillip Hesser

Potter County’s Wanda Shirk— long-distance survivor.

By David Nowacoski Chucking the woodchuck.

32 Winey Dogs Allowed

By Lilace Mellin Guignard

Our staff boxador tours Seneca Lake wineries.

36 Fifty Shades of Green—

Along with Blue, Purple, Yellow, and Red

24 What’s SUP?

By Gayle Morrow

Visit the colorful world at Bespoke Apothecary’s open house.

By Lilace Mellin Guignard Stand up paddleboarding lets you choose your own adventure.

42 Back of the Mountain

By Sherri Stager Share the road.

28

Cover design by Wade Spencer.

Cover photo: Captain Terry Stewart with Spencer Beaver, by David O’Reilly; (top) Terry Stewart, by David O’Reilly; (middle) Wanda Shirk, courtesy Wanda Shirk; (bottom) Melanie Derry, by Lilace Mellin Guignard 3

OPEN 1 ACCOUNT, GET 4 FRANKLINS.

w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Editor & Publisher Lilace Mellin Guignard Associate Publisher George Bochetto, Esq. Art Director Wade Spencer Managing Editor Gayle Morrow

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S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e Shelly Moore Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard Cover Design Wade Spencer Contributing Writers Jimmy Guignard, Phillip Hesser, Karin Knaus, David Nowacoski, David O’Reilly

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C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s John Derry, Phillip Hesser, David O’Reilly, Sherri Stager

D i s t r i b u t i o n T eam Amy Woodbury, Grapevine Distribution, Linda Roller T h e B ea g l e Nano Cosmo (1996-2014) • Yogi (2004-2018) ABOUT US: Mountain Home is the award-winning regional magazine of PA and NY with more than 100,000 readers. The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005, by Beagle Media, LLC, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2022 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

TO ADVERTISE: E-mail info@mountainhomemag.com, or call us at (570) 724-3838.

AWARDS: Mountain Home has won over 100 international and statewide journalism awards from the International Regional Magazine Association and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association for excellence in writing, photography, and design.

DISTRIBUTION: Mountain Home is available “Free as the Wind” at hundreds of locations in Tioga, Potter, Bradford, Lycoming, Union, and Clinton counties in PA and Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca, Tioga, and Ontario counties in NY. SUBSCRIPTIONS: For a one-year subscription (12 issues), send $24.95, payable to Beagle Media LLC, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, PA 16901 or visit www. mountainhomemag.com.

Wade Spencer

Great Place TLast he Last Great Place

When the Stars Align

By Lilace Mellin Guignard

C

hange will happen. We know it. We resist it. Sometimes we get lucky, and everyone ends up happy, as if there is some celestial or divine plan. The Mountain Home family recently went through such a change.

Our operations manager, Gwen Button, who had been handling layout and design since 2016, has taken another job with a family business. She kindly gave us a month to find a replacement, still it was hard to imagine putting the magazine together without her. Amy Packard, accounts manager, remembers, “she was quick to connect with us as a team, steadily working but always had time to crack jokes.” On deadline, that’s a gift. But Gwen also had attention to detail and real talent. How long would it take to train someone to take over? After all, those of us in the office knew what Gwen did but not how she did it.

As Teresa and I pondered the dilemma, my mind fixed on a photographer we’d used a few times recently for cover stories, probably because we’d just picked his photo as the Back of the Mountain feature for May. I met Wade Spencer, originally from Ogdensburg but now living in Wellsboro, when I worked one season for Pine Creek Outfitters. Wade enjoys whitewater paddling, mountain biking, and hiking (the latter with his girlfriend, Sonya, and Vee, their pittie-mix), and has been a weekend warrior raft guide and safety boater at PCO for years. It was talking to Wade

while he was repairing bikes in the PCO garage that I discovered his career was in media, and he freelanced doing photography and videos for the music industry. So, I begged him to take my son’s senior photos. Watching him at work—his control of lighting, eye for composition, and ability to get an unforced smile from this kid—well, I was impressed.

We tapped his skills for the November 2022 cover story on hunter Janice Cavanaugh and the February 2023 cover story “Rye Rebels.” Then his action shot of paddling Pine Creek caught our eye. So, I asked him, “I know you use Photoshop, but do you know InDesign?”—the software we use for all our layout. Turns out he did.

I told Teresa. And then, like when you click a button and the design elements line up, everything snapped into place. Perfect alignment.

Gwen spent a few days training Wade in the top secret behindthe-scenes machinations of Mountain Home design, and then we pushed him out of the nest, to fly solo with the July issue. Let me tell you, he soared.

Then he tells us that May wasn’t his first Back of the Mountain feature. On his phone he pulls up a screen shot of May 2013, for which he’d written the title: Aurora Wellsborealis (above). So, the stars had given us a sign back then.

God speed, Gwen. Welcome, Wade.

5

Sailing Takes Me Away Our Staff Sailor Makes Finger Lakes Lovers Out of Landlubbers

By David O’Reilly

A

six-knot breeze is blowing down Cayuga Lake, dancing the afternoon sunlight into diamonds. Sublime, but I’m watching those stone cliffs looming large on the eastern shore. Time to tack.

No need to shout “coming about.” I’m the only one on board, and as I push the tiller away this nineteen-foot O’Day Mariner starts to turn.

The mainsail flaps and flutters noisily as we cross through the wind, but then fills out and stiffens into the graceful curve of white Dacron that will drive us upwind, in apparent defiance of all physics. That’s sailing.

I’m alone, yet in the company of what feels like an old friend. My first sailboat, Grey Goose, was a Mariner nearly identical to this, and it’s 6

David O’Reilly

You are heeled: Maria Brubaker chats with guests of the True Love as they speed across Seneca Lake.

the first time I’ve sailed one since I sold “the goose” twenty-eight years ago. Yet everything about this boat feels familiar.

Alas, with no crew I must let go of the tiller to scoot forward and switch the lines, or sheets, securing the foresail. But, dang! The jib cleats are tight, they don’t want to pop, and the jib sail is stuck on the windward side, pushing the bow downwind. Grrrr. This is taking too long, we’re going off course—ah! There it goes. I yank the jib sheet into the port cleat, scramble back to the tiller, and give it a tug. We heel over gently and pick up speed, leaving a wake as I steer for that shaded gazebo on the far western shore.

See Sailing on page 8

7

(2) David O’Reilly

Whose line is it anyway?: (left) A Keuka Yacht Club member prepares to lift his MC scow from the water; Spencer Beaver tightens the main halyard line on the True Love.

Sailing continued from page 6

Welcome to the New York Finger Lakes: eleven slender, glacier-carved marvels of geology that most folks only ever encounter from on shore. Scenic, certainly, with splendid wineries. But on a blue-sky summer day, wouldn’t you rather be sailing?

Calm and Peaceful on Cayuga You may think of sailboats as playthings for the rich. But just an hour earlier I joined the Merrill Family Sailing Center in Ithaca, giving me immediate access to about thirty of their sailboats ranging in length from fourteen to twenty-six feet. Members who have the skills can take any one of them out—including this red-hulled Mariner—for three hours at a time, as often as they’d like, from late spring through early fall. No varnishing, no hull scraping, none of the headaches of boat ownership. A half-season is just $300, full season is $550, and if you don’t know port from starboard, they’ll teach you.

“We’re the only community sailing facility on the three lakes,” says Ivan Sagel, program director for the Merrill Center.

“Everything else is either yacht clubs or private marinas.” In those places, members own and maintain their own boats. He’s looking to expand membership and upgrade the fleet over the next few years.

Though not an entity of Cornell University, Merrill Center sits on university property, and 8

shares its modern, wood frame boathouse with Cornell’s sail racing team. It was the creation of the late Philip Merrill, Cornell ’55, a newspaper publisher and U.S. diplomat. “The idea [behind it] was to get as many people as possible out on the water,” says Ivan. “On a sunny weekend afternoon, all the boats are gone.”

But not around the bend. That would be Salt Point, five miles from the boat house, where the Cayuga turns west. “Then we can’t see you,” says Ivan. “So that’s as far as you’re allowed to go.” Cell phone reception on the lake is good, and the club provides two-way radios as needed. The staff will come get you if the wind dies or you get in trouble.

It’s the only way to sail, some members say.

“I’ve never owned my own boat and have no interest in doing so,” Shank Kohlhatkar, fifty-seven, an engineering production manager, says as I fill out the paperwork. He was preparing to step aboard Priscilla, a stable, twenty-four foot sloop that’s his favorite.

“I learned to sail here, my daughter taught sailing here, and I’ve been a member for thirty years,” he says adding that he tries to get out on the water at least twice a week. “Sailing is so calm and peaceful. It beats any other water activity.”

Sailing comes in a variety of sizes and flavors, too. Besides small-boat daysailing— what I’m doing today—there’s racing, coastal

and offshore cruising in bigger boats, and “gunkholing.” That’s where you sail broad, inland waters fed by creeks, like Chesapeake Bay, then find a quiet anchorage to spend the night. It’s you and your companions, making dinner as the sun glows coral on the horizon.

Heaven.

I’ve done them all, they’re all great, but you can’t do them all on the Finger Lakes. The glaciers that scoured these hills ten thousand years ago gouged them to astonishing depths—more than 600 feet in places—that forbid most anchoring. And their steep, rocky shorelines don’t have sheltered coves for gunkholing.

“We have picnic benches here where people can hang out if they want,” says Ivan.

“But anchoring out is not something we do.

Sailboats are made for sailing.”

Tell that to the folks at Keuka Yacht Club, where boats run on wind and adrenaline.

Adrenaline-Fueled on Keuka “I much prefer racing because of the competition and camaraderie,” says Jeff Braddon, sixty, of Canandaigua. It’s a Saturday in June, and he’s just eased his sixteen-foot MC scow back to the dock after two hours racing single-handed against six other boats.

“Racing forces you to sail the boat as efficiently as possible,” explains Jeff, a retired plastics manufacturer, “and it’s very intense.

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You have to be focused every second on the currents, the wind shifts, your sail trim, and what the other boats are doing.”

“It’s the only sport where you can compete against world class champions and have a chance of winning,” says William Hudson, sixty-nine, a financial manager for an international investment bank who regularly trailers his boat to competitions along the East Coast.

“It’s just you and the waves and the wind. It’s something you can do with your kids and into old age.” (Used MCs range in price from $2,000 to $15,000) Founded in 1872, Keuka Yacht Club sits seven miles above Hammondsport, where its modern clubhouse and lawns command a splendid view of the seven-hundred foot rise, called The Bluff, where Keuka splits to form a crooked “Y.” Just half a mile wide for most of its nearly twenty miles, it’s the narrowest of the major Finger Lakes.

Keuka, one of America’s oldest yacht clubs, seems to attract professionals—lawyers, judges, business owners, stockbrokers—but the gilded sign out front bespeaks friendliness: “New Members Welcome,” it reads. “A friendly club without airs,” reads its website, though prospective members need two sponsors.

The club offers six-week sailing classes open to the public, has activities for kids, and boasts a fine restaurant serving lunches (like mahi mahi fish tacos) and prix-fixe dinners on summer weekends.

Finger Lake wines are, of course, on the menu.

Racers are always looking for crew, and I could have volunteered, but on a recent Sunday morning I accept an offer from George and Elizabeth Welch of Corning to watch the Lightning and E-scow races from their powerboat, which they keep at a slip at the club.

“We’re a family of sailors. We used to race together,” says Elizabeth, a retired nurse. She points out their son, George Jr., at the helm of Mojo, one of the eight E-scows. flat-bottomed and twentyeight feet long, E-scows were created for inland sailing in the 1920s and are the fastest class on the lake. The nineteen-foot Lightnings were introduced on nearby Skaneateles Lake in 1938 and, with more than 16,000 produced, are among the most popular sailboat designs ever made.

We head for an anchored pontoon boat where the race committee will signal the start. It’s blowing six knots out of the south, good enough for a twice-around the mile-long course, and at nine a.m. the E-scow race starts with a horn blast. Wind force is exponential, so that a ten-knot breeze is twice as strong as a seven, and knowing where and how to ride the friendly gusts—the “lifts”—is a big part of what makes a winner.

“I knew this would be interesting,” says Elizabeth as half the E-scow fleet heads towards the western shore in search of a lift. Mojo goes early onto starboard tack—the wind is now on its right, or starboard, bow—and is first around the first mark.

On the downwind leg, four boats again go west looking for extra wind, and four go east. “We’ll see how they do going to shore,” she says, but this time it’s Corning’s Bob Cole, with an all-female crew, first around the second mark. Bob takes a long lead as George Jr. and some others search for better wind again on the western shore. Mojo picks up speed but must tack twice to reach the finish line, losing ground, and finishes in the middle of the pack.

In the second race the wind shifts, and George finds himself blocked by four other boats. The race is shortened after the wind dies, and Finale wins again. By 11:15 everyone is heading back to shore, dropping sail, waiting their turns on the cranes.

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Sailing continued from page 9

“We beat the young’uns today,” exults Ann Penwarden, one of the three women on Bob’s crew. “That’s always a good thing.” Their ages, she notes proudly, range from sixty-one to seventy-two.

Caroline Welch, thirteen, describes her duties on Mojo as “weight distribution” and adjusting the lee boards—fins that poke through the hull—on the downwind legs. “It’s fun,” she says.

And what does she like best about racing?

“Winning,” she replies, instantly and emphatically. It seems to be in the Welch blood.

“Sailing is relaxing,” explains her dad, a Corning lawyer like George Sr. “Racing is for intensity and adrenaline. It’s a physical as well as cerebral thing.”

But then there’s the “leisure” time after a race, he says, where competitors mingle on the lawns or the club bar, boasting about their clever moves, sharing advice, teasing one another, and revisiting their mistakes.

“The best beer of the year comes after racing,” says George. “You’re exhausted. You’re exhilarated. And it sure tastes good.”

10

If adrenaline-fueled athleticism is not your thing, know that “sailing” can simply mean being out on somebody else’s boat, letting them nurse and curse the wind shifts while you sip something frosty. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” you call out as you rattle your ice cubes. And there may be no grander way to do passenger sailing on the Finger Lakes than on board True Love: a vintage, sixty-seven foot wood schooner on Seneca Lake.

It’s another blue-sky weekend in June, and, at half-past noon, owner Terry Stewart emerges from his gazebo-like office on Watkins Glen’s town dock.

“Let’s get outta here and go sailing,” he calls out to the ten passengers waiting on the pier. In an instant they’re clambering onto the navy Gone with the blue cushions laid around the cabin top. wind: (top 2) The boat can carry twenty-two passengers, although “that’s a E scows at Keuka squeeze,” says Terry. The rate for a two-hour sail is $69 per person.

Yacht Club fly A Coast Guard-certified captain, he shows everybody where the life spinnakers on jackets are, then invites me to join him in the cockpit, where he seats a downwind himself alongside the varnished steering wheel. The wind today is a leg of a Sunday “gentle southerly,” he says, meaning out of the north, and the forecast morning race; calls for breezes of six to ten miles an hour.

Terry Stewart at the helm of the “But even with light wind we’ll be moving.” In a moment his True Love, joined young crew—Spencer Beaver and Maria Brubaker, both twenty— by his crew, Maria have cast us off, and we’re motoring out into the lake.

Brubaker and Schooners typically have two masts, with the aftermast taller.

Spencer Beaver.

They’re the aristocrats of sailing yachts, and True Love is a blueblood.

Designed by the legendary yacht builder John Alden and launched in 1926, she was featured in the 1956 film High Society, starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. The great Cole Porter even wrote a song about her.

Terry, a retired New York State trooper, acquired her in 2021, after coskippering for her former owners.

“My accountant said ‘Are you crazy?’” he recalls with a deep laugh. “I said ‘It’s a challenge. Something to do. Let’s see if we can make it work.’” Now in his third season as owner, he has “no regrets.”

A hundred yards out he points the bow into the wind as Spence and Maria hoist the larger sails. Already the wind has begun to pick up, and Terry instructs them to raise just one of the two foresails. (Less canvas means less heel.)

