In July of 2017, I planned a hike in Danby. After leaving my car at Eastman Hill Road, Elizabeth drove me to Durfee Hill – a very steep, very rocky, seasonal road. I start climbing up, expecting to turn off onto what the map described as a private, woods road. It was not quite one mile to the turn. I climb and climb but I don’t see any sign for the turn. Eventually I decide I must have missed it. I head back down the hill and this time I see an intersection, but it is marked on both sides “no trespassing”. So I keep going down the hill, but I am sure I have gone too far again. I go back to “no trespassing” signs and I think this MUST be it. Maybe the signs just mean I must stay on the road but not stray onto the property on either side. I walk in and very quickly see the white blazes that indicate this is indeed the Finger Lakes Trail.

The rocky climb on Durfee Hill Road gives way to a lovely stroll through the woods. I continue a mile and a half to the next intersection at Heisey Road. But my map shows the trail turning left here. Instead, I see brand new white blazes telling me to continue straight into the woods. I follow the trail another half mile and I am back at my car. Back home, I go on the FLT website and look at Map 17. They had JUST published a new version of the map. That’s when I learned the lesson that would have saved me many miles of hiking and hours of confusion. Before starting any hike on the FLT, one should check to be sure one has the latest version of the map!

In 2017, I did not have the slightest inkling about creating a series of sculptures about the trail. So in 2023, when I realized that I had very few photos from Map 17, I asked my friend, Susan Larkin, to hike part of that map with me again. We set out together on a crisp, sunny November morning. I thought this train bridge would be the answer. Then we continued up the hill toward Lick Brook Preserve. I captured some images of a tree with its roots exposed by erosion. One of those photos inspired the sculpture shown on page 32.

Toward the end of the hike, Susan and I sat for a while and discussed our plans for the exhibit we would have together in October of 2025. For her recent work, she has collected photographic portraits and interviews of people in her community, looking for connections and common ground in these difficult times of polarization in our country. The resulting books are both beautiful and compelling. I had mentioned to Susan my desire to create a book of my own based on my hiking adventures. Now, as we sat on a bench in the woods, Susan encouraged me to join her in a class focused on creating just such a book. I am so glad that I took her advice.

I met Jacqui Wensich in 2018, the year I signed up for the County Hike series for the first time. Jacqui is the volunteer End-to-End Coordinator. She offers hikers assistance when they are working on completing the FLT. Jacqui maintains a list of trail spotters who will meet you at one end of your planned hike for the day and drive you to your beginning point so you can then hike back to your car. She keeps a detailed spreadsheet of the whole trail which hikers can use to log their miles and track how close they are to completion. And she maintains a list of everyone who has completed the trail and sends us our certificate, nametag, and patch when we finish.

I wrote an e-mail to Jacqui after one of the longer hikes in Delaware County. That day had been rainy and much of the twelve mile hike was through standing water. I told Jacqui that I did not think I would sign up for the county hike series again the following year. The hikes were just too long for me. At some point, it stopped being fun and just felt like a forced march. She agreed, especially when the trails involved a lot of hills.

After we finished the last Delaware County hike that summer, Jacqui and I decide to log some miles together on the maps between her home near Rochester and mine in Ithaca. We covered the 20+ miles on Map 12 together that September and October, enjoying the crisp autumn air and brilliant colors. It was wonderful to have found a partner with a compatible hiking pace and who agreed that seven or eight miles in one day is challenging enough to be satisfying yet still feel like fun.

Over the course of 584 miles of trail, you cross many roads. Some are seasonal, dirt or gravel roads in the woods. Many go through towns and villages. There are parts that follow along railroad tracks and there are a few small tunnels. But I think the most unique crossing is on Map 09, at Kanakadea County Park in Hornell. Here, the trail goes UNDER the four lane Interstate Highway 86. Robert and I were hiking from west to east and, after hiking up and then back down a small hill, I see a tunnel made of corrugated steel. It looks like a huge culvert pipe, about 4 foot wide and seven or eight foot tall. (Dave Newman later informed me that the tunnel was installed when I-86 was built in order to maintain public access to the part of the park north of the expressway.)

I watch as Robert disappears into the darkness. There’s shallow water on the floor of the tunnel, which leads me to worry about flash flooding, even though it is a perfectly sunny autumn day. I enter behind him and turn around to snap a photo looking back into the sunlight. Then, walking in deeper, I snap one more photo. It is now op-art: a psychedelic, almost black and white image. I can barely make out Robert’s silhouette way off in the distance, backed by bright white sunlight. I follow him in, trusting that I will not be swallowed up into some rift in the space-time continuum.

In the summer and fall of 2022, I hiked a lot of miles in these western counties. To save gas and miles driving out there from Ithaca, I planned two consecutive days of hiking and stayed overnight in a motel. Robert was my frequent hiking buddy on these trips. But after planning two days of hiking in September, Robert could only make it on the second day. I wanted to cover almost seven miles on the first day, about half in the woods on Map 5 and the rest was road walk on Map 4. I reached out to hikers on the Finger Lakes Trail list-serve, but no one was available. However, Joyce Ermer offered to be my car spotter. She could meet me at one end and drive me over to the starting point so I could hike back to my car, alone.

The important part of this story is that my wife, Elizabeth, REALLY doesn’t like it when I hike alone. She worries about me. She is a worrier in general. To try to ease her fears, I showed her on the map how this part in the woods was never very far from the road. There happened to be no hills to climb, so it was unlikely that I would fall. And then the rest would be easy road walk. After much cajoling and many promises that I would be exceedingly careful, she reluctantly gave the OK.

When I arrived at the meeting place, Joyce was there and, to my surprise, she was putting on her hiking boots! She said, “Do you mind if I join you?” I couldn’t wait to call Elizabeth and tell her she could stop worrying!

For a long time I wanted to do a piece which captured my experience as a diver in California kelp beds. Giant kelp is a macro alga which forms dense forests from rocky bottoms to the surface in depths of fifty feet or more. Kelp beds or forests support a rich variety of fishes, invertebrates and other algae. Aside from their biological significance, kelp forests are visually stunning with the green/brown stalks and leaves, shifting shadows, and blue shafts of light penetrating the depths. Their three dimensional complexity can also be a confusing and disorienting environment for a diver. The visual experience and impression of kelp bed diving is what I wished to convey in a painting, but unfortunately I had no personal photograph that was an adequate reference image for such an effort. The idea sat dormant for years. Not long ago I took a photo of living kelp in a public aquarium in Japan and I decided to transform it into an abstract composition that would suit my purpose. The steps were as follows:Create a second version of the image with an altered palate emphasizing cool colors2. Superimpose semi-transparent versions of both images, with one rotated 180 degrees. This constituted my “final” reference image.

1. Select kelp image and create two versions: one in natural colors and another with a blue-green-purple shifted palette.
2. Superimpose semi-transparent versions of the above images with one rotated 180 degrees
3. Pencil sketch the original image 
4. Sketch the rotated image over the first sketch
5. Add oil pastel color consistent with the digitally created reference image.
6. The last step was a long process of working with the oil pastels to eventually result in the final painting.

Below are some images selected to represent the steps. The result is a hybrid of my usual representational or realistic style with a more abstract style. I think it captures the colors and movement experienced when diving in a kelp forest.