It’s gotten cold way too fast. After a strangely temperate, muggy fall, New England has plunged into the darkness of northern winter and I’m not the only creature around here struggling with the sudden temperature drop. Cold-stunned sea turtles are currently getting stranded and rescued along Cape Cod. This happens every year. Sea turtles have a tough time finding food in frigid water. Throw in a case of hypothermia and a turtle can come down with maladies like pneumonia. But the warmer fall delayed the start of this alarming seasonal event, and just like the abrupt transition into winter, the sea turtle strandings have suddenly skyrocketed. Thankfully, they’re being treated at the New England Aquarium’s turtle hospital in Quincy, but I think I speak for many New Englanders when I say, “We feel you, friends. Solidarity. On a half shell.”
Outdoor swimming is out of the question—unless you’re my dad and you like jumping into a water source each month of the year, snow or shine, chasing after that Finnish childhood you never had. But where do you go hiking when you haven’t adjusted to the winter air yet? When your nostrils are alternately dried out or runny, and your body is shuddering so much that you can’t tell if you’re getting sick or discovering that your fancy new micro-puff jacket offers micro-insulation. The way I see it, you’ve got two choices. You flee the winter by traveling to a warm locale, or you can embrace the seasonal changeover by taking a hike someplace that conjures warm memories.
These memories can be your own. Or you can just steal them from other people.
Last week, while returning to Boston from a sleepover with friends near the the south edge of the Berkshires, I took a scenic detour into the Litchfield Hills of northwestern Connecticut. My initial stop here was a gargantuan cascade called Campbell Falls, which literally spills over the Massachusetts state line into the Nutmeg State. But as I headed south toward Route 44, I began seeing signs for something called “Beckley Iron Furnace.” My fingers were still thawing after snapping pictures of the waterfall and my car heating system was takings its time. An iron furnace sounded lovely. I wasn’t quite sure what an iron furnace was, but I assumed there would be fire and radiant heat. So I went west and entered the gates of Beckley Iron Furnace State Park.
This is what greeted me.
As it turns out, an iron furnace is exactly what it sounds like. A stone or clay furnace in which workers would smelt freshly-mined iron ore into something more malleable that you could shape into cutlery, building tools, weapons, or other iron products. Beckley Iron Furnace is one of a handful of surviving iron furnaces in the U.S. These structures speckled the hills of New England and the east coast in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
How did they work? You’d start by picking a place for your furnace that was close to an iron ore deposit—ideally with an onsite water source. Each furnace would have a hydro-powered wheel for circulating fresh air in the building. This, along with a steady diet of timber wood, would allow you to light an inferno within the furnace, which you would pay workers to constantly maintain. (Yes, we are assuming that you’re a deep pocketed businessperson.) The resultant hub of skin-scorching red-hot charcoal was used to break down the iron ore, for which demand was soaring—to the point where a single iron furnace could be the economic fertilizer for a full-blown town. Villages that began as iron furnace workforce housing became viable, often thriving communities.
But the iron furnace went the way of the dinosaurs amid the growth of U.S. railroads in the 19th Century. Due to their rural nature—the necessity of being built close to iron deposits in the backcountry—many iron furnaces were a considerable distance from the rail lines and thus, iron product would have to be transported to railway pickup areas by oxen: a physically brutal and expensive ordeal that ultimately wasn’t worth it.
Ecologically speaking, the decline of iron furnaces was a blessing for local flora and fauna. The environmental impact of iron furnaces would be horrifying for a modern American hiker to behold. The hills surrounding an iron furnace were often stripped of their trees to create more fuel for the flames—not unlike the way Saruman logged the forest surrounding his wizard tower to build a furnace and create weapons for the dark lord Sauron in Lord of the Rings. (I’m in awe of J.R.R. Tolkien’s self-confidence in naming his two big bad guys “Sauruman” and “Sauron” and not caring if readers found this confusing.) But the image of a glowing furnace nestled deep in the countryside is Tolkienesque in a positive sense too. It conjures memories of an era when people had a closer relationship with the land. It may have been a toxic relationship, given the way Americans pillaged America’s natural resources in the name of capital. But the idea of getting to spend time working outdoors can feel novel in out fluorescently-lit present.