Then, with a turn of the wheel, Terry eases us over gently, and we’re gliding toward the eastern shore. As we approach the cliffs, he jokes he could scrape his bowsprit against them and still be in deep water, but tacks well out. We Lilace Mellin Guignard

(3) David O’Reilly

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See Sailing on page 40

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E-Bikes: The Good, the Bad, & the Easy Use Your Noggin Along With Your Legs

By Jimmy Guignard

Y

ou’re following your riding partner on your rented electric bike, or e-bike, at an effortless nineteen mph on the Pine Creek Rail Trail. The mile markers from Darling Run to Tiadaghton zip by about every three minutes and fifteen seconds. Pine Creek flows on the right while sycamores and pines clip by on the left. Your partner suddenly stops pedaling to point out a rattlesnake. His speed drops to thirteen mph, while you’re still cruising at nineteen and looking at the kingfisher chattering over the crick. The four-foot gap between bikes disappears. You have a choice—crash into the back of him or swerve (but not toward the snake!). What do you do?

Electric bikes, or e-bikes, are bicycles with an electric assist from a rechargeable battery. They have become A Thing.

Bicycling magazine states the sale of e-bikes surged 240 percent from 2020 to 2021.

That put 880,000 e-bikes on the roads and trails in 2021. Some of those bikes are right here in Tioga and the surrounding counties.

Along with the surge came a jolt in e-bike rider issues.

One reason for e-bike popularity is the speed. An e-bike raises the rider’s power12

to-weight ratio, enabling a person to ride farther faster, turning Joe Offthecouch into Joe Tourdefrance. Pennsylvania’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources states in its regulations that e-bike riders must pedal to use the e-assist, and cannot exceed twenty mph. (Some e-bikes have a throttle that works independent of pedaling.) The regulations, which focus on behaviors, not bikes, are important to reduce risk; you can (and should) check them out at dcnr.pa.gov before you plug into your inner Greg Lemond. The regs apply only to Pennsylvania state parks and forests.

Jim Hyland, district manager for Forest District 16, suggests introducing e-bikes into the wild is pretty complex. Forest District 16 covers about 160,000 acres in Bradford and Tioga counties and includes much of the Pine Creek Rail Trail, a new hot spot for e-bikes. Jim was involved in the decision-making about the rail trail in 1998, and he is a member of the Rail Trail Advisory Committee. He talks about the rail trail the way cyclists talk about revered racers, calling his work “a great honor.” He wants people using the trail, and he wants them to be safe and experience the forest.

Wade Spencer

John Derry

Blazing saddle: Sherri Stager responsibly rides her class 3 pedal-assist e-bike, which has a motor in the frame and a backup battery the size of a large water bottle.

But, as the bookshelf in his office attests, he has a bit of an Ed Abbey streak.

Like Abbey, who in his books urges people to get out of their cars (off their bikes?!) and “walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees” to see what’s really there, Jim worries about people “becoming more and more removed from forests.” In his view, the technology that gives us e-bikes changes people’s experiences of the forest. The issue, for Jim, is effort, or the lack thereof.

If people don’t work a bit, they may not appreciate where they are and what they see.

He’s concerned about the rail trail becoming a “race track,” though he recognizes that, for some, they may see more of the forest. It’s complicated.

Curt Schramm, the CS in CS Sports in Wellsboro, likens the influx of e-bikes to the influx of snowboarders on ski slopes back in the ’80s. A former ski patroller, Curt said skiers followed certain “rules” on the slopes that made it safer for all involved. Then snowboarders started ripping down the slopes, doing their thing and proclaiming “What rules?”

Not that Curt is opposed to e-bikes.

He sells them. He suggested to Pine Creek

Outfitters in Ansonia, a mile or so from the Darling Run rail trail access, that they take two e-bikes he’d ordered and rent them. Now, PCO has six e-bikes and two more on the way. Other places, like Pettecote Junction Campground in Cedar Run, rent e-bikes as well.

As Curt says, e-bikes aren’t going anywhere. Except maybe out on the trails.

For some people, e-bikes are a game changer. Sherri Stager turned to cycling when her body no longer tolerated running. She rode a human-powered bike called Pink Cadillac—she’s an Elvis fanatic—around the hills of Tioga County with the local bike crew. Then her heart—a fairly important muscle for cyclists—tried to quit. She got a pacemaker. That surgery was followed by back problems. Unable to pedal Pink Cadillac the way she used to, Sherri began to think about alternatives that would keep her pedaling with her posse.

Enter Burning Love. (It’s that Elvis thing again.)

Burning Love is Sherri’s Specialized Creo e-bike, a Class 3 e-bike with a pedal-assist up to twenty-eight mph (no throttle).

Though she could, Sherri rarely rides faster than the people she’s riding with, preferring to chat with her buds on regular bikes at speeds around fifteen mph.

Sherri rides because she likes to be outside and socialize with local riders (we can’t figure out why, but we’re glad she does). She appreciates seeing grazing deer, glowing red efts (see page 42), blooming mountain laurel, and exploring new terrain. She enjoys time to reflect. She “feels cleansed” after a ride, and enjoys the jolt of endorphins. She knows the rules of riding in a pack, controls her speed, warns others of hazards, and lets slower cyclists and hikers know when she overtakes them. For Sherri, an e-bike makes sense.

Burning Love doesn’t mean her rides are effortless. One Memorial Day, Sherri rode over eighty miles of gravel and paved roads with around 8,000 feet of elevation gain west of Pine Creek, a ride that, even with the e-assist, physically wrecked her. Sherri says of her effort, “I couldn’t have done it without the e-bike.”

Sherri’s ride was not crowded. Riding e-bikes in crowded places like the rail trail gets complicated fast when you add hikers, runners, kids, horses, and wildlife to the mix. Research suggests e-bikes cause worse injuries during crashes because of their weight (often exceeding sixty pounds) and speed. E-bike speeds rival bike race speeds. The skills of many riders don’t. Maybe e-bikes are, as Jim says, “too convenient.”

He suggests there’s a lot to learn for most e-bike riders, and the people regulating them. Riders should watch speeds in crowded areas. Warn others of your presence. Be prepared for mechanical issues. A battery can get a rider out there but a dead one can’t get them back.

Sherri sums it up well: “If it gets you outside and moving your body, do it. But be sensible. Wear a helmet. Don’t be stupid.”

Born in North Carolina, Jimmy Guignard teaches at Commonwealth University (Mansfield Campus) and tries to keep up with his family.

Northcentral Pennsylvania reminds him of the North Carolina mountains, though with more bears and bald eagles and fewer barbecue joints.

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Courtesy Karin Knaus Shivering their timbers: Terra and Heather enjoy the blue waters of Pirate’s Rock.

All Roads Lead to Big Falls

Wellsboro Gal-Pals Take an Epic Swimmin’ Hole Tour

By Karin Knaus

S

ome of the greatest ideas in human history have sparked between good friends talking over a few beers.

Unfortunately, many of these lightbulb thoughts are lost by morning. On a late Friday evening in 2002, on a barstool at Wellsboro’s Gas Light Bar & Grill, I collaborated on one of my greatest ever ideas. Fortunately, it led to a tradition that is unforgettable.

As things wound down that evening from a girls’ night out, we sat reminiscing about our youth over some cold, cheap drafts, and someone brought up Big Falls.

Big Falls, for those outside the circle, is Tioga County’s most fabled and cherished swimming hole. Its value to the people who love it cannot be overstated. When a sixteenyear-old got a driver’s license in Wellsboro in the 1990s, they were excited for two reasons: one, they could now cruise the strip from McDonald’s to the West End looking for fun on a weekend night, and two, they could cruise out to Big Falls whenever they wanted.

Stories about treks to Big Falls and its lesser known Stony Fork brethren led to the aforementioned idea that night. What if we

spent a day visiting all the great swimming holes we knew? We plotted out the “perfect route” on a napkin, and the semi-annual swimmin’ hole tour was born.

We met the next morning, and, after stops at Steve’s Beverage and Terry’s Hoagies, our tour began in the village of Blackwell, where we launched tubes into Pine Creek.

