Brings me back to my younger years. The Plymouth Sundance and later the little Ford Ranger exploring these back roads. Singing along with Jim Croce’s I’ve Got a Name and the Easy Rider sound track in my Plymouth Sundance played through a big black audio tape recorder and an FM modulator as that car lacked a tape deck much less a CD player. Crazy shit like taking my on that road covered with ice and snow, but my little 4×4 was pretty good in the snow except the few times I deep centered it. I don’t do shit like that anymore.
In my younger years I spent many an evening after work and college exploring the back roads. I told myself in search of freedom, whatever that I meant. I wanted a mental map of all the farms and backwoods homesteads with blackened burn barrels in hope of smelling a little bit of burnt plastic or better yet a rip roaring fire, maybe with a little pungent black smoke as those Styrofoam egg trays, plastic bags and paper plates burned on up. But also I wanted to see those deep rural homesteads with the deer hung out, dressed each October or November, a few goats and hogs penned up, or a working dairy – the small tie stall grazing kind in the hills – were people scrapped together a living from manure spread with an open cab tractor and milk. Those were the best to find a blackened and often smoldering burn barrel at too.
In later years it also was a search for roadside campsites at state forests in my pickup, some designated and otherwise. So many rough dirt roads to explore in that little Ford Ranger. And wildlife. Deer. Turkey. Grouse. Shit when you are walking in the rough country and accidentally flush one out, I almost shit my pants in shock. But more than anything for that deep rural freedom. The deep hollows and mountain vistas. The woods and hard scrabble farms. In many ways the freedom to burn – even stinky garbage – was all wrapped up in that. They never allowed any of that in the more civilized and urban areas. I would with my little Ford Ranger pickup drive those dirt trails, just to see where they lead and because it was easy to back up and turn around should the road be too rough for a stock 4×4. Many of those trails were destroyed if not deeply eroded for a stock Ford Ranger after Hurricane Irene – and lately the DEC has gated and posted more and more of them as No Motor Vehicles due to lack of maintenance and damage by ATVs.
In my younger years, when I was hanging out and exploring Kenyen Road, a land owner up that way approached me and asked if I was interested in buying land along the road. It’s not that I didn’t have an eye on this rural road, I walked it and explored it. In recent years, some of then abandoned farm land has sprouted houses. Indeed, more recently two roads over a somewhat run down hunting cabin on ten acres that I immediately fell in love with went up for sale for only $90k but I passed on looking at it at 37 miles and 45 minutes from work, including a very steep rough dirt road to get up to it.
It was so perfect except for being in New York State with the burn ban, SAFE Act 2.0 and so far from work with the mandatory five day in office crap except when it’s not. But the gas would add up and I might have to still maintain an apartment in the city for work in bad winter weather – and how to take care of livestock them. Remote enough though I probably still could have campfires and bonfires for the burnable debris and avoid sending it to the landfill during the summer months. Just roasting some sticks, junk mail, and maybe that occasional wrapper or bottle from the day or two – I don’t eat a lot of packaged food and with a homestead I’d certainly have even less that couldn’t feed the hogs or compost pile. Maybe I should have scheduled a tour – it sat on the market for some time as it’s mostly hunters and folks like me who seek out such a property. It also was grid tied too which I did not like at all as it’s not easy to disconnect an existing structure from the grid.
I do so love the country up this way but my time spent in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and even rural Maryland has shown me deep rural exists outside of New York State and while West Virginia has burn laws, Maryland and especially Pennsylvania are super relaxed out in the sticks. Gun laws outside of Maryland are good but Pennsylvania gets werid and restrictive with a lot of random shit like their liquor laws and no legal cannabis. Pretty country though up this way with the Blackhead Mountains and the deep hollars in hills in all other directions.
With my big jacked up truck with it’s heavy fuel consumption and not all that nimble on off-road trails it’s rare I’ve driven many in recent years. Trust me, a full size truck even with a lift kit is shit on the trails and a major pain to back any distance. Then the DEC designated all the campsites for a while at Rennselaerville State Forest camping by permit only. After Camp Cass closed, the moved the Park Rangers training area up here, so I figured it’s not worth it with so many other places to camp. So I stayed away until those restrictions were dropped except for hiking and skiing until after the pandemic when the permit requirement or at least the signs disappeared and were not replaced by the department.
Early spring signs in Upstate NY include the shrill calls of peepers, drumming ruffed grouse, and migrating robins or red-winged blackbirds returning. On the forest floor, skunk cabbage emerges through snow, followed by bloodroot and trailing arbutus, while red maples show red buds.
Woodland Flora and Fauna
Skunk Cabbage: One of the first signs in wet woods, producing its own heat to melt surrounding snow.
Wildflowers: Early bloomers include Bloodroot (white petals) and Coltsfoot (yellow, dandy-lion like, along road ditches). Later, Red Trillium, Trout Lily, and Spring Beauties emerge.
Amphibians: Spring peepers (tiny frogs) and salamanders move to vernal pools to breed.
Trees: Red maple branches become visibly reddish due to budding, and willow catkins appear.
Auditory and Visual Cues
Birdsong: Red-winged blackbirds, robins, and bluebirds are seen and heard, and woodpeckers begin drumming.
Wildlife Activity: Ruffed grouse “drum” by beating their wings to create a vacuum noise.
Environmental Changes: Streams and ponds thaw, snow melts around tree bases, and the smell of wet earth emerges.