While you can’t hike to the Beckley Iron Furnace or most of the surviving iron furnaces that have since been converted into historic preservation sites, you can begin a hike up nearby Bradford Mountain from the Beckley site. After admiring the stone furnace and trying to imagine tending to the bellows within, flames licking your whiskers, your fingertips numb from the nerve endings being singed off by earlier close encounters with the charcoal, I wandered up the Iron Mountain Trail, halfheartedly wondering if I might push through the freezing temperatures and reach the summit. The mountain was still snowless. Somehow, I managed to borrow the memories of the iron furnace workers, toiling in sweat-stained rags that would freeze as they stepped outside into the subzero midnight air for a break, poised between heat exhaustion and choking on soot. This unearned nostalgia imbued me with a warming glow that kept the cold-
I’m just kidding. I was still fucking freezing. The hike lasted all of 15 minutes (8 of which were spent running back to my car.) Picturing the Beckley Iron Furnace aglow with charcoal failed to make the winter climate more physically endurable. But it did make me long for something that hasn’t yet been realized. A version of life in which more people can have regular contact with the outdoors through their livelihoods: a non-extractive partnership with places like the Litchfield Hills or any of New England nooks where old iron furnace remain (see the list at the end of this newsletter for a few additional furnaces scattered across the region.) Maybe the creation of a civilian climate corps could make this possible. I imagine many Americans would be drawn to good climate-adjacent jobs that necessitated time in the woods, mountains, marshes, and beaches of New England. What about you? Would you venture out there for work?
THE RUNDOWN (four New England iron furnaces to check out)
Beckley Iron Furnace
East Canaan, CT
Nearby hike: Bradford Mountain via Iron Mountain Trail
Click here for a Google Map of the furnace
Besaw Iron Furnace
Franconia, NH
Nearby hike: Bridal Veil Falls
Click here for a Google Map of the furnace
Katahdin Iron Works
Brownville, ME
Nearby hike: Gulf Hagas
Click here for a Google Map of the furnace
Kent Iron Furnace
Kent, CT
Nearby hike: Glacier Rock via the Appalachian Trail
Click here for a Google Map of the furnace
Question for all of you: Would you be interested in a roundup of unconventional hiking gear that can spare you a lot of hassle in the backcountry? Stuff that you’re not going to find in the aisles of REI? I try to keep gear endorsements to a minimum, given how much of outdoor media is persuasion to buy lots of expensive stuff (most of which you don’t really need for enjoying the outdoors safely and responsibly.) If you’d like to read an unusual hiking gear list in a future newsletter issue—based on my outdoor experiences—shoot me an email by replying to this one, or leave a comment below.
You know cranberry bogs? The mythical wetlands from which every New Englander’s favorite Thanksgiving berry is harvested? One of them is swallowing Amazon delivery vans! On Sunday night, another van got stuck in a Duxbury cranberry bog. Local cops were able to get the van dislodged and the bog itself suffered minimal impact. But for some reason, Google Maps has been sending drivers straight into this bog. This isn’t the first time that a delivery van has gotten partially eaten by the cranberry bog. I don’t really have a bigger point here, other than this: listen to your gut if the road in front of you looks dodgy and Google Maps orders you to take it. This summer, while hiking in the Mahoosuc Range of Maine, Google Maps instructed me to drive across a wooden bridge that was literally splintering in places. (I’m embarrassed to say that I obeyed.)



Finally, I’m pleased to report that my new book Moon New England Road Trip hit indie bookstores and online retailers last week! I’m already hitting up some of the stores in Boston to sign copies. (You can grab them at Brookline Booksmith this weekend.) I’m also going to be planning some author events in 2022, once we have a better grasp of how Pandemic Winter #2 is going to play out, and whether the Omicron variant is likely to be a game changer.