It was early July, so the water wasn’t exactly racing, but it moved enough at that spot to lazily ferry us along, dragging beers in a grocery bag to our first hole, Rattlesnake Rock. We disembarked, doing flips and floats and dives off the rock ledge before mounting back up and continuing downstream.

Our sweet, leisurely float came to an end at one of my very favorite spots, a hole we’ve always known as Woodhouse, as adjacent to it, along the road, is a sign that says so. What makes this hole special is it’s deep and calm, and has its own beach. Really! There’s also a rock ledge, a rope swing, and a fairly majestic view of the Pine Creek Valley going south, to boot. Regrettably, a few years after we started touring, someone posted no trespassing signs, and I haven’t been there, other than to glide by on a tube, in many, many years.

After a rowdy dip, Heather, who had stashed a bicycle there earlier in the day, rode back to get the car. We returned to Blackwell, ran down the hill, and around noon swam in the spot Heather and her mom always called the Sucker Hole.

From there, it was a drive with classic country tunes and girl talk across the long, dusty Landrus Road all the way to Arnot, then through Blossburg and out to Pirate’s Rock. There’s a hike in, and you have no idea what or who you’ll find there until you arrive.

The irony of this hole is it has cool, clear, crystal blue water, but that beautiful color is caused by the acid mine runoff upstream.

One last, long drive remained for the final leg of this epic tour. Returning to Wellsboro, we traveled out to Stony Fork.

There was a stop at Blueberry and at Little Falls, and all the little spots nobody had a good name for in between.

And then, around dinner time, we reached the mecca—Big Falls. Coming down that steep path while the sun had started fading felt like coming home. Still does, in fact. It’s tough to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for, which is just how we locals See Big Falls on page 16

14

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The original crew in 2002: (l to r) Terra Dillman Tokarz, Heather Linder Spring, the author, and Kristin Gribble Hebe.

Big Falls continued from page 14

Decorative Ponds, Water Gardens, Fountains, Pondless Waterfalls

like it. It’s one of the most beautiful sights these eyes will ever see—a vast, deep, green pool surrounded by rock ledges and cliffs of all sizes, trees and wildflowers, with a waterfall steadily running in.

There are dozens of ways to get into the deep water here. I always chose a running leap from the big ledge. Heather would ride the rope swing out and drop. For you amateurs, only weenies wade in from the shallow side.

Late in the day, we had the hole all to ourselves. We floated on our backs, soaking up the remains of our perfect day.

We continued touring for a few years after that, but, due to babies, cross-country ventures, and life simply moving on, we haven’t done it in a long while.

If you’re lucky enough to grow up somewhere with swimming holes, you already know about their magic. They are fountains of youth—partly because you become a kid again as soon as your aging body plunges into those icy waters, and partly because of all the memories that bubble up. I can’t drive past the Sucker Hole without recalling a summer evening when I was seventeen and rode lying down in the back of a pickup truck looking at the stars the whole way out there for a night swim. I can’t go to Big Falls without thinking of the time I took a group of grown adults out there to do some writing and watched each of them shed their adulthood when they hit that enchanted water. In particular, I’ll never forget watching my friend Dick, who at the time was nearing sixty, climb into a pine tree and launch himself out over the water on a rope swing, coached by a group of teenagers.

Swimming holes mark time in that way. And while it’s been more years than I’d like to remember since my girlfriends and I loaded up brews and hoagies and hit the road, I have no doubt that tour remains one of my greatest ideas.

Karin Knaus is an English teacher in the Cowanesque Valley who enjoys life’s simple adventures and believes strongly in the power of a great swimming hole.

16

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Listen to the Lake

By Mary W. Myers

Mary Myers was eighty-eight years old in August 2008 when we first published her reminiscence of sailing Keuka Lake in the 1940s with her husband of sixty-nine years. Robert died in 2009 and Mary followed him in 2018 at age ninetyseven, but her words still cast a spell we’re proud to share with you again.

Y

ou’ve probably heard the legend that on certain days in certain summers the air above our five Finger Lakes vibrates as if to the sound of a great distant drum. I read about it in a book long ago.

I think it was written by Carl Carmer, who lyrically maintained that the elusive thrumming comes from the lakes themselves.

And if you’re lucky, you’ll hear it. Or judging from his masterful description, maybe you’ll feel it more than you hear it, like the jiggle in your belly when the bass drummers beat by, close past you, in Wellsboro’s Laurel Parade.

You may be aware of the voice of the lakes only once in a summer or once in a lifetime, but I know you would remember it.

Perhaps that rare resonance in this geographically unique region has something to do with the unusually large number of residents whose deep thinking, early on,

18

stirred deeper thoughts among our society in general. Joseph Smith and his religious revelations and Elizabeth Stanton and her political convictions come to mind most readily.

It’s evident that the fingers of the five lakes are holding an energized and fertile handful of North America. No wonder the lakes might choose to remind us every now and then of their mystery and depth, their beauty and power. I have never heard their song. Even back in the days before noise pollution became a major interference, if the lakes woke and spoke, I never heard them.

But I listened. And I would have been acutely receptive in the summer of 1940, when I was twenty and first sailed on Lake Keuka, one of the fabled five.

The boat we sailed was the Caprice, an aging A-scow, authentically built of wood— de rigueur at that time and a treasure in these days of fiberglass craft—and designed to the precise dimensions of her class. She was much less ethereal than her name would suggest, and nearly as long at thirty-sevenand-a-half feet as her thirty-eight-and-a-halffoot mast was high. Her beam was eight feet four inches, and she weighed an impressive

1,850 pounds. But big as she was, she had her whimsical ways. It was best to learn them quickly yet still expect the unexpected.

Sailing is always a challenge, I was told happily. Otherwise, why sail?

The Caprice was one of the three boats of her class on the lake that year, the three largest on the water. With unflagging zest and optimism, the crews of the three raced each other almost every summer weekend and as often as possible in between. Since most of the Caprice’s crew lived in the Corning area or farther afield, for several years they had rented a cottage on the lake to be close at hand for the next hot regatta. Their residence was known as the Men’s Cottage.

Accordingly, the crew’s assorted fiancés, sisters, and girlfriends rented a cottage for the summer, too. Wherever they found one, they announced that it then housed the Auxiliary.

I was hospitably included, and we were all welcomed aboard the Caprice any time the wind and the anchor were about to come up.

As we tacked into the morning breeze, vacationing elderlies gave us friendly waves from their Adirondack chairs. I was sure they were envying us. I would have envied us if I were in an Adirondack chair watching as we See Lake on page 20

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Lake continued from page 18

zigzagged up the lake or whooshed past, running flat out before the wind. If one of the girls ventured out to stand with her back against the mast, with no further effort on her part, she became beautiful, the personification of summer itself, but most often I modestly manned the pump. Lacking a mast for a prop, I spent a lot of time bailing out the bilge with an old coffee can. I needed a mission, and the Caprice obligingly leaked.

Ah, but sometimes when the wind was strong and steady, the skipper heeled the boat down until her high side leeboard angled out of the water. Some of us clambered out onto the board and rode it, clinging to the gunwales. If either of those heavy steel plates, the leeboards, still exist somewhere, the toenail marks on them are mine.

On the thwarts as more sensible passengers, we ducked when the boat came about, hard alee, as the great boom swung over, with luck missing our heads. When we heard the command, “Jibe-O!” some of us stopped chatting and looked up at the tall creaking mast.

What an almighty tree it must have been, I thought. Very likely a white pine like those so ruthlessly harvested from the steep flanks of our Pennsylvania Grand Canyon in the 1800s, some for the same purpose, back in the era of tall ships. We were aware of the mast’s age and empathized as it protested the strain of jibing. “Steady as she goes!” was a far more reassuring command, and I have since repeated it often to myself in times of small family crises. I’ve found that, unless one is in the dentist’s chair or in labor, it usually helps.

