Ancient Lake Hitchcock

15,000 years ago, our ridge top home would have been beach-front property on the shores of the very picturesque “Ancient Lake Hitchcock”. The 150 foot deep lake, which spanned from Rocky Hill Connecticut to Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, was, I am sure, breathtakingly gorgeous, with stark white icebergs serenely juxtaposed against the turquoise water.

The ravine by our house helped drain the overflow from the lake, whenever the receding glacier “calved,” giving birth to new icebergs and causing the water level in the lake to precipitously rise. And just as the ravine once acted like a funnel for glacial flood waters, so it now funnels people and wildlife in search of one of the few navigable pathways down through the traprock ridge.

My grandmother referred to the steepest part of our ravine as “the goat path,” and yet, she walked it every day. The name stuck, and despite its steepness, the goat path is still the best way to get from the ridge to our pastures and the woods below.

Anne and I installed a cell enabled trail camera in the ravine, which sends us pictures whenever something passes through. We receive real time photos, day and night, of fox, bobcats, bears, coyotes, deer and one obnoxiously photogenic squirrel.

As much as I love seeing all of these photos and keeping track of what's going on - what I wouldn't give to be able to see the ravine back in time! I can imagine the vast hoards – and herds – of animals skirting the edges of Lake Hitchcock and being funneled down through the ravine as they made their way down to the tundra on the valley floor below.

If someday we should find ourselves transported back in time, you'll know exactly where to find me. Come join me for a cup of tea, and from the relative safety of the ridge, we'll while away the afternoon watching all the animals passing through...

It must have been a veritable freeway with herds of caribou being pursued by packs of wolves, with the slow moving ground sloths lumbering along, and the giant beavers, doing whatever it is that giant beavers do. I can visualize, and practically hear, the elephant-like mastodons thundering past and the small band of paleo hunters in hot pursuit.

I can see them all, going about their lives and finding their way past my grandmother's goat path through the ravine...