Back to the Portage Trail

November 3, 2012

By Margot Russell Hanrahan - Special To The Post-Journal , The Post-Journal

When I moved back to Western New York from New England, I was hoping to reclaim something
from my past. I had been away for nearly three decades, and there were things that I remembered
and wanted to find again.
Both of my parents had been raised in Jamestown, and although I was brought up in Amherst, we
owned a cottage on the north side of Chautauqua Lake for most of my childhood. The days I spent
with my brothers bouncing around in our little boat, traipsing through meadow and wood, or fishing
on our creaky dock were the best days of my life. We thought then that there was no place in the
world like Chautauqua Lake.
For many years, we set out in October with 30 family friends to walk the Portage Trail. It was a rite
of passage to welcome fall by following that old Indian trail, disturbing the stillness of those yellowed
woods with our crunching feet and barking dogs and little kids. We weren't far from civilization, but
to us it seemed primeval. Our group-friends of varying ages and sizes-lumbered down that trail like
make believe vagabonds, united in our quest to seize the day.
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A map of any life will change directions, its old paths forgotten and overgrown. My brothers and I
remembered our hikes on the Portage Trail and, thinking that there would always be a someday, we
planned to take our families there. But life got in the way, as it is apt to do. Before turning 50, I
moved to Lakewood and thought to set out and find that old path, now tangled in memory.

Surely, it must still be there, the way that I remembered it. In years past, we had always hiked a
small part of the trail, and all we had to do now was remember where the path began and ended. My
father had been the arbiter of those childhood hikes, but he died seven years ago, taking our
landmarks and some of our memories with him. In some way, hiking the Portage Trail seemed a way
to walk with him again.
I became of singular mind that I would hike that trail in its entirety, just the way we had before. I
remembered the trail had started in the woods along an old trolley bed, descended down a steep
embankment to Little Chautauqua Creek below, and then on to Buttermilk Falls where we'd have
lunch and skip rocks in the cool, tumbling water. Later, we'd follow the creek to Gale Street, climb up
another embankment, emerging from the wilderness onto the threshold of a beautiful vineyard that
always smelled like heaven.
One day, frustrated with our progress, we stopped at the Westfield library where a lovely young
woman located an old Portage Trail Boy Scout pamphlet written in 1971. It was stuck in an old
manila file in a back room, and she dusted it off and handed it to me as if it were an authentic map
from antiquity. This was it! The trail we had hiked! But we had been right: The beginning of our trail
was now on land that discouraged hikers, and under the threat of arrest, we'd have to find an
alternate route. Perhaps, I thought, if we hiked the trail backwards - beginning on Gale - it would all
become clear as we walked along. I was certain we could find a neighbor on Quilliam Road who
wouldn't mind if we ended our hike on his land.
On a recent fall day, filled with the promise of warmth and color, and with Boy Scout map in hand, I
set off with my husband to pursue the trail in a backward fashion. He was not feeling well, having
just had a minor tune up on his heart, and so this would be a kinder, gentler walk. After giving up on
the impassable creek bed, we spied a spot from the road where we could hike into the woods, and
after a bit of climbing and sliding through the undergrowth, we came across a view of Buttermilk
Falls below us. I had worried it would be less than I remembered, but there it was, as beautiful and
present as it had been 30 years before.
The woods smelled the same - deep and dank and mossy. Old trees had fallen and rotted as they
had before. There was the sound of the rushing creek; the slippery, golden leaves beneath our feet;
the whole place dappled with afternoon sunshine and sodden with depth and loneliness, just as it
had before.
Stretches of the path were mostly overgrown or not remembered. We could see where it had once
been, but time had given way to fancier trails. We stood there in silence, just our beating hearts and
the sound of the falls and the bustling creek. I was an older version of the little girl I used to be in
the same woods, in a fall without end, in a life with a finite measure.
The Portage Trail, with its roots and leaves and meandering paths, had been the backdrop to our
lives on days that were filled with extravagance-memories that were saved and worth retrieving. I
only saw a part of that path when I went back. It was still there, in its own uncertain way.