The Caprice depended solely on the wind and on what the people aboard her did about it. She had no engine. Boats that did, the motorboats cleaving derisive wakes around us, we referred to as Smudge Pots—or worse. Nevermind that the breeze had dropped, as Keuka’s breezes could do without warning, and we were sitting dead in the water, watching the massive collapsed sails for the slightest stirring while assuming nonchalance. And if nobody had an appointment or a full bladder, it really didn’t matter.

On race day, however, everything was important. Females were banned from the boat. From their own ranks, the males judiciously selected those thought to have the least debilitating headaches from the beach party that usually broke out as we gathered from all points on Friday night for the big weekend, and they took charge.

The Caprice could be sailed by four people, or, at a bare minimum, three very busy ones. But on race day, five, six, or more of our team swarmed resolutely aboard. The number depended on the strength of the wind and past performance. We in the cheerleading section waved high signs. And out on the lake, the three scows began their beautiful circling dance, so crucial to the timing of the starting gun.

The racecourse was rarely clearly defined, sometimes not even to the crew. (My Bob and our daughter Jane once wandered on Chesapeake Bay in our little sailboat and came in seventh in someone else’s six-boat race.) To watchers on Keuka’s shores, the event appeared even less coordinated. If the wind was light, many left their Adirondack chairs and went in for a nap, knowing the contest could take all day. They also were pretty sure that the Privateer, the glossy new scow with the spanking white sails, would win again.

And they were pretty often right. But there was always another day, another possible fluke of the wind.

We in the Auxiliary posted observers in the dinghy. Did the guys get a good spinnaker set when they cleared the first buoy? They did clear the first buoy, didn’t they? And then we hurried in to tidy See Lake on page 22

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22

Lake continued from page 20

up our own cottage before trying a discrete bit of the same for the absent men. Otherwise, we knew, they would use the helmsman’s old sailing pants as a tea towel for another week.

We convened at Derb Young’s Keuka Hotel at Keuka Landing.

The finish line was always conveniently nearby. We filled the big, pleasant lounge with ebullience and thirst. We knew that we made Derb a little nervous, so many of us from other boats and beaches all crowding in, all re-sailing races and mishaps, present and past.

But we never broke anything except, for a heady while, the quiet of the late summer afternoon.

In mid-season—maybe it was the Fourth of July weekend— the crew with great effort trailered the Caprice to a big regatta on Cayuga Lake. Bob and I didn’t get there until it was time to bring her home again, beaten again, although with fewer new leaks than expected. But she was in trouble. During the week while she’d been anchored at the lower end of the lake, a National Guard unit had set up a training encampment there. A thick black power line had been strung from the far bank across the little cove harboring the Caprice to the encampment site on the other side. Stretching at a thoughtlessly low level, lower than the top of the Caprice’s mast, the cable effectively trapped the boat.

The afternoon was waning when the crew gave up trying to find someone with authority, or maybe even with a handy screwdriver, and we resorted to plan B. Somehow, the mast would have to be tilted down low enough to be coaxed under the power line. This meant someone would have to climb up the mast and attach a line to its distant top. Then we on this side of the cable would pull on the other end of the line and hold the mast down until it sailed under and out.

Bob handed me his beer and said, “Give me the line!” We all cheered when Bob called that the rope was snugly tied to the top of the mast. But when the appointed team began to pull the other end, one of the many extension knots we’d tied in it gave way and it parted. Just behind Bob and the Caprice, a rather high bridge with a pedestrian walk spanned the small cove. The boat lay at right angles to the bridge, close by. She was broadside to those of us pulling from the shore, and her prow was pointed hopefully toward the offending cable and to eventual freedom beyond. A woman was crossing the bridge when our line of ropes broke, and Bob rose up out of the mist beside her. Paralleling her course, he rode the mast in a long sweeping arc. As he passed her, Bob politely said, “Good evening,” and sank out of sight. The woman ran all the way across the rest of the bridge.

I know that this tale, told and retold in the bar of the old Keuka Hotel, could never measure up to the mystery of the lakes’ distant drum. But for a time at least, there was a woman who could attest that on a midsummer’s eve in 1940, a man rose from Cayuga’s misting waters, spoke to her, and returned to its darkening depths.

It had happened to her only once. No, never again. But it truly had happened. Right there on that bridge. Just past dusk, a man rising up from the water. Where else could he have come from but from the lake? Just past dusk, at that murky time of night...

Of such stuff are legends born. But when you visit any one of the Finger Lakes, be sure to listen. You may yet hear a lonesome drum.

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23

Stu Gallagher

Phillip Hesser

The power of Wandavision: Wanda Shirk, who appeared in the tenth season of Survivor, spends hours caring for the trails she hikes.

Trailblazing Through Life

Potter County’s Wanda Shirk—Long-Distance Survivor

By Phillip Hesser

W

anda Shirk’s hiking adventures began at age fifty, but her penchant for adding her personal stamp to things started long before that. As an English teacher at Northern Potter High School, she enlivened Fridays by devising POETS day—“Phooey On Everything, Tomorrow’s Saturday”—when students illustrated favorite poems. She sports a T-shirt reframing WOKE—it’s her acronym for “Working On Kindness and Empathy.” After twenty years of thru-hiking (completing the entire trail) Pennsylvania trails, the gnarliest in the Keystone State have left their mark on her, but she has shaped them to her purpose.

Wanda was ready for a new life at fifty.

She would take time from home and the classroom. Her son had graduated from high school, her daughter from college, and her remaining foster son—one of over fifty she and her husband, Bill, brought into their family— was sixteen and enjoyed batching with Bill.

24

So she started hiking. Was it the attraction of Penn’s Woods surrounding her home in “God’s Country?” No. Actually, she wanted something “on the cheap.” No spending on fancy sports equipment.

She took her first hikes with hand-medowns from the kids: sneakers, pack, and bedroll. The sneakers and pack fell apart.

Schlepping a barrel-sized sleeping bag felt like hauling a trailer. Later the sole detached from one boot and—before being somewhat re-attached with cord—produced a hobbling “flabadap” (it’s a MAD magazine thing) every other step.

Sometimes repeating mantras (“Cross.

Fork. Ice. Cream” on a hot day—incentive to finish and get to Kinney’s store in Cross Fork where she could get ice cream), she went the distance and covered the eightyfour-mile Susquehannock Trail System in her first year. She then gave back to STS, joining the Susquehannock Trail Club, and

later becoming president. Lois Morey, STC’s corresponding secretary, writes this about Wanda: “When she is not preparing for the next monthly club meeting, you will find her out on the trail wielding a Pulaski [a multipurpose hand tool] to clear the trail…She helps shuttle hikers…She answers endless questions regarding the trail and the club.”

Her exploration of new vistas was not limited to Pennsylvania. Six years into her outdoor life, she was a castaway on television’s Survivor: Palau, attracted to the adventure and the chance to meet new people on an island country in the South Pacific. Employing her talents for putting her own stamp on the standards—as a teacher she’d take to the school intercom to sing for the birthdays of students and faculty—she auditioned by putting her words to a familiar tune. Her version of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” went like this: “Put me onto Survivor/Put me into the game/Make me eat bugs, give me hardships too/I’ll do See Trailblazing on page 26

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Trailblazer continued from page 24

whatever you want me to do…”

During her brief stay on Palau, her repurposing skills came in handy when she tore a scrap from her slip to bandage a gash on another castaway. Even when she was voted off to shouts of “We love you, Wanda,” she exited with another telling song, this one to the tune of “Maria”: “And suddenly the game will never be the same again…!” Her time in Guam, where ex-castaways awaited the completion of the show, also reflected a new purpose, when she bonded with another former castaway, hiking the trails and forming a friendship with a lawyer from Texas that would lead to long telephone conversations and visits back and forth. She took part in the Survivor: Palau ten-year reunion, and describes her fellow cast members as “interesting” and “good people.”

Ten years into her life as a hiker and a few years after her appearance on Survivor, Wanda began another life at sixty with her retirement from teaching. She celebrated by thru-hiking the unforgiving seventy-six-mile Quehanna Trail. She has since thru-hiked over twenty-five Pennsylvania trails and finished large sections of the fabled Appalachian Trail.

