Willimantic, Now & Then
We came to love the Benton Museum, the enormous buildings with the elevators and upper floor windows looking out on the beautiful, pastoral campus. We loved the food wagon and all the little signs telling us what kind of tree we were looking at.
And we loved the Fenton River and the Nipmuc Trail. I grew up in the country, with the Leadmine Brook running through our front yard. I think I spent as much time in that stream and the hemlocks and mountain laurel that grew around it as I did in my bedroom.
By Mark Svetz
WILLIMANTIC –May 2009
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The Fenton River: Memory Trail Through the Woods
It was one of those “Once in a Lifetime” opportunities. And, as is so often the case, I was too busy living it to really take proper note of the events at the time.
For more than 30 years, you see, I have been reliving those moments, returning to this place in my mind, nurturing the feelings that were so important to me the first time around. The stretch of the Fenton River, between Old Turnpike and Gurleyville Road, has played a central role in the mythology of my life.
On one of those warm days near the end of March this year, my now-grown son, Gregory, and I went for a walk in the woods. We went to Old Turnpike and the Fenton River.
I first arrived in Eastern Connecticut in the fall of 1972. I was in my early 20s, and Gregory was a toddler. And he toddled with me on the Nipmuc Trail along that stretch of the Fenton River.
It is hard to imagine myself in those times. I was so excited and full of the great adventure of leaving my hometown to attend the University of Connecticut. Every thing about that was unexpected, exciting and full of promise: Moving away from Torrington; attending University; sharing my life with this beautiful, young child.
It was almost as though I couldn’t get enough of any of those things; I wanted to enjoy it all to the fullest. Gregory used to come with me to class, and we would spend the time between classes clambering over the trees, walls, bushes and streams on campus and in the vicinity.
Gregory, who has thrived in Manhattan for the last 20 years, thinks of the UConn campus as his first “urban” experience. I still remember how disappointed he was on our first trip to Storrs: “But where’re all the stores?” he asked. Sniffling just a little.
The Fenton River was like returning to my own childhood, and here I was enjoying it with my own son on my shoulders. On this recent walk along the river, Gregory started out with his own memories of the marshy land along the trail where, early in the spring, the brown, grey and black left over from winter was just beginning to be broken up with the bright green moss and other marshy plants. Gregory remembered there was a marshy area with open water and hummocks of grass just around the bend in the trail.
I remember sitting quietly in the woods, off the trail, listening to the rustling leaves as a flock of turkeys approached, “grazing” thought the underbrush. Gregory and I sat quietly as the turkeys scratched and pecked so close to us we might have touched them. That was the Fenton River, but the way the turkeys came up from the stream bed, emerging from the hemlock and laurel thickets to the relatively open forest on the little knoll where we waited, it might have been the Leadmine Brook of my childhood.
In our present-day walk, we came to the bend in the Fenton River, where there has been a campfire ring as long as I can remember. Gregory recalled us sitting there, pretending it would be our home someday, as soon as we cut the trees for the cabin. We used to throw sticks in the water, and then chase them around the bend, trying to get them before they got lost in the deadfall logjam.
Just downstream from that bend, there is now a dead hemlock trunk that I could swear has been clawed by a black bear. It sure reminds me of a tree I once saw in the Catskill Mountains. At that time, an old friend of my father’s – a trapper and hunter – told me it was a “bear tree.” When I showed it to Gregory, it seemed to complete a circle for me.
There is still the section of the trail that is on the steep bank of the river. The trail is narrow, with a drop of maybe 10 or 15 feet, down to the stream. The footing was uncertain at times, and I remember sliding down that bank, ending up – you guessed it – in the river with wet shoes and muddy pants.
This little stretch of river and trail has been part of my life throughout the years I have lived in Eastern Connecticut. I have walked there with many friends and a few lovers over the years. Once I dated someone who lived on Old Turnpike. I “commuted” by walking down this trail and up over Horsebarn Hill to catch the bus from UConn into Willimantic.
I have sat on the banks of this stream, suffering the pain of one breakup or another, lost jobs, missed opportunities, deaths and other tragedies in my life. And always, the gentle waters and soft rustling of the forest have consoled me. Somehow, this precious spot on this beautiful planet, has always given me the strength to get back to my life and pick up where I left off.
It was to this trail I brought my pain when we found out Sarah had MS. I thought if I prayed fervently enough in this sacred spot, I could help her cure herself. On that occasion, I lost our wedding ring and came back the next day to find it in the snow. Surely this is a place I could commune with the earth. I don’t know about cures, but our love has only grown since that time.
I am not a religious man, but this spot is somehow at the spiritual center of my life. It is here, in this cathedral of hemlock and oak, that I have found peace and strength.
This path in the woods along a stream, is one of the places that my world starts to make sense. As my life moves inexorably toward its conclusion, I will return to these spots whenever I can.
Mark Svetz and Sarah Winter own Clothworks, a shop on Church Street in Downtown Willimantic, where they make and sell clothing and bags. On their days off, they walk the streams and trails of Eastern Connecticut.
In my memory, our golden retriever loved to splash into that marsh, with Gregory usually trailing right in after her. We often came home with wet shoes and muddy pants, which might have been my childhood as well as Gregory’s.
