The Strangest Farm on Earth
An ode to town pride in Southern NH
In the opening scene of John Wick 3, Keanu Reeves finds himself cornered in the stacks of the New York Public Library by an assassin the size of Nikola Jokić. So what does our man do? He plucks a hardcover book from the nearest shelf and he manages to dispatch the goon with it. This sort of thing recurs throughout the movie. Less than 10 minutes after the opener, Reeves is chased into a horse stable by more henchmen and he gives one of the stallions a slap on the ass—prompting the horse to back-kick one of Reeves’ pursuers right in the kisser (with an audible crunch.) In an interview with the great film critic Mark Kermode, Reeves describes these delectable moments as seizing “Weapons Of Opportunity.” Whatever happens to be on hand.
I like to take this approach to hiking; especially in winter, when biting air and slippery roads impose limitations on where we can roam. If I’m traveling for work and staying at a hotel in some unfamiliar city, I’ll look at Google Maps or AllTrails and search for walkable paths within a one mile radius of the space. And if I’m running a few errands and I have an hour or two of wiggle room—and the hiker’s itch—I’ll do the same thing. Once I find a prospect, be it a full-on park or a designated pedestrian route, I tend to go in blind. Why ruin the surprise of stumbling upon a beautiful ramble? If the hike turns out to be a dud, you can bail without having spent much time and energy. But more often, I’ve found that Hikes Of Opportunity yield odder and beguiling things.
On a crack-your-lips Saturday last January, I drove up to a strip mall in Hudson, New Hampshire to sell an old backpack to somebody from Facebook Marketplace. The motivation for the trip was purely business at first—monetizing something that had been squashed into the back of my closet for a decade. But once I had pocketed the greenbacks, it was only 9:30am. And I felt like kind of a bozo to have driven 43 miles with no plans beyond offloading a backpack. I had crossed into New Hampshire: the goddamn Granite State. I was dressed properly for the punishing winter conditions. And it would have been a waste to have not spent any time poking around outside.
This is how I found Benson Park, a 166-acre wooded recreation zone, located directly across the road from the strip mall. (It was hidden from sight by a row of condos.) As my car crunched into the icy parking lot, which was mostly empty that day, I assumed that I would find the sort of tasteful features that the word “park” usually suggests—wandering paths, stately rows of arbors, and a statue or two. Little did I realize that in fact, I was stepping into a shrine for something much more bizarre. I was about to discover why Benson Park was once referred to as “The Strangest Farm on Earth.”
The story begins with a boy who ran away from home to join the circus. The place was England, the time was the late 19th Century, and the boy was John T. Benson. He worked his way up through the ranks of the big top, from sweeping up peanut shells to training the animals. And after his first tour of the U.S., Benson was able to parlay his circus skills into helping cities plan and set up new zoos; including Boston’s own Franklin Park Zoo! Animal training remained his occupational backbone, and in the early 1920s, Benson made an even savvier career pivot. He found and purchased a large plot of vacant farmland in Hudson, with plans to transform the space into a transitional training ground for wild animals bound for circuses and zoos. And not long after the enclosures had been filled, Benson opened this “farm” to the wider public, who were happy to fork over a few bucks and gawk at the creatures within.
One of the star residents of “Benson’s Wild Animal Farm” was Colossus, a silverback gorilla born in West Africa and weighing in at over 500 pounds. His time at Benson’s started in the 1960s, after the park had changed hands, and because he was the sole gorilla on Benson’s Farm (which would no doubt be considered animal cruelty today), Colossus developed a predilection for humans and the things we do. Legend has it that whenever he wanted a breather from the zoo patrons, Colossus would retire to a little room within his enclosure and watch episodes of “General Hospital” on a TV set that had been installed there. So locally beloved was Colossus that in 1980, the park owners entered him into New Hampshire’s Democratic and Republican primaries. He appeared on both ballots next to Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan before relocating to the Cincinnati Zoo, for what I’m sure was a happier and less public-facing stayover.
Today you can step into Colossus’s old abode. It’s one of several attractions that have been preserved as relics of Benson’s Wild Animal Farm. Others standouts include a large A-Frame structure that once contained a pizza stand, and the “Old Woman in the Shoe”—a bright red house-sized boot that you can step into, Storyland style. The farm suffered a terminal bankruptcy and closed in the late 1980s, after a few decades of declining visitation. For the next several years, the abandoned farm fell into disrepair and became the kind of venue where people gather for nocturnal activities that are spoken about in hushed tones. But the memory of the animals and odd attractions within the farm was embedded enough that community residents eventually joined forces with the Town of Hudson to revive the old farm and rehab it into a consistently walkable, peaceful memento; a window to the laughter and merriment of yesteryear.