The past decade has only added to her love for Pennsylvania hikes. Her work with STC led to her involvement in the Keystone Trails Association, whose mission is “To provide, protect, preserve, and promote recreational hiking trails and hiking opportunities in Pennsylvania.” KTA Executive Director Brook Lenker calls her “a dynamo,” highlighting the fact that she is “passionate about trails.”

That passion earned her KTA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018 for “selfless devotion and dedication.”

There is another way that she has repurposed her hiking life.

Wanda is a solitary hiker, who loves the “key exchange” hike, where she and another hiker park at different points on a trail, meet in between, and take the other’s car keys for the trip out. Yet she’ll join a crew to wield her Pulaski to widen hillside trails, or lead KTA slackpacks (hiking without a full backpack) that introduce large swaths of trail to hikers in daily stages. She’ll appraise trail sections, noting any areas where she could rally a team to clear a stand of nettles or to fundraise for a new bridge. She also reflects on her latest progress on the “5-Ls,” the dashboard of her social and solitary life. Those are: lover—putting family first; learner—seeking truth and living up to her “think for yourself” motto; leader—giving back to the community of hikers and neighbors; liver—taking up challenges as an adventurer; and leaver (of legacies)—becoming the “best philanthropist you can be” and endowing funds for new programs and scholarships.

Considering her complex trailblazing life—solitary, engaging with others, and always reflecting on her values—Wanda, now in her mid-seventies, says the Survivor audience “saw only 10 percent of me.”

She has followed Thoreau’s path of “several more lives to live,” and it’s the stamp Wanda leaves on the trail and her life—loving, singing, hiking, meditating, contributing, and lopping the undergrowth on whatever path life brings.

When he isn’t writing about the Chesapeake Bay watershed, its deep history and its people, Phil Hesser runs and rambles around the Delmarva Peninsula and the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania. He is a proud supporter and member of the Keystone Trails Association (ktahike.org) and Susquehannock Trail Club (stc-hike.org).

mirecca-stock.adobe.

Field Notes

Chucking the Woodchuck

By David Nowacoski

W

e’ve got this young woodchuck that has made himself at home under my back porch. I used to think he looked kind of cute. He would crawl up on the rock wall of the porch and stretch all out to soak in the warmth of the rocks.

We’d see the startled look in his eyes when he returned home only to find us quietly sitting in our chairs. Then he’d scamper off to his favorite entrance, a hole between the rocks just at the corner of the deck.

I was okay with him being there. I never saw him in the garden or in the orchard. He’d seemed pretty content with just foraging the dandelions we let grow in our lawn.

Until this week.

This week, he made a mistake.

To appreciate the severity of this mistake, I must explain another problem I have here on the farm: our internet connection. Our internet is so slow that sometimes it forgets we are still waiting for an answer. It just leaves that little wheel spinning until we get so frustrated we close everything down and try again. For those of you who understand such things, on a good day we get 5 Mbps. Bad days are less than 1. Very hard to run an online grocery store when we can’t do anything online!

I finally gave up on my hopes that we would see faster service from our provider and

purchased one of those Starlink things. I’m really not sure how it works, but supposedly when I ask for recipes that use parsnips, it beams my answer from space. It was advertised as being very, very fast.

It only took a few days to get here, and the instructions seemed simple enough. The only issue was that I had to drill a hole for the cable to run into my office from outside. That wouldn’t be too hard, until you realize that I have solid concrete walls. After a few hours of drilling a hole through concrete (and the occasional piece of steel rebar), I was ready to hook everything up.

Here is where I made one crucial error.

In my excitement to see how this was going to work, I took a shortcut. Instead of immediately mounting this on my roof, I just stuck the receiver on the deck and ran the cable along the rock wall. The piece I needed for a roof mount hadn’t arrived and I wanted to try this out now.

I plugged everything in and—wow!— 153 Mbps. I could search for a recipe for summer goulash and have it in front of me before I realized I spelled goulash wrong. It was so fast I was absolutely giddy.

And so it was for almost a week. But the other day I was working in the office, enjoying this feeling of immediate gratification, when

it stopped. Just stopped working. I quickly checked the status on the app, and it was flashing “Offline.”

What?? No, no, no! I want my fast internet back! I looked out the office window to see if the receiver had fallen over or something.

And that is when I saw him. That cute little woodchuck was chewing on the cable I had left on his rocks. I ran outside but—too late. The damage was done.

Now this brings us to a great dietary lesson. There are things that we know we should eat and there are things that we know we shouldn’t eat. Dandelions from the lawn, for instance: good for you. Internet cable lying on the rocks? Will definitely shorten your life span.

David Nowacoski grew up on a farm in East Smithfield and lives just down the road a bit from it still, where he runs WindStone Landing Farms and Delivered Fresh (DeliveredFresh.

Store) with his wife (and high school sweetheart), Marla. He made his kids pick rocks from the garden and believes that sometimes a simple life is a more wise way to go.

27

Courtesy Ithaca Shakespeare Company Lilace Mellin Guignard

To hold, as ‘t were, the actor up to nature: Where art thou, Ithaca Shakespeare Festival?

Outdoors at Robert H. Truman State Park!

Board in summer: Melanie Derry paddles a rented SUP on Keuka Lake at Champlin Beach, Hammondsport.

What’s SUP?

Stand Up Paddleboarding Lets You Choose Your Own Adventure

By Lilace Mellin Guignard

M

aybe you’ve seen the long boards tied on vehicles and wondered what the heck they were doing around here, so far from ocean waves.

Though stand up paddleboards began in Hawaii in the ’50s and ’60s as an offshoot of surfing, the activity has morphed to include paddling on flatwater, in river rapids, and SUP yoga. As far as water activities go, paddleboarding is one of the most versatile, affordable, and accessible ones.

An inimitable peace comes from being on the water looking back at shore, as if the land holds all the chores, responsibilities, and disappointments. Lie on the paddleboard and look up at the clouds. Watch the osprey soar and dive while the babies hidden in trees call in hunger. Listen to the fish jump.

28

If all you do is paddle out and float, there’s no judgement. Bring a book or a beverage.

Cry—who will see? Or burn off the stress with an easy-on-the-body complete core workout.

Maybe it’s the physical awareness of not being on solid ground that reprograms the brain. A person doesn’t need to be far from the shore to experience this peace, though perhaps far enough not to hear the kids call. Wait—you want to hear the kids?

Want their laughter and stories? The average paddleboard will take a small kid or two (or kid and dog) with an adult for lazy paddling or just floating (standing up is optional). Use the SUP as a base to swim from. They weigh much less than a plastic kayak, so whether going solo or as the only adult, loading is easy.

No boat rack or shed is needed either, as inflatable SUPs (the most common for beginners) are less expensive and more forgiving of being knocked around in the load/unload process. When the marinequality PVC board is inflated to the recommended pressure (typically around fifteen psi) it feels hard, though it won’t be as fast as rigid boards. Most come with a hand pump, which is a workout in itself, but fine for those once-or-twice-a-season inflations.

Small electric pumps are available—they run off the car battery, making transport as well as storage pretty simple.

It might sound intimidating to paddleboard for the first time on one of the Finger Lakes, but if it’s not windy that can See SUP on page 30

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SUP continued from page 28

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be a great first experience. New York’s public boat launches don’t require a permit (Pennsylvania does), but, unlike in Pennsylvania, most New York state parks do charge a day use fee to use their launch. Champlin Beach at the south end of Keuka Lake is free to access and you can rent a board right there. Keuka Water Sports (keukawatersports.com) has a tent and trailer by their dock from June 15 through Labor Day. Rentals range from hourly ($30 for one hour, $35 for two hours) as well as for the day or week. The staff will give you a basic introduction, as well as a life jacket renters must wear. Adults using their own boards or kayaks are required to carry one per paddler, except for November through April when everyone on a small watercraft must wear a life jacket. Children twelve and younger must always wear one.

With only a gentle breeze and no real current to contend with, beginners can paddle around on their knees until trying to stand up.

Stay in swimming distance of shore—or closer to chat to the friendly woman tending her garden. Mention you’re hungry, and she’ll point across the lake and up the ridge, saying Bully Hill Vineyards serves a lovely lunch. (Village Tavern in downtown Hammondsport is great, too.)

In the Northern Tier, SUPs have started showing up on the local lakes and even on Pine Creek. Hills Creek State Park’s 137-acre lake, near Wellsboro, is a great place to paddleboard. Tim Morey, Natural Resource Specialist for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, says, “We’re seeing them more and more. People seem to really like them once they try them.” Many local outfitters have them, including Pine Creek Outfitters (pinecrk.com), which provides rentals on location at Hills Creek and Ives Run Recreation Area on Hammond Lake.

Chad Zengerle, who, with his wife, Jess, co-owns Crooked Roots Adventures and Crooked Creek Campround (crookedrootsadventures.com) along Route 6 in Gaines, says this activity appeals to folks who don’t necessarily identify as adventurous.

“Families come to rent SUP or take lessons, and mom and dad really get into it. At the end of the day, they’re like different people,” he says. Chad’s an American Canoe Association certified Level II SUP instructor, giving individual or group lessons, usually on Nessmuk Lake in Wellsboro.

“People want to come camp, but they also want adventure—and they want you to plan it for them,” he says. Jess is certified in SUP yoga, so you can do some adventurous relaxing, too.

A first lesson starts on land, covering equipment, how to enter and exit the water, and how to go from kneeling to standing. Then you practice on the water, learning the basic strokes, as well as how to get back on the board if you fall in. “If you can go from kneeling to standing on the land, you can paddleboard,” Chad says.

After two lessons, he’ll guide you down the Upper Pine if you want to try moving water, putting in near Galeton and paddling to their campground. A less-challenging and more dependable river (when water levels are low) is the West Branch of the Susquehanna where it runs wide and slow. You can get a quick workout by going upstream as far as you want before heading back to your car.

Park at the Arch Street river access of Susquehanna State Park in Williamsport, and afterwards grab food and a beer at New Trail Brewing, just a half mile away, where you can toast your latest adventure and plan your next one.

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Courtesy Naval School of Music

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No mo camo: Dave Wert, shown here in 2017 at the Marine Detachment of the Naval School of Music, has left the uniform behind and snared a spot as a featured performer in this summer’s Endless Mountain Music Festival.

Bevvies with besties: Dogs are a cheap date and welcome at many Finger Lakes wineries.

Winey Dogs Allowed

Our Staff Boxador Tours Seneca Lake Wineries

By Lilace Mellin Guignard

O

n a summer morning, I loaded the red dog bed in the back of the SUV and surprised Hulk by inviting him on the tour I’d planned for our friends from North Carolina who were eager to visit as many FLX wineries as possible. I hate leaving Hulk at home alone, and this trip was designed to see if we could include him and still have fun ourselves. My husband, Jimmy, drove because he is the largest and, while he likes wine, is not quite as crazy about it as the rest of us. (If you want to know what he does like to drink, see our February 2023 cover story.)

We headed up the west side of Seneca first. At 11:30 a.m., we pulled into Lakewood Vineyards’ parking lot, just north of Watkins Glen. The grounds were in full summer splendor. We were finally experiencing real heat, and the picnic tables with red umbrellas scattered across the green expanse beckoned.

I assume Hulk felt the pull, because he pulled me in that direction. But not so fast. I’d been assured that well-behaved and leashed dogs were welcome indoors.

32

Two- and four-footed greeters met us with smiles and sniffs. Harper, a blonde Labrador, made Hulk feel at ease. Hearing our plan to get a glass and walk around the vineyard, we were directed to the bar. I knew I wanted Lakewood’s Bubbly Candeo. Melanie and John sampled, then settled on cab franc and riesling, respectively. Jimmy surprised me by getting a rosé spritzer. (After twenty-four years you think you know a guy…) While all this was being decided, another canine came over, accompanied by a friendly fellow in a Hawaiian shirt who introduced the Australian shepherd as Cake Pan III. Hulk is a middle-of-the-pack dog, so I didn’t worry when Cake Pan III growled a little to assert his status, but Kevin Barnes, the tasting room steward, whisked him outside. No growling allowed. (A good winery rule no matter how many legs a visitor has.)

At the far end of the vineyard sat a white gazebo that’s a perfect spot for a proposal. We appreciated the shade. Mel had her water bottle but for some reason did not want Hulk’s jowly mouth all over it. Jimmy, whose

Sidekick Session Spritz came in a small bottle (with perhaps a previous Cake Pan on the label), offered his now-empty glass for Hulk to drink from. It was water from home, so unexciting. When we returned to the patio water bowl, I asked where their water came from. Turns out it’s a vintage from a private reservoir shared with only a few houses. Hulk obviously approved.

Next stop was the Fox Run Vineyards Café. Hulk and I stayed out back under the wisteria-draped pergola while the others ordered inside. There was a large rubber water bowl and a hose for easy refilling. This water was a fairly common varietal known as Penn Yan city water, but Hulk enjoyed the complimentary Bo’s Bones gourmet organic dog biscuit. Human lunch highlights were the Mud Creek Bison tacos prepared with a slightly spicy Lemberger braise, and the charcuterie board with local meats and cheeses, cab franc applesauce, Brud’s pesto spread (as in Chef Brud Holland), sweet dried cherries, and Stony Brook pepitas.

See Dogs on page 34

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Tongue-not-in-cheek: No dogs, especially Hulk, got drunk in the making of this story.

Dogs continued from page 32

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Jimmy got a dry rosé and John got a riesling—the pattern for the day. Mel drank chardonnay, and I sipped merlot. Hulk appreciated the cool gravel more than the whirring noises made by two-legged puppies and their toy airplanes. But I’d brought treats for him, so he was easily convinced to leave them to their play.

Before heading to Seneca’s east side, we stopped off at Trestle Thirty One in Geneva to pick up wine I’d ordered. Even though they don’t have an outdoor area, this is a dog-friendly winery. Sue Conrad, hospitality manager, pulled out a bag of Beggin’ Strips to prove it. Soon enough, we were all settled in the main tasting room below the chandelier left over the building’s days as a tattoo parlor.

Hulk took a snooze by the AC vent while we sampled some of the ’21s just released, and Sue, a former science teacher, schooled us about winemaking.

I’d planned our day to end at Boundary Breaks, so we could enjoy the dog park and western view across the lake. Sadly, the smoke from Canadian wildfires obscured the view. But inside, the staff fussed over Hulk. John tasted his first ice wine before reverting to riesling. Jimmy got a 2023 Coca-Cola. I got a dry rosé, especially lovely on a hot evening, then Hulk and I headed to where he could zoom while I sat at a table in the dog park. When he was done, we joined the others lounging in green Adirondack chairs. It was near closing, and when a cooler of ice was dumped, I took Hulk over for his first taste of winery ice. The next cooler, which Diana Lyttle, co-owner, kindly brought for him, had some water in the bottom. She explained then that the smoke was a concern for the vines because smoke particles hold moisture and therefore pose a mold risk. “The weather increases the disease pressure on the grapes,” she said. “That’s what we worry about.”

Vowing to return when there was no smoke, we piled in the car to talk of what we’d tasted, lamenting that we couldn’t have stayed longer. Mel and John were heading back home, but Jimmy and I—and Hulk—can come back. As Hulk’s snores merged with the sound of tires on Rt. 414, I started planning adventures that involved hiking or paddling with my dog, with an end-of-day winery visit. Dog days on the lake!

A list of dog-friendly wineries can be found at senecalakewine.com, or check your favorite winery’s website.

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Gayle Morrow How does their garden grow: Bill Krovetcz and April Hart turned cancer into a cause and their lawn into a cure.

Fifty Shades of Green—Along with Blue, Purple, Yellow, and Red Visit the Colorful World at Bespoke Apothecary’s Open House

By Gayle Morrow

A

pril Hart and Bill Krovetcz agree— this was not the plan when they bought their eighty-five hilltop acres just outside of Elmira seventeen years ago.

This, by the way, being a rambling, gloriously alive profusion of growing things—a multitude of fenced gardens interspersed with chickens, bees, dogs, prayer flags, paths, and potential. Initially, the couple travelled the traditional homeowner route. They spent a lot of time their first few summers mowing.