Insert pregnant man emoji here. I had to giggle a bit when I saw that ad the other day after I rode my mountain bike up the State Street Hill from the suburban office in Menands to the Alfred E Smith Building and hiked up 17 flights of stairs prior to the the Friday meeting, then rode my bike home.
Oh, Oh, Ozempic the Advertisers Sing, 🎶 and I don’t even own a color television and I know the marketing slogan to morbidly obese who spend their time eating Cheesy Burgers 🍔 while watching the Boob. 📺 Or internet at home, the last time I brought my laptop home was sometime in January. 🌬️ With that wind today and snow squall I’m not sure if I am going anywhere today, I might put off going to Wally World until tomorrow, or maybe I’ll just wait until later on, ride out to Schiffendecker Preserve, 🐸 then shop and be home before dark. In evening around 6 PM, Wally World tends to be a lot quieter. Mostly I want to get lemons, 🍋 as I was inspired by lemon Mom gave me other day for chopping up and using in blueberry pancakes.
But mostly it’s just a quiet 🤫 somewhat stoned Saturday, 🪨😁 reading and studying the newspapers about the smelly trash fire known as the Middle East 🗞️ and watching the YouTube. And maybe pushing through some more of the library books. Trust me, I know about stinky trash fires, as there is been many years I’ve gone to transfer station once a year. 🗑️ I am refusing to turn the heat back on my apartment but I did have the space heater out a little to warm my hands and certainly used my electric blanket a bit last night. Maybe tonight I’ll turn the heat to prevent the pipes to get from too cold, though I’m not sure there is much risk at this point of the year. I just want the days to return when I can have the window open and enjoy the fresh air. 🪟 I should be studying trucks and making my next move, as I will be pretty busy on Monday, but I am kind of undecided and feel like much less of rush as I watch the Iran 🇮🇷 situation play out. Do I really want ginormous Godzilla truck 🐲 ? And I can’t imagine them flying off dealer lots.
Honestly, if gas is going to be $5 or $6 a gallon, maybe this is not the year to be planning to drive out to Michigan in an HD truck. 🏕️ I’m not saying, not to buy the HD truck, ⛽ but maybe I would just have just as much if I disappeared for the week to the Green Mountains, in my nice new camping rig, and just hung out, read books and relaxed. 📚 Really need like a week and half for a good Michigan trip, and I don’t want to deal with a lot of work crap while I’m on vacation, so maybe this is best done in 2027. Though, I do worry the time to get away is getting short with my parents getting old, and I’m not sure that I won’t be tied down with responsibilities much too soon. Trick is to find some place with cell service for streaming media on my phone, 📱 a quiet place within a short bike ride from swimming hole. That could be a good summer vacation without burning too much gas. I don’t think I want to Finger Lakes again this year, though I guess that option but I didn’t get a state parks pass this year. 💳
I get tired of the endless advertising and posts that tell you how foolish renting is and how it’s better to be in hock to a bank then a landlord because in a few decades you’ll have some equity in a dumpy old house that you still have to pay property taxes on or the government will seize it. Advocates for home ownership seem to always forget the high cost of commuting in an automobile compared to a bus or bicycle, not to mention all the costs of building and yard maintenance. Or the cost of electricity to light and gas to heat a vast space. Or the endless appliances, carpet, roofs, windows you have to go through as a homeowner. Or the furniture you need to buy. I hate those plush sofas and EZ-Chairs that you see in so many houses covered with cat hair overlooking the 900 foot wide smarty televisions connected to internet. All shit you have to buy as a suburbanite house owner.
Mortgage companies always like to promote their options and assistance for those needing help with a down payment. You shouldn’t worry if you don’t have enough cash up front. Don’t you know renters are super poor, depsrate people. But that’s certainly not my problem. I could buy with cash today if I wanted to pay the Capital Gains tax. A lot of off gridders are quite poor, the emphasis seems to be on cheap rural land and the affordability of building a small cabin. Don’t you know if you build a small cabin by hand, you could have something for under $10k. Framing ain’t that hard, and if it’s not perfect, if it keeps you dry and warm, you can survive. But for me that’s not the issue, I make a good salary at my position and have been saving and investing for decades now. If I wanted to build something fancy, I probably could, especially if my savings and investments continue to grow over the next decade.
Maybe my adverision to homeownership is purely that I can’t move out to country and have a burn barrel and burn a lot of stinky plastic trash without having the cops up my ass. Or that I can’t just walk into a store or garage sale and buy a handgun that I can shoot at targets off my back porch. Or that I have to comply with building and health codes, which are pre-supposed to prefer landfilling over anything else. But I actually think it’s more then that – I don’t want to be tied down to New York State – and I want something simpler close to a hunting cabin on acerage in a small rural area, far away from any big city. Where nobody is going to care, where I can live my life without all the gadgets that constantly wear out and need hauling to landfill and replacement like is common in the typical suburban house climate control and flush toilets and sinks. I don’t want to have to deal with constantly handing big wads of cash to plumbers and mechanics, nor do I want to spend my weekends messing with a lawnmower engine, cutting grass and painting walls.
But maybe I am a bit jealous of my friends and colleagues who do have homesteads out in the country, or those celebrating their first home purchase, but I just can’t my find myself committing to New York State like that.. I want to get out, to wider open spaces, maybe not next week but I want to keep my options open especially when early retirement is an option less then 13 years away at this point. Which is not a long time – Big Red just turned 13 1/2 years old – and it seems like yesterday when I got that truck new. I guess to reject the dream of the suburban single family house in favor of a hand-built shack on acerage in a deep rural area of a freer state is just a sign of my severe mental illness.
