The Medfield Insane Asylum

What do you do with a former insane asylum that is no longer being used to house patients?  You could fence it off to prevent people from getting near it, or you could tear it down to make room for yet one more condo association. But if you're the really cool folks of Medfield Massachusetts, you turn the entire area into a walking park and open it up to the public.

The Medfield Insane Asylum began operating in 1896 as a way to ease overcrowding among the state's existing facilities. By 1914 it had changed its name to the politically correct Medfield State Hospital, at which point its campus style grounds consisted of over 50 buildings and was home to 1,500 patients; a number would swell to over 2,300 in later years.

Today this entire area sits abandoned and boarded, and although some of the buildings have been destroyed in recent years, on the day we went I counted at least 30 of them still standing. Medfield was a community as much as a hospital, and what's left has the creepiness of a ghost town but the pleasantness of a city park.

We passed several people along the streets that day - including a family with young kids and a pair of elderly ladies - and all were doing exactly the same thing we were; getting some exercise while at the same time enjoying this glimpse into Massachusetts' past.

Anyone who remembers the cars I drove as a youth can tell you that I find beauty in the decrepit. Put me in a place like this and I'm a big old kid in a 900 acre playground, trying to see it all in one afternoon. I probably made Tina take a dozen pictures standing by this clocktower just to make sure I’d have a least one or two that wouldn’t end up in my recycling bin.

A few of the buildings were residential houses where I believe management kept themselves separate from the population, but mostly the staff lived in the upper floors and attics of the same brick buildings patients were housed in.

For a variety of reasons - least of all the hazardous materials released by the deterioration of the buildings - the town doesn’t want people going inside any of them. In addition to boarding up all the windows, security guards regularly patrol the grounds and signs everywhere warn of all the bad stuff you’ll be inhaling should you enter. I'm also convinced they have the buildings alarmed. Why I think that, I'll never tell.

Outdoor activities were a part of life for many patients of Medfield Hospital. They farmed the hundreds of acres surrounding the hospital, providing enough food not only for the hospital but excess to ship to surrounding towns. This was important not only for the hospital to help sustain itself, but for patients to keep busy while at the same time learning to lead productive lives. It wasn't all work for them, though - playtime did exist, at least according to a fenced-in yard and basketball court toward the back of the complex.

It took me the better part of a full beer to figure out how to write these next few sentences. I didn't want to finish this post by just putting up more pictures of boarded up buildings, or by stating a bunch of random facts I'd looked up about the hospital, but I couldn't translate that into figuring out how I did want to finish it. Finally I tried looking at things from a different perspective. The day we explored here I spent most of my time running around trying to get the perfect picture, and the rest of it wondering what the buildings looked like on the inside. But did I ever stop to think about the people who actually lived here, who considered this place home? I'm sure I didn't. At best I probably offered up a few stinks to have been them type comments before moving on.

So I forced myself to think about what this place must have meant to the people housed here, especially during those early years. I'm a healthy and free individual who is able to live the life I choose. Sometimes what I choose takes me in crazy directions - such as this past weekend when I drove 80 miles in search of some obscure cave on some even more obscure mountain - but that's the beauty of being free. I can do whatever makes me happy, even if it is something that leaves my wife muttering and scratching her head. With the limited health care and rehabilitation knowledge of their time, this was a choice residents of the Medfield Hospital did not have. For some of them, even if they only wanted to go outside for some fresh air, they had to wait for someone to come along and give them permission.

Rehabilitation methods vastly improved during the years Medfield State Hospital was in operation, and in direct relation to that came more patients being re-introduced into society and less need for them to be permanently housed. The population continued dropping, and by 2003, down to less than 200 patients, the hospital closed for good.

Although a public park (and occasional movie set) for now, attempts to turn this site into a massive housing complex have come up in the past, and will come up again. One day, nothing will remain of this place thousands of patients once called home and over 800 of them died, in many instances simply because they were born in a less fortunate era than those of us today.

Links of Interest:
Visit the Medfield State Hospital

New Hampshire's Five-Town Rock

The Four-Corners Monument in southwest America marks where four different states meet at one spot, and is a popular tourist destination. That's great and all, but if we're talking strictly a numbers game then we have a spot here in New Hampshire that's got it beat by 25%. It is our Five-Town Rock, and it marks the spot where Alton, Barnstead, Farmington, New Durham, and Strafford all meet at a point.

First thing to know about the Five-Town Rock is that this is not a tourist destination. You're not going to find any monuments here, there's no plaque pointing to which towns are in which direction, in fact there aren't even any trails leading to it. There is just a single rock a half-mile deep in the woods, carved with letters and dates that span back over 200 years. Finding this rock had been creeping up our to-do list for a while now, and on a recent Sunday afternoon it finally found itself at the top.

Sometimes the universe signals to us that we're going to have a good adventure, even before that adventure begins. Today was one of those days. Our parking spot turned out to be right in front of an old cemetery, and if you know my wife Tina then you know that the only thing better than an old cemetery to her, would be an old cemetery next door to a Ben & Jerry's.

There weren't any ice-cream stands next to this graveyard, but we did spot a couple of foundations, and it got us wondering whether the former inhabitants of one were now the current inhabitants of the other.

Once we got moving we realized that, for several reasons, winter is the best time to make this hike. Three reasons, to be exact. That's the number of streams we had to cross during the next half hour, which was made easy by the fact that each of them was frozen over.

Upon reviewing my pictures though, "easy" might have been too strong of a word for it - I've seen people crossing the Grand Canyon glasswalk with more confidence than Tina showed crossing this layer of ice.

But even with these challenges, and even though there were no trails to speak of, it was still a relaxing and enjoyable hike.

The rock was said to lie at the intersection of two stone walls. We encountered several along the way, but most wandered off in the wrong direction so we resisted the temptation to follow them and stayed the course.

Eventually we found a wall that didn't disappear sideways into the woods, and right where it cornered with a second one we spotted the rock. Footprints showed we were't the first people to make this journey since last snowfall, and to highlight another reason why this trip is best done in the winter, those helpful folks did a great job of rubbing snow into the the rock and making the carvings legible. In addition to the dates we found several initials which we thought might refer to which town that part was facing, but none seemed to match up or make any sense.

So rather than put too much thought into deciphering it, I just stood on the rock and made bad jokes about how tired I was from visiting five different towns in a matter of seconds. Tina laughed, but I'm pretty sure it was of the 'at me' variety, not the 'with me'.

If you're anything like our daughter Madison, by this point you might be shaking your head and wondering, did I just read an entire story about a rock? You did, kind of ... but no, you really didn't. What you read was a story about two people spending an afternoon in the woods, getting some exercise, escaping the hustle of everyday life, finding a piece of history, and having a few laughs along the way.

It was just disguised as a story about a rock.

Other rocks we like:
Boise Rock
Madison Boulder
Frog Rock

Hiking To An Abandoned Cabin

This is the story of a hike that distance-wise was less than three miles, but time-wise took us nearly six months to complete. It is our adventure to find an abandoned cabin on Abbott Mountain, in Shapleigh Maine.

Our first attempt was a spur of the moment decision during the winter of 2016, when we found ourselves driving through Maine one unseasonably warm day with a couple of hours to kill. I'm a believer that every town has at least one unusual or interesting place to offer - many times they're hidden or off the beaten path - and I keep a list of these places on a bucket-list map for future adventures. Anytime I get wind of a new one, onto the map it goes. I opened that treasure map now, and saw the nearest place I had listed was something called the "Hillbilly Cabin" on Abbott Mountain, which is where we began our most ill-advised hike of the winter.

Sometimes my enthusiasm outweighs my good judgment, and on this day I somehow convinced my wife that this would be a short enough hike that we could muscle our way through the snow. She wasn't convinced, but gave it her best shot and got an A for effort.

I on the other hand got an F for common sense, and as a result of this day I also got a pair of snowshoes under the tree this past Christmas. As did Tina.

Having failed at our first attempt, finding this cabin had now moved much higher up on our to-do list,
and early last summer we found ourselves back on Abbott Mountain. Only this time sneakers were the correct choice of footwear.

This is a fun little mountain to hike, and even better if you enjoy exploring old remains and stone walls. Tina found this good sized foundation not far off the main trail, and the fact that she could not see over it confirmed it to be almost five feet in height.

I briefly tried looking into the history on this place, but although I found many references to Abbot Mountain online they mainly focus on the hike, not the structures. And as for signs or kiosks that might offer info along the trail itself, let's just say that those are a work in progress.

As long as you stick to the main trail, however, you will find the cabin. I don't know how many more winters this thing has left in it, but I've dealt with sturdier Jenga towers on game nights with the kids. Some of the more cautious among you will probably be content just to admire it from a distance.

But cautious is a word seldom uttered from my lips, and I found that as long as I tested each step and avoided the soft spots - a skill I developed thanks to our old sun room - I was able to make my way entirely around the single-room cabin.

Wonder what I'm hiding here?

