Testifying to the Importance

 

Just before Covid shut everything down my younger daughter and I had been making a routine of heading out Saturday mornings to find a local breakfast joint where we could fuel up.  The Egg’s Nest which is right across the street from the High Falls Kitchenette Seafood Shack, both do a fine breakfast.   And I wondered if they were both surviving this past year as I hadn’t been to either one or had much of any reason to drive through High Falls in a long time. 

 

My dad and I have our weekly hiking routine for Friday mornings.  The last few weeks I’ve suggested we head out for a late breakfast or an early lunch after our walk and we kept putting it off into the future.  This morning I was typing away on emails when I heard him out in the driveway talking to my wife.  And soon we were on our way to High Falls.  A former stop on the canal’s way, there is a trail along this walk and a museum, testifying to the importance of both the canals in general, and this actual reminder of what this area was like in the days before he automobile. 

The Five Canal Walk isn’t long, but it’s fascinating. Deep pits of stone layered up or down.  The canal could, it sounds raise the water sixty feet as it meandered along. Hoogges were the kids to lead the mules that pulled the boats along.  And I read there at the back of an old stone building that suggested it was the future home of the C&H Canal Museum, I thought of my daughters and my nephews and of what a rough world it would have been for six year-olds or sixteen year-olds when that was the norm, and there wasn’t any time for school. 

 

It meanders along beneath some lovely old sycamores and some statuesque tulip trees, and it ended too soon at Depew Road.  (And I was right that there used to be a Depew Canal House, that is no longer around.)  Maps suggests the canal continues, tracing its way beside the Rondout Creek, but I’d suspect it was buried over at some point.  We couldn’t see any further trace of it. 

The Eggs Nest was closed.  But the Kitchenette had a trio walking in. I broke a fast with some eggs and sausage and a biscuit that were good, if not great.  And we had a fine time returning to normal, having a breakfast without any masks from a young lady who was similarly bereft of covering. 

 

 

 

Friday, 6/11/21