Day 29 – Wednesday, October 1^st, 2014

I’d awoken from a nightmare of lost child, of a little blue hand that broke when I’d picked it up.  It was set in the day of touch-tone phones.  In the dream, I was over-heated with anxiety.  I was happy to get out of that dream and be sung to by Dean from across the screen tent.

Within the tent, I dressed quickly: bathing suit, rain pants and rain coat.  Ate eggs and toast under the orange, nylon tarp.  Unusually I was ready first.  We only have 8 more miles to go before we reach Historic Deerfield.

It took an hour of driving to get to our starting point. Dean took a photo of Pauline and I at starting point as per usual. 

And off we went while Dean moved the car up.  He would move the car up 4 km. unless he first found the road leading to Eunice Williams’ tombstone.  The usual sounds this morning, insects, boots & walking stick in contact with asphalt, and the added swish of our rain pants and raincoats.

Dean was back not long into the walk.  He’d driven 600 meters and found the off-road leading to the tombstone.  It was 300 meters in (and out), so I decided we’d walk it.  As we turned off the bi-way, I felt it: the emotion of going to see this place.  Mehitable, Abigail’s mother, had been killed the fourth day into the march. 

Back, but while we were in Bellows Falls, I did not even think of it.  The grey stone was close to the river on an embankment.  It was dated 1884 and told us that Eunice had been killed on March 1, 1704, therefore on the first day of the march.  Those who put up the stone had had it engraved with words written by her husband, the Reverend Williams whose book continues to be published to this day.

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There is also another unrelated marker to the left of the stone: this brass marker lists the many workers who reconstructed the covered bridge in 1972.The covered bridge was actually being worked on, on the land next to another sign about Eunice.  We spoke with the 3 construction workers there and I shook hands with them.  Jason was the most talkative one. 

All 3 Vermonters were friendly.  We found out that a kid had burned down the covered bridge in 1972.  This time, it was simply maintenance.  The town of Greenfield was paying for the work. Only 5 workers were needed in this day and age, with lots of technology.  I also noted that Jason spit out something brown. Chewing tobacco?  Yes.  Grizzly? Pauline had noticed and recognized chewing tobacco cans along the road.  I told him I’d even photographed some.  When Antonio the engineer came along, we got him to take a photo of the three of us together, this being only the second one of Dean, Pauline and I.

Before we left, I walked down to the river bank.  I didn’t have my rubber boots with me.  The river was rocky so I walked carefully to be amid the river.  The 1704 group had walked along Deerfield River first.  I chose a small rock: it was black with small blood-like reddish-brown marks. I placed it in my rainjacket pocket and zipped it for safe keeping.

We walked back the 300 metres and set off again.  The only unusual thing for me was that I did not take any breaks when we got to the car.  I was energized by the end in sight and the wetness of the day. When we got to Greenfield’s Main Street, I decide to ask to use the washroom at a nail salon.  It was run by American citizens of Asian descendance.  There was a row of foot-bath chairs like so many treadmills.  The attendants wore surgical masks while doing foot and nail care.  One client sat with her child in her lap while on one of the foot-bath chairs.  I saw small children that must have been the children. Once in the back, I looked for the toilet door.  One door said Magic Child.  How intriguing!  I refrained from turning the door knob.

When I came out on the street again, Pauline was nowhere to be seen.  I knew that we were looking for a "xxx Court" where we would turn left.  Pauline had the directions. (Dean was the one who planned out the route and made changes as we went along, whenever we heard of a trail or better route.  Pauline read the map each morning.  At one point, I worried that I wasn’t more involved in figuring our route.  I did assist in interpreting what was on Pauline’s paper, as in the previous day’s walk.  When I thought of 3-year old Abigail, who was likely carried along, I realized there was no need for me to worry about the map and the route.)  I heard Pauline call out my name from behind me.  She was behind the door of The Magic Child, a toy store.  Pauline had finally found something to her liking to put all the change she’d been collecting along the road. (The most recent find had been the day before, where she pried two dimes out of the rubberized material used to repairs cracks in the asphalt.) 

As  Pauline made her purchase, the woman asked my friend if she was local.  So I told her of our walk.  She shared that Deerfield had had plays about the raid.  The audience played parts.  One play they would be the captives.  Another night the audience would play the part of the natives going through the woods.

Pauline found the Court Square where we had to turn: we only knew by the sign.  Walked downhill and under an underpass. We hesitated: which way were we to turn? There was no “Old Main Street” was to be seen.  A woman with a broken umbrella made a psst sound. I turned and asked her. She walked with us explaining how to get to Greenfield.  She would have liked to take us there by car.  She would have liked to give me her book about the boy who was taken to Canada and buy herself another copy but she wasn’t sure where she had it. I said I would look for it when we got to the Deerfield Bookstore. As a newspaper reporter approached us, she dropped back and was gone.  Were we in front of her house?

And a minute later, Dean was with us. The reporter had had a call from the saleswoman at The Magic Child.  He had another interview to conduct but he took a few notes, including how to contact us, and he took a photo of the 3 of us.

RAVioli was parked in Historic Deerfield. The three of us continued to walk.  We came to a bridge over a river.  There was a sign about Deerfield announcing it was incorporated in 1673.  It had been a frontier town back in 1704.

Pauline was ahead again at that point.

When we saw the sign for Historic Deerfield, Pauline asked me to take her photo with her ipad.

I had let Dean take my iphone to the car for fear it would get too wet within the zipped pocket of my rainjacket.  Dean had a camera and he took a photo.  We were now on route 5. The traffic was moving fast. My right foot hurt. I was getting keen on arriving.

Finally we came to Old Main Street.  I had no patience to wait.  Without hesitation, I stuck out my walking stick. The traffic stopped first from my left and then on the right.  We crossed.

We walked a ways before arriving at the street lined with historic houses.  I did not notice that the RAVioli was parked there.  Passed couples of people walking casually with umbrellas open.  There were markers indicating who had lived there back in 1704.  No Nims house to be found.  At one point we came to the Museum.  I told the attendant behind the counter that we had just walked in from Montreal and that I was a direct descendant of Abigail Nims.  So he got out a map circled where the Nims house was.  He said that they did not own that home; it was privately owned.  It was painted yellow. Then he circled another museum where Sally, a direct Nims descendant worked.  He said she would be able to show me the stone where a house had been hidden in the snow on that fateful day.  I knew he was referring to the Munn’s, Abigail’s sister and her brother-in-law, who lived in a “temporary shelter” and who was saved because their house was not seen.

I walked down the sidewalk with determination.  I saw the yellow house whose walls were not perpendicular to the ground. This was the house that John, Abigail’s brother rebuilt in 1710 in place of their home that had been burned February 29, 1704. This was where the walk would end officially.  I might not be able to go inside the house but I was going to go up the walkway and sit on the step in front of the house.

The rainiest day of our walk seemed suitable as I completed my art performance, my “life performance” (Deborah at Earthstar Pottery) of Abigail Nims who was twice baptized.