A Living Magazine - Day 325 - Homecoming - Canton to Granby

Well, I did sleep in until about 9:30 a.m. As the traffic just on the other side of trees began to really pick up, I felt the strong urge to just get headed up the road. I packed up, and then found a better way out of the ravine than I'd used to go in the night before.

Canton is quite unremarkable. While being a perfectly pleasant place, I'd seen no especially interesting features or historical landmarks to photograph. In fact, that whole day's walk, right up to the last few miles before Granby, was a beige experience (one, just a bit better than being characterized by monotony and boredom). The weather was quite nice, the hills were not overly steep, the shoulders were fairly wide and often paved. There were a few small towns and edges of towns along the way. The first was Avon...

Maypole. 

I'm not positive, but I believe that this was the first Congregationalist Church I'd seen in the last 19 months. That was my denomination growing up. There was something so nice about being in a region of the country where there wasn't a church every 500 feet; empty and taking up space, as I'd seen in the South. Social religion in the North is a much more subtle affair. I'd recently walked 560 miles from Athens, Georgia to Fredericksburg, Virginia. Baptist churches were more numerous than any other kind of organization, not to mention the most common Christian denomination.

A friend in South Carolina told me that when she first moved into her town, she was walking down the street and her neighbor immediately came out, introduced herself, and asked, "So what church ya'll going to?" The assumption is - of course - that you are a "Christian." And, why wouldn't you be? My friend said that the impression she got was that it was okay to go to any church, as long as it was Baptist. And, it was okay to go to any Baptist church as long as it was the one that neighbor greeting you in the street attended.

That kind of religious pretension just totally turns off a Northerner. The other thing that is strange at first to northern sensibilities is that Southern Baptists (and even Northwest Protestants) will openly say that "Catholics aren't Christians." In my mind, this has got to be one of the most insular, self-circumscribed and ignorant things that one follower of Jesus can say about another follower of Jesus.

It reminds me of how a Libertarian will say that a Republican is not a "true conservative" and vice versa. People love to define themselves in ways that they assert and promote as self-evidently natural, when another person with only slightly different views will reject the first person and claim the same title.

This is a vein and slightly stupid kind of behavior, particularly when it comes to ideology. Logically and technically, no one is ever what the inventor of the ideology would define as "pure." Therefore how the hell could someone who thinks he or she is fitting the pure sense of an ideology ever agree that another person is doing exactly the same thing--following the same rules?

I've said this in a hundred different ways now. Ideology of all kinds are divisive by their very natures. Systems are put in place to group people under certain flags and labels, but instead these same people are completely distracted by constantly trying to define and redefine their place in the systems, while comparing it to the places of others. It is a futile and useless effort, and an exceedingly efficient way of wasting time and energy.

Ideologies (including institutionally religious ones) build barriers, fences, and walls between people who would otherwise probably agree on most things. I thought about this as I took some pictures of the church and its surroundings...

Avon was very small. I passed through it quickly, and walked for a good stretch along a very woodsy area until I reach the next town...

Not a founding date you would see in the West.

The town had been kicking around for 346 years!

Simsbury had some unique features. It mostly ran along the ridge of a mountain. All of it's amenities were to be found in updated strip mall-like areas on this valley path. The surrounding towns were very similar. Simsbury was upper middle class, clean, environmentally aware, with many examples of well-preserved architectural specimens, both private and public.

The most obvious structure dominating the landscape from the top of this mountain was the 165 foot Heublein Tower...  

The Heublein Tower was built by Gilbert Heublein as part of a "castle" he'd promised to build for his wife after they had hiked to the summit of the mountain where it now sits. He was a food and beverage magnate. His company manufactured such great hits as A1 Steak Sauce and Smirnoff Vodka. A bit further down the road came the neat buildings of the 18th and 19th Centuries... 

This was odd to see. It is Ensign-Bickford Company, an aerospace defence firm.

Really weird to think these guys are doing secret military stuff in the middle of this quaint place.

With enough walking and time I always reach my destination...

There was actually a Starbucks in Granby, along with a McDonald's. Yet, again, I just wasn't going to do a McDonald's meal, and Starbucks is a bit lacking in the substantial amounts of food for what you pay ($7 for a beef wrap with about one ounce of chips). But I was saved by a Subway sandwich shop that was located right near both of these other regular haunts of mine. Perfect! And, it had Wi-Fi too!

I finished up and checked the area for Google Earth green spots. There was one road that looked promising but had never been scanned by the Google Street view vehicle, called Hungary Road. I left to check it out...

Sure enough, down the tree covered road was a cliff bank with a small steep pathway leading to the top. When there were no cars around I climbed it, in a kind of sidestepping motion, keeping the weight of the pack forced forward, because even a small tug backward would have pulled my down. Somehow, I made it...  

I rested and paced around just making sure I wouldn't be suddenly discovered by man or beast. It turned out that I was on the far woods' edge of a large field. I got set up and the mosquitoes began to move in. I had no choice but to climb into the tent. As soon as I'm in there, there really is no other choice but to go to sleep. So, I did.

Granby Sleep Spot.