I went for a walk today (Thursday). I just had to go outside. I grabbed my camera and started walking down route 79 towards town around 12:10pm. I turned left and walked up Brooktondale Road (heading east) and when I got to Banks Road I looked at Six Mile Creek and the hill and told myself that my goal was to hike to the top of the hill.
My first distraction was to depart the road and check out the creek and the bridge. Under the bridge I found an amazing set of handprints from this past summer and some other white painted graffiti. I watched the water rush by and stopped to see the paw prints in the tiny stones at the shore of the creek.
I hit the road slowly moving south and seeing horse shoe tracks. I was only about a mile or so from my house and I hadn't ever seen any horses in my neighborhood, but there were definitely signs of horses on Banks Road. A little further on I saw why. There were three giant horses in the field behind Brookton Hollow Farm.
I continued my climb up Banks Road to Coddington Road, stopping every so often to listen the the brook that ran paralled to the road and to listen to the grasses as the wind whipped through them.
About halfway up the hill I noticed a hubcap and then four tires in the brook. I looked a little closer around the tires and noticed the legs of a deer. No deer though, just two legs with hooves and about 18 inches of deer leg. I am guessing the deer was hit by a car and the wild animals of the area pulled the deer apart. There wasn't any blood or anything. The whole scene weirded me out, but not enough that I couldn't take a few pictures to show you.
When I got past the tree line to a field I knew immediately I was near a cow pasture. The scent carried by the hilltop wind surrounded me. I pushed on wondering if the thin wire fence on the otherside of the brook was electrified. At the top of the hill I paused to take a few pictures of the valley between Coddington Road and Slaterville Road and noted that my house was not in view. I took a picture of Cornell way off in the distance and then headed back down Banks Road.
At the bottom of the hill I headed east once again towards Besemer Road. Just over another small creek bridge I found the Roe Cemetary. I climbed up the hill on the north side of Brooktondale Road and took pictures of the gravestones and read the dates and ages and poems from the stones.
I continued on my way, turning a sharp left and climbing the small hill to Slaterville Road. Throughout the whole walk I was thinking about a walker in New York City who walked on every road in Manhattan over the course of a year or two. I thought maybe I would start today and see how many roads in Tompkins County I could traverse. So now there will be a new blog topic and I've already created a new flickr account that will document the journey by foot around the county. It may take years, but it will be worth seeing what the county has to offer.
See the pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingtompkins
