Oct 19 Background Descriptions

1. “Longfellow Darke and the Missing Coin”
The Valley, once called the “Breadbasket of the Revolution”, still held its farming community charm. Spring brought forth the newly verdant hills and the wet aromas of freshly plowed fields which carried with them the promise of new life and new beginnings. Small creeks were still high from the winter’s snow runoff, making the trout fishing wonderful. Newly hatched chicks and birds chirped on the breezes, whether still cool of the past season or warm of the new.

2. “Longfellow Darke and the Topless Ghost”
Summers in the Adirondacks were always green, the leaves on the ashes and birches, the needles of the pines and the spruces spread shadows on the dark, moist ground. The occasional loon call to a mate broke through the silence of the small lake. The dawn’s breaking signaled for the animals to scurry, the deer running for shelter, the raptor birds flying from their high perches down to the lakes, streams, and open fields. Long abandoned logging cabins along the headwaters of the Hudson, their paint long since faded, the wood falling in disrepair, housed the small creatures on which the predators fed, and where the large forest spiders spun to catch the blackflies and mosquitoes.

3. “The Loneliness”
They sat in the overgrown field, one building just a few feet off the edge of the road. Three buildings, two barns and an old farmhouse, were faded, only the red color of the barns evident. Aged wood sagged on the barns; the roofs had Swiss cheese amount of holes. Stepping out of a vehicle during the early autumn afternoon, smells of the river and newly fallen leaves came on the warm southernly breezes rustling through the tall grasses and near-dead golden rod. A chill could be felt when you looked into the home’s windows, seeing the once proud shutters almost off their hinges. A shadow or two moving seen, maybe a woman in white looking out the second-floor window, her shoulders slumped, her head slightly shaking.