For a lot of us, that slow-fade into New England’s long, dark, biting winter is tougher than the winter conditions themselves. One day you were waking up to a warm breeze sneaking in through a screened window and caressing your toes. Or the tree outside your room exploding with shades of bright orange, like the mane of a Troll doll. Now, the sun goes down before 4:30pm, those breaths of air making their way through your windows (which you’ve been meaning to cover in cling-wrap) aren’t so warm anymore, and it’s much harder to persuade your friends to meet for an evening walk, a show, or dinner someplace where they still bring each table a complimentary bread basket.
It’s no wonder that many of us feel a wave of grief, depression, and/or anxiety around this time of the year—even though we know these seasonal hardships will eventually yield winter beauty, a new year, and in a few months’ time, spring. Because we have lost something elemental. We’ve lost the ability to be outside and move around with relative ease. And as much as I like to lean into New England’s culture of deranged meteorological masochism—the idea that within every blizzard or hurricane, there’s something sublime to be appreciated—the truth is that I’ve also been feeling the pre-winter angst lately. Even though there’s a lot in the immediate future that I’m excited about (ex: learning how to properly go winter camping in January), I’ve felt like half of myself these last two weeks. And what I’ve learned from prior early winters is that a reliable tonic for this malaise is going on a good, old, elegiac Stick Season ramble.
We’ve touched on the beauty of Stick Season in this newsletter before. But this year, I wanted to crank things up a notch and seek out a new hike that offered more than just eerie funereal vibes. I wanted the literal centerpiece of this hike to be something that evoked a sense of melancholy, to better reflect what’s internal for so many of us right now. And whenever I’m seeking something weird like this, I invariably return to Little Rhody: a state whose heritage cuisine include cheese-less pizza strips, and whose highest point was once occupied by shotgun-wielding curmudgeon who delighted in scaring hikers away. I knew that within the vast woods of the Ocean State, I could find something tangible that would properly mirror the gloominess of our current moment.
What I found was more ghostly and historically significant than I could have guessed.