Abbot Mountain has a little bit of appeal to everyone. It is an easy hike and therefore great for beginners, there is a beautiful view if you make it to the top, and there are remnants along the way to explore and satisfy your sense of adventure. We would be very hard pressed to recommend a more satisfying way to spend a summer's afternoon. Or, even a winter's one ... as long as you make sure to pack the snowshoes.

A Backroad Treasure! The Beryl Mountain Car Museum

My plan was to pull the car over and pretend I was adjusting my bike rack, maybe even act like the bike had been starting to fall off, while secretly taking pictures of the rusted old vehicles lined up alongside the road. I had spotted these relics earlier that day on my way to search for the Beryl Mountain mineshaft, and because I'm a fan of anything that looks like it has a story to tell, I made a mental note to drive the same route home so I could get a closer look at the cars. 

The collection obviously belonged to someone, but sitting this close to the road like they were I considered them fair game to spend a few minutes admiring, even if they were on private property. I did my bad acting job of fiddling with the bike rack, but before I'd even switched my phone over to camera mode I saw an elderly woman approaching from the nearest house. I knew I'd been busted. Prepared for an ear-beating about how I should mind my own business - a speech I've long since memorized - I was surprised when it wasn't her tongue that greeted me, but her outstretched hand and a smile.

"Hi, I'm Ruth!"

I recovered quickly enough to introduce myself back, and was soon enjoying a much more pleasant conversation than what I'd been expecting. The cars did in fact belong to Ruth and her husband, and she welcomed me to take as many pictures as I'd like.

There weren't just cars among the tall grass, either; toward the end of the line were miscellaneous rigs that included a couple cranes.

Ruth had such as easygoing way about her I soon found myself spilling details about my day, and how I'd driven to this part of the state in search of an old mineshaft. This garnered an almost grandmotherly concern to make sure I was being careful out there, and she even asked if I was taking care of my body. Guiltily I showed her my legs, which had gotten a bit scratched up during my earlier bushwhacking, but she dismissed these with a wave of the hand as if to say it was real injuries she was concerned about, not boo boos. I had none to report.

We talked a bit more and I thanked her again for allowing me to take pictures, then she went on her way. But before leaving she told me they had many more cars around the corner, and to make sure I checked those out as well. Thinking this day was just getting better by the minute, I drove down the street she'd gestured toward and was rewarded with a property littered with twice the amount of vehicles as before. And I'm not talking junkers like the rusted out Chevettes that used to decorate my driveway, these were cars with personality.

As I was just finishing round two of my photo shoot a golf cart came rolling up, and before I could explain that Ruth had given me permission to take pictures, I was being greeted by her husband, Ralph. Turns out Ruth had woken him from a nap to tell him someone was interested in his vehicles, and always eager for an opportunity to show them off, he'd chased me down. I started apologizing for the disturbance but he stopped me and said it had been time for him to wake up anyway because he needed to take his heart medication, and before I could feel bad about that he winked and told me his heart medication consisted of gin and tonic.

I learned quite a bit about Ralph over the next ten minutes. He is 87 years old, which he said was a good age because when you're older than everyone else, you have more stories to tell than everyone else. He also still keeps plenty active. It wasn't even until the last couple of years that he'd begun to slow down with his work, which at the mention of his eyes lit up and he told me I had to come see his collection of vehicles there.

Starting to feel like I was intruding I hinted at the two hour drive still waiting for me, but Ralph wouldn't hear of it. Next thing I knew I was following him up a long dirt road to a massive sawmill, which I soon found out was the family business. The place was enormous but he didn't want to talk about that, instead he led me behind one of the buildings and to the third installment of his car collection.

In addition to being strewn throughout the weeds, many of the vehicles were inside and protected from the elements. My favorites were these trucks equipped with tank treads, and I enjoyed listening to him tell me the history of these and others I pointed out.

By now I'd given up any hope of making it home on time, so back to the house we went where Ruth joined us in the driveway and we stood around talking like old friends. It was then that I learned the two of them had celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary just the day before. Ralph marveled at how they'd managed to stay married for all those years, and Ruth laughed that yeah, and most of them were even happy ones. He pointed to the house up the road and told me that's where he was born and raised. After a moments thought he reckoned he didn't travel all that far in life, but he followed this up by saying he always enjoyed himself, and by that account he imagined he did alright. I agreed one hundred percent, and had we been enjoying some of his heart medication at that point, we would have clinked glasses.

Talk eventually came back around to his cars again, and I had to pry just a little. Where did they all come from, and what was he doing with them? Ralph is a collector, and although he still buys and sells them from time to time, from what I could tell he isn't in it for money, he simply enjoys being able to look out at his treasures. This led to him telling me a story that turned out not just to be my favorite one of the day, but probably of recent memory.