One thing is certain. The inherent strangeness of finding a training farm for circus animals in the suburbs of Southern New Hampshire still undergirds Benson Park today. When I entered the snow-encrusted grounds, one of the first things I spotted was an old red ticket booth from the more carnival-esque years. Shortly after, I arrived at a clearing where two steel column loomed high above me. One of them appeared to have been scorched by an inferno, and a nearby plaque explained it all. I had found Benson Park’s 9/11 Memorial—created in the memory of a Hudson resident who had been aboard one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. The charred steel column that I was looking at is a literal steel beam from the WTC, which the Town of Hudson had managed to procure from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It was transported from Queens on the longest flatbed truck available.
Benson Park’s more curious features are concentrated on the northeastern side of the park. Once you amble past a lagoon-like pond near the old A-Frame structure, the manicured parkland transitions to bushier woods, which contain a network of trails with alluring names like “Otter Way” and “Moose Pond Trail.” All of them run through a lovely patchwork of town forest, reedy wetlands, and once you reach higher ground, the occasional meadow. If any denizens of Benson’s Wild Animal Farm were kept up here, you wouldn’t know it today. The densely wooded southern half of Benson Park looks like the sort of sanctuary from which circus and zoo animals were taken. Its inclusion within the park today feels right. Nostalgia and evolution are not binary.
Still, as I crossed into the frozen wetlands—the most beautiful and immersive realm within Benson Park, for my money—I couldn’t help but admire the strength of the local nostalgia that catalyzed this park. Maybe that’s because I live in a city where places we cherish are being sold to corporations. Great Scott, one of Boston’s most beloved indie music venues, is about to be reincarnated as a Taco Bell “Cantina.” In a healthier world, a bunch of us might have our pooled resources together, secured a grant from the City of Boston, and purchased Great Scott from the landlord, so that one of the city’s best concert venues could survive. But to pull off that kind of civic intervention, you need immediate access to capital: access that most of us simply do not have.
For now, the suburbs and rural nooks of America are places where you can still find chirping success stories like the woody rebirth of Benson Park—odes to town pride and resourcefulness, where everyone wins. Residents, visitors, wildlife, and the land.
I drove home grinning. It was a hike of opportunity, in a peculiar park of opportunity.
Benson Park
Hike distance: 1-4 miles, depending on what trails you follow
Elevation gain: 100-400 feet (again, trail-dependent)
CLICK HERE for a trail map
For those of you who also like to reuse disposable water battles—out of thriftiness or the expensive habit of losing more fortified water bottles—I have some tough news. A recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences’ journal found that branded bottled water often contains nanoparticles of plastic that can infiltrate your bloodstream and major organs. I’m not exactly shocked by these findings. At this point, I assume that the average American is composed of 30% corn and at least 3% plastic. But still, we’re only capable of tuning out reality to a certain point, and for me, the publication of this new NAS study marks the end of my reusing SmartWater and Gatorade bottles on hikes. We’ll just have to try harder to not misplace our Nalgenes.
On a more uplifting note, a 92 year-old hiker from Berlin named Alfredo Aliaga Burdio just clinched the Guinness World Record for the oldest person to successfully hike the Grand Canyon from rim to rim. It wasn’t Burdio’s first traverse of the canyon but like Benson Park, it was partially fueled by nostalgia—for the time he spent hiking the canyon with his late wife and his daughter. It’s a wincingly brutal endeavor, with a huge amount of elevation loss and gain, along with high risk of the temperatures inside the canyon soaring into heat exhaustion territory. But despite the odds, Burdio completed the journey in just 34 hours; reminding the rest of us that for all our fears of aging and the way American society tends to marginalize the elderly….nonagenarians can get it.
Oh, and speaking of getting it, I’m heading to Montreal for IglooFest—the electronic music festival I mentioned a few weeks ago, where people dress up in their warmest winter parkas and dance to techno amid arctic weather. It’s part of my increasingly demented attempt to resist the cultural lethargy of New England winter, by finding new ways to be active outside. If I return with my fingers intact, I’ll look forward to publishing Mind The Moss next week. If I don’t, it’s been an honor and a privilege!
Wow! That 92 year old. And yes to finding a walk/hike/bike/ski wherever you find yourself.