That’s what you do when you have green space, right? You turn it into a lawn.

Then—“I got cancer,” says April. “That caused us to want to live differently. My whole life had to change from this time out.”

It did. Theirs did. She bypassed the chemo and the radiation, and “I didn’t get sick from treatments.” Bill, she says, is a really 36

good researcher, and, using that research, they opted then to work with nature, with the “food as medicine” mindset, to help April heal herself. She remains cancer-free.

The next logical steps were to learn as much as they could about physiology, chemistry, biology, herbology, plant properties, what works and why, and then to share that knowledge. As they ventured into making a variety of plant-based products— teas, tinctures, infusions, and more—that would, they believe, help people “heal and thrive,” they found an ever-increasing circle of family, friends, and friends they hadn’t made yet, all benefiting from those products.

Most of those products had their start in April and Bill’s gardens.

Needless to say, there isn’t much mowing anymore. That time gets spent in other ways.

Bill laughs when asked how many hours a week they put in.

“All of them,” he says.

This day, a hot one in July, they’re in the midst of a tincture production run (Bespoke Apothecary is a New York State certified production facility). Tinctures are an alcohol-based preparation of an herb. Every plant has different types of plant chemicals, Bill notes, and herbalists used various liquids to pull out those chemicals. April says that valerian (a plant with pretty pink or purple flowers, historically used to treat insomnia, migraine, fatigue, and stomach cramps), for instance, is not particularly water soluble, so it doesn’t shine as a tea. It does well as a tincture, however.

“We’re a big fan of tinctures,” Bill says, which is a bit of an understatement as they See Fifty on page 38

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Fifty continued from page 36

have 110 different herbal tinctures available at this point.

As for the teas, April is the go-to person. She’s put together fourteen different loose-leaf blends, and says she can offer people “pretty much what they need.”

As Bill says, they can fit the herbs to the people, and will, in fact, custom-create products. They like to do a consultation prior to that, and they’ll ask for a two-week “food and mood” diary, but can do a kind of “off the cuff” suggestion of products that could be helpful.

They also make creams and lotions, and a variety of infusions.

With infusions, oil is the solvent used to pull out the plants’ chemicals, its healing properties, this after the plant has been properly dried. Bill and April use a dehydrator for that part of the process— slow and low, it can take two weeks to a month, depending on the plant and its moisture content.

The gardens where the raw ingredients for the Bespoke products grow include ten-foot-tall sunflowers sharing space with just-comingup turmeric and ginger. They grow about 200 pounds of each per year. Turmeric and ginger are in the switchel they make and bottle— it’s a drink, kind of tangy and very delicious. You’ll find nettles in the gardens, tomatoes, culinary herbs such as parsley, oregano, thyme— April says they’re highly medicinal—milkweed alive with pollinators, berries, an asparagus patch, horseradish, mullein, birdhouses, even a pan of water for the bees.

“We wanted to give them a place,” Bill says. “They need water, too.”

They stress their belief in the importance of biodiversity, on sustainability, working with nature instead of fighting it.

“Everybody forgets about ‘take half, leave half ’ [in nature].

We’re growing as much [of our own] as we can,” Bill continues.

“We kind of interplant a lot of things.” They use hay or straw, or both, for mulch, as well as cardboard. Cardboard breaks down, Bill explains, and it’s one less thing to have to throw away. “We try to be responsible with our waste.”

“We just wanted to bring natural products, made with care and in small batches, to people,” April says. They believe prevention is a way better way to stay well than trying to cure what ails you after the fact. Try getting the jump on potential problems with a daily dose of switchel or fire cider. Fire cider is a medicinal/herbal concoction that’s a favorite of herbalists (both April and Bill are certified herbalists).

It’s used to support the immune system and help keep seasonal infections at bay. Many of the approximately two dozen ingredients come from their farm, or near it.

As for seasonal pests, Bespoke offers a “99 percent effective tick spray.” Their tick and black fly repellent is made from essential oils such as eucalyptus citriodora and chamaecyparis nootkatensis. Sounds like they would knock a tick for a loop, doesn’t it?

There will be an open house at Bill and April’s farm, 300 Sullivan Crest Road, Elmira, on August 26 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. There’ll be vendors, twenty-two at last count, a food truck, and music. Bespoke Apothecary products are available at numerous locations throughout the Twin Tiers and via Delivered Fresh. You can also shop online. Visit bespokeapothecary.com to get the latest information on the open house and to see all the products available, or call (607) 426-0999.

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Friday, August 25

Live Music with SPLASH @ 7:00 p.m.

Saturday August 26

10th Annual Sayre Borough End of Summer Celebration

Riverfront Park – 3:30pm to 8:30pm Live Music / Food Vendors / Kid’s Activities Fireworks Display @ Riverfront Park – 8:30pm Presented BY: Gannon Associates Insurance

Events are funded in part by the Bradford County Tourism Agency

Pumpkin Festival 20th Annual

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Sunday, October 8, 2023 10:00am–4:00pm

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Sailing continued from page 10

Celebrating 100 years!

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Join us for an afternoon of fun, history, music, and cake!

Featuring music by New York State’s Authentic Civil War Brass Band: The Excelsior Cornet Band and a talk on Elmira’s lost river community Bohemia-on-the-Chemung from J.D. Iles.

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start angling northwest. Soon the wind is blowing ten and gusting to fifteen. Waves are less than a foot but forming whitecaps, and the boat is heeling over more.

“This is normal early-summer wind,” he explains, “good but schizophrenic,” meaning it’s shifting often in strength and direction.

Today’s breeze is a far cry from the fierce “howls” of October, he says, and more fun than the “doldrums” of July and early August. The fall winds are best. “They blow steady all day long.”

Spence comes back to say that a family of three is expressing anxiety about our heel. Terry instructs him to lower the large gaffrigged sail on the foremast. A minute later True Love is sitting up more. “Way more comfortable,” he says.

At 1:38 we tack again to the northeast, and he points out Hector Falls in the distance. By 2 p.m. the wind is blowing a steady fifteen with gusts in the low twenties. Big stuff. “It’s coming westerly or straight north,” he says with a scowl, and tells Spence that for the four o’clock sail they’ll reef, or shorten, the main before leaving the dock.

We tack and tack again, and this time stay on a beam reach, perpendicular (or abeam) to the wind. Spence eases out the main to keep us from heeling too much. “How’s that?” he calls out, and Terry gives him a thumbs up. By now we’re about four miles from the dock, but the wind is so strong Terry will need little time to get back.

It’s a glorious sail, and I mention how much I miss Cirrus, my Lippincott 36 sloop of twenty years, which my wife and I recently sold. (The six-hour drive to Chesapeake Bay proved too much after we moved to Wellsboro.) Turns out Terry learned sailing as a boy on a Comet dinghy built by Howard Lippincott, builder and first owner of Cirrus. And Terry may have bought his previous boat, a Cabo Rico 38, from the same guy in Annapolis who sold me an Irwin 25 on the Potomac River in 1995. Small world, sailing.

At 2:15 he declares it time to head back, and we “run” downwind with the whitecaps. He starts the engine as we come close to the dock, turns us into the wind, and, as the sails drop, noses us onto the pier.

“I loved it,” says Erin Czesak, thirty-four, a sunglass designer from Brooklyn whose dad had discovered True Love on the internet. “Very relaxing. I love being on boats,” says her boyfriend, Josh Richmond, thirty-five.

Today was her first time ever on a sailboat, says Theresa Jopson of Conesus, New York, but the heeling motion never scared her. “I loved it—the calmness, with no motor running.” She’d been on powerboats before. But, she says, “sailing is different.”

Award-winning journalist David O’Reilly was a writer and editor for thirty-five years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he covered religion for two decades—davidcoreilly@gmail.com.

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B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

Share the Road

T

By Sherri Stager

here’s an old logging road behind my house in Mansfield that I frequently hike or bike with our two dogs.

On this particular morning, the trail was overrun with red efts, and it was a challenge dodging the little critters. This one seemed totally unbothered by my fat tire and was even happy to pose for a photo.

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