Not everyone enjoyed his cars as much as Ralph did, and many years ago he received a letter from the town demanding he clean up his illegal junkyard. Well first of all, Ralph didn't consider his collection a "junkyard", and second of all, he didn't want to clean it up. He liked it just the way it was, where he and other people could see it. So he found a lawyer in Claremont who said to give him a check for $100 (a fee that gives me a pretty good idea of how long ago this story took place) and that he'd never have to worry about cleaning his cars again. Ralph wrote him the check, and he waited.

Soon after a letter arrived in the mail, and upon opening it he learned that the lawyer had registered his garage, his barn, and all of his cars as an official museum. The Beryl Mountain Museum.

And the lawyer was right. With this designation, his dozens of vehicles have forever remained protected from harassment by town officials, some of whom just don't have the same eye for beauty that people like Ralph or I have.

The Beryl Mountain Museum can be found at the intersection of Beryl Mountain Road and Saw Mill Road, in Acworth New Hampshire

Abandoned Gold Mine in Grafton County

It's times like these I feel the most alive. The sun was shining, the breeze was warm but not hot, and I overlooked a beautiful river that would have been right at home on the back of a postcard. I had arrived in the mountains of New Hampshire armed with a single paragraph of directions, and I had an entire day to see what I could do with them. My goal? An abandoned gold mine said to exist somewhere along this river.

As I gathered supplies from my car, an elderly man approached and commented what a beautiful area this was. The only trick would be the twenty-foot, nearly straight down embankment required to reach the water, which if the gentleman before me had climbed would have been nothing short of remarkable. My guess is that he'd been admiring the river from on high. We chatted a bit, then he went off to search for some falls he thought might exist a mile or so downriver. Just two adventurers whose paths had momentarily crossed - a good omen to start my day if ever there was one.

My own adventure had started with finding a road that crossed this river, and from that intersection following the river upstream until finding the mineshaft in the side of a cliff. The road was not given by name, but of all the roads that intersected this river I was confident enough I'd chosen the right one to make the hour and a half drive north. And although my research described the mine as being a hundred yards upriver from the bridge, knowing how these things work I was prepared to travel for several hundred yards to look for it, and in both directions.

I navigated the steep drop to the water and soon began what I'll call the wild goose chase part of my search. After rock-jumping upstream a hundred yards and finding nothing, I thought possibly the tunnel was tucked back a little ways in the woods, so I retraced my steps, climbed the far side embankment and started bushwhacking.

The great thing about wandering aimlessly through the woods is that you never know what you'll stumble across, and today I found this abandoned satellite dish that had long since lost its battle with the brush. For any of you born after 1990, you have no idea how popular this would have made me if our family had owned one of these growing up.

I didn't find anything else of interest, but because the steep embankment had turned into a full-fledged cliff I was forced to continue upriver for several hundred yards before finding a way down to the water, which meant I would now be backtracking downstream. This river is anything but boring at least, and even had I not been hunting for a mineshaft it would have been a worthwhile trip, simply for all the wonderful pools and waterfalls.

And it was along this downstream excursion that I struck my own version of gold, spotting the opening of the gold mine across the river and at the base of a cliff, as promised. Even though the location of it wasn't very accurate, the description was spot on.

My problem now was, back in the shallower water upstream, I had wandered back to my original side of the river, and the mineshaft was on the far side. It was also flanked by a waterfall on one side and a pool on the other, two barriers no normal person would attempt to navigate. Fortunately that's not a category I fall into, and after slowly scaling the top of the falls I made it to the entrance with 50% of my feet still dry.

Into the tunnel I went, moving slowly not only so that I didn't miss anything, but so I could stop every few steps and listen, making sure I wasn't waking anyone that wasn't in the mood for company. Before long the entrance curved to the left and I began losing sunlight.

Then I came to something I don't see too much of in our New Hampshire mineshafts; an intersection. Usually these turn out to be quick dead ends where one direction was abandoned in favor of another, but I actually had a decision to make here. I chose left.

As I followed my beam of light I cannot remember if I could still hear the waterfall, but I do remember how cut off I felt from the world, and how creepy it was. With my flashlight off it was the kind of darkness where you could wait for an hour and your eyes still wouldn't have anything to adjust to. If I'd been with friends this would have been a raucous old time, but alone it was a nerve-wracking, jump-at-every-sound kind of journey. There was no turning back now though, so like a kid who stayed out too late and has no choice but to walk home in the dark, I walked through my nervousness and right to the end of this tunnel.

Before backtracking to next see what the right hand turn was all about, I left a little memento in the wall. Someday someone's going to come across one of these coins I'm always leaving behind, and they're going to know I was the one to put it there and will write to tell me they found it. I hope.

