“TRAVEL IN LOCAL SPACES”
“Mine Kill State Park”

by Jessica Kuzmier

     The drive to get to Mine Kill State Park is almost as scenic as the park itself. You drive past acres and acres of farms, the scent of suburbia far away. You can get to the park in a variety of ways, all of them scenic, for the park is not located near any interstate, and fast food joints along its borders are not part of the picture. You can travel south on state route 30 past a kingdom of state forests, sort of a harbinger of what is located further north near Saranac Lake. If you head up from the other direction, you pass all the ski areas like Grand Gorge and Roxbury, which in the off season seem like quiet quaint old towns rather than the madhouses they are in the winter.

     That's the way we came. A couple of people were hanging out in front of the local pizza place in Grand Gorge, and they looked at our car as we went by, maybe wondering if we got the time wrong and missed the ski season by a few weeks. Though it was supposed to be an unusual high of eighty-two degrees, there were still patches of snow scattered about on this mid-April morning, a reminder of how long this ski season had been. If we were to be accused of being too late to spring ski, in our defense, we hadn't missed it by much.

     The park itself is located in Bleinheim, which is in Schoharie County. My trusty atlas lists the amenities as being swimming, hiking, fishing, boating, cross-country skiing, and snowmobiling. You could swim at the beach, which was on the Bleinheim-Gilboa Reservoir. Or you could wait until the pools opened, which in upstate New York usually meant later than the unofficial marking of summer of Memorial Day. Normally, if I had a choice between natural swimming holes and the chlorine alternative, I would choose the former. But the idea of swimming in the natural grounds later on in the season was tempered by the fact a large hydroelectric plant lay directly across from us on the other side of the reservoir, interesting eye candy for a day outing.

     I walked down to the edge of the water, walking from a dirt trail that when followed would take you deeper into the woods where the trail network was. Having been deprived of beaches for the better part of six months, and sort of seduced by the warmth, I headed down to the shore. To get there, you had to tear through a lot of underbrush and weeds, and once you cleared that, it was a balancing act between negotiating slippery rocks and preventing your feet from disappearing in the quicksand of mud. It probably took me a total of fifteen minutes to walk three hundred feet, not exactly established marathon record time.

     I stood by the embankment for awhile, not exactly eager to go through the whole process again, and took in the sights, smells, and sounds. I was able to stick my hands into the water and not get hypothermia, the water probably fairly warm because of the sun, the smallness of the water's body, and the strange mechanical contraption making noises right across from me. Mixed in with the songs of the birds returning from their summer sojourn was the weird whirring noise that came from the plant. Occasionally a vehicle or two would enter the complex and disappear into it, and suddenly reemerge like magic and disappear the other way. Whatever road it was that led to this place didn't seem to be on the map, so who knows what was going on. If I wanted to take a wild optimistic guess, I'd go with hydroelectric, but the activity seemed so clandestine you could begin to wonder.

     In the end though, there was a happy surprise. One thing that this place purported to boast was scenic views. At first, it seemed like a bit of an exaggeration, meant to lure adventurous hikers to its bosom into thinking there was some great vista to trek to, because any path within the main part of the park by the beach just led to differing views of the mystery plant. But, giving up hope on anything spectacular and heading away from the park, we saw a pullover in the wooded area, which claimed to still be part of Mine Kill and claimed to have spectacular views. We parked in the lot and headed on the main trail, a walkway with bars on each side, with a sign warning all travelers to stay the marked trail. It led to a feast of falls and glens amidst the woods; with the hot weather it felt nearly tropical. The walkway circumvented the falls, and though for obvious legal reasons the path didn't lead right up to the falls, there were two landings on the walkways that gave pretty good views. Right above the falls was an overpass where the traffic on Rt. 30 whizzed by. There were no barricades to prevent anyone from climbing down. I wondered how many adventure seekers had hopped the road to get a good close-up view.

     We left once our solitude was broken by a couple of office workers in search for fresh air and a place where they could smoke a cigarette without the nicotine police barking at them showed up. The landings weren't that big, and even their minimal presence made the space feel crowded. I wondered what the place would feel like once all the tourists showed up. But at least we got to see some beauty that didn't include a hydroelectric plant.