I had though I had driven across New Market Gap on the East Lee Highway when I was in Virignia but I have not. It looks like it's a good place to find a lot of hairpin burns and congested highways between Luray and New Market.
Poke-O-Moonshine Fire Tower is located 2,161 feet above sea level and offers sweeping views of Northern Adirondacks and Lake Champlain Valley includes points as far north as Chazy, and south to the High Peaks of the Adirondacks.
There are two ways up Poke-o-Moonshine. The most common way nowadays is the 2.5 mile old woods road, that provide a quiet, modestly steep way up the mountain. The other way from the former Poke-O-Moonshine Campground is a 1.2 mile steep and eroded footpath.
People, especially the older generation, complain about the dirty, dangerous smell of cannabis. They associate it with the smell of crime, which until recently it was. I think it’s kind of ironic, because once you smoke it and learn about the terpenes, you actually get to like the rich, pungent smell and all of the various components. I smelled some pot somebody was smoking on a patio outside of Canajahorie. It’s just one of many of smells of rural countryside these days. One, while pungent, you can learn to really enjoy.
Riding out from the village, you could smell the diesel smoke from a coal rolling pickup — the hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide and distinctively pungent smell.. Maybe not the best for air quality, especially in crowded urban areas with thousands of trucks and cars, but here in the sticks, it doesn’t really matter. I am reminded of my parent’s neighbor with their big jacked up diesel with “Diesel Makes Me Horny”. Diesel, especially when it’s pumped and burned incomplete in old tractors, trucks, and coal rollers definitely in pungent.
RIding along, I passed Friers’ Dairy, with the house high on the ledge overlooking the Mohawk River and , where “Northview Diary” comes from. You could smell the cows, and the hay and silage even if they aren’t an active dairy anymore. It’s always interesting to take in the terpenes from a passing farm, noticing the smell of the silage, especially in the fall, along with the unique smells of hay and grain. And the tangy sent of manure and the honey wagon and spreader come the autumn through the spring time. Whatever you think of the cow smell, it’s what makes all those delicious dairy products from ice cream to milk and cheese. The raw ingredients might be pungent but the ends are so good.
Riding along, I was brought along the old Canajahoharie and later MOSA Landfill, which is located in a former gravel pit probably dating from the era-of-the Thruway. Or maybe the hill was mined earlier. The landfilll, capped but unlined is leaking reddish iron-bacteria leachate into puddles along the Canalway trail. They have an active transfer station that smells like garbage, or sometimes what you smell in the supermarket when they have rotting food or garbage in the back. Not real pungent, almost sickley sweet. Not unlike the smell of the County Waste Material Recovery Facility when I pass it by riding in. I compost and burn my garbage, but still it’s not an unfamiliar smell. I get it people have to get of garbage can’t burn everything. But I would try hard to compost more and feed the land.
Riding further along, passing a farm or rural house somewhere on the cliff above, smelled the ever pungent smell of a burning barrel. Might be illegal these days, but they definately had something plasticky on fire. I guess it’s better then the landfill, though if I was to burn that kind of thing, I would make sure to burn it good and hot, so it doesn’t stink. Smelled different though then at burn barrel I smelled in Pennsylvania. I breathed in, and could imagine the plastic wrappers, plastic milk bottles, junk mail and cardboard burning off. But people have trash to get of and at least it’s not going to the landfill.
Riding past a homestead along the trail I could smell the pungency of a male buck goat, certainly spraying their beard with urine. Then a passed the pig pen. Now that was pungent. But who doesn’t bacon and goat meat? I’m sure the pigs not only are eating grain but also recycling waste food and other slop. Goats are chewing away from at the brush, turning it into healthy eats and rich manured soil for growing other crops. Good things can be pungent!
All of it just part of the landscape, you kind of get used to it. But then again, I work next to the city composting plant and North Albany Sewage Treatment Plant, so I’m used to sometimes pungent odors. Composting and keeping the river clean from poop and chemicals. But sometimes, much like cannabis, it’s worthwhile to breathe in the pungent air of the countryside, think about it a bit.