Back to the intersection where I took the right this time, and this direction continued maybe twenty feet before winding left and coming to a halt. At this dead end someone had left a little memento of their own, in the form of several empty beer cans. I cursed the hooligans that may all their future beers be flat, and made a mental note to bring a trash bag next time I visited here.

I'd seen everything this mineshaft had to offer now, and roughly speaking the entire thing was shaped like a drunken capital T. Back down the main tunnel I retreated and was soon standing in the warm sunlight once again.

My original research telling me to travel 100 yards upriver came from a geological study done in the 1950's, but oh those tricksters from a half-century ago. Google Maps later confirmed it was 587 feet as the crow flies to reach the mineshaft, and adding the twists and turns of the river the distance was more than double what they'd promised from start to finish. A bit off, but certainly not the hardest place I've ever had to search out.

I used to be a semi-serious runner until learning I was a 40 year old man equipped with an 80 year old's joints, and one of the things I miss most about those days was coming home with a runners high. No matter how miserable a day I was having, by the time I'd finished my evening run it was impossible to be in a bad mood. In many ways exploring has filled that void for me. By combining the physical aspect of hiking with the mental aspect of exploring all these wonderful and sometimes creepy places, I come home with as many feel-good endorphins running through me as I did with my longest runs. Only difference is, instead of basking in that feeling on my back deck with a beer, I'm now basking in it on my drive home, sorting blog notes in my head while trying to out-sing whatever Toby Keith song I have blaring on the radio, often forgetting that other drivers might actually be watching my goofiness.

So, if you're ever driving along our New Hampshire highways and see a bald guy in a black Jeep, singing like a fool and looking a little bit too high on life, you just might be witnessing the origins of a future blog post.

Blood Mountain Plane Crash Wreckage, Newbury NH

Pilot error is the probable cause of a 1949 single engine plane crash on Blood Mountain in Newbury New Hampshire. As with several other crash sites deep within our mountains, the body was removed but the wreckage remains, and if you ever make the journey to one of these spots, you'll understand why this is a practical decision.

Our expedition to this crash site was a classic case of don't believe everything you read online. Described as a 1.25 mile hike, our directions said to follow a logging road up the mountain until reaching the spot, insinuating that the road led directly to the wreckage and we were facing 2.5 miles round trip over something casual enough my Jeep could crawl up it.

We found the logging road at the base of the mountain, and although it seemed headed in the wrong direction, a helpful bear hunter showed us on his map how it eventually curved uphill and toward the peak. So far so good, and we crossed this small bridge over Blood Brook to begin our journey.

The logging road was an enjoyable hike that got us halfway up the mountain, but then it continued east when my GPS insisted we needed to turn south, and there was not a southern trail to be found. It also insisted that the crash zone was still almost a mile away. No matter how many times I re-positioned it the answer came back the same, so ignoring my wife's reminder that this was supposed to be an easy hike (a reminder punctuated by her patented stink-eye), I announced that it was time to begin our bushwhack.

Into the thicket we went, and although I had to endure more pestering of are we there yet than during the last family drive to North Carolina, thirty minutes later we found the wreckage. So much for the promise of 2.5 miles by dirt road though, by the time we trudged out of the woods later that day we had logged over 5 miles on foot, with a good portion of it bushwhacking.

Accounts I've read say the engine was thrown clear of the plane's carcass on impact, so we split into two directions with me searching for the engine. As a non-mechanic who rarely ventures beyond the yellow-capped items beneath my hood, I still assumed that what I was looking for would look like a big car engine and I'd know the thing when I saw it. Although I didn't find quite what I imagined I would, I came across this spiral armed thing that I believe to at least be part of it.

We also found that, through either the force of the crash or 70 years of growth, some of the plane's debris is actually embedded in surrounding trees.

The fuselage rests downhill from the engine, still possessing enough resemblance to a plane to give me pause, reminding me that this was an area of great tragedy.

I sometimes worry that there's a fine line between visiting a plane crash site to respectfully view the wreckage and learn about the victims, or just being a big old looky-loo. Maybe it's just something each person has to decide for themselves, but I feel comfortable that we fall into the former category and not the latter.

Soon it was time to leave, but rather than being daunted by the treacherous return hike, I attacked the thick brush with raised spirits, happy that our group of friends was able to be out here on this beautiful day, enjoying nature and each others company, and feeling fortunate knowing we'd still have countless more opportunities like this in our future.

Related Links:
http://www.soonipi.com/crash.html - Sunapee Mountain Plane Crash Remembered