How the Car Loop got its name

Two mornings ago, the dogs and I walked the Car Loop. It’s a longish walk usually reserved for Sunday mornings. Its name dates back to an earlier period of living on the Hill when L. named our walking routes. This one was named after the 25-30 year old remains of a Toyota Corolla then living out its afterlife in the streambed of a brook running alongside the state forest road. It was always hard to imagine how it had managed to navigate the road, more of a rutted track really, to get itself in to that spot but not at all hard to understand why it had never left once it had.

For the first decade of walking past it we would mutter gloomily to ourselves about wanting to get that thing out of there, the mutterings usually lasting only until the road passed the lovely swampy area a quarter mile ahead and we’d be distracted by a flower or a bird or a dog wallowing in the mud. The car was also a sure-fire way to invigorate bored prepubescent boys visiting with their families who would see it, get a little wild, and inevitably leave with some piece of it in hand (the steering wheel in the hands of P. & P.’s grandson comes to mind). Anyway, round about year seven or eight of this, L. started fruitlessly calling state forest people once or twice a year to talk about getting it removed. Though the calls seemed to range from noncommittal to sympathetic, the Toyota remained firmly in place.
Finally, four or five years ago the intrepid L. took matters into her own hands, called J., another very determined woman, who assigned her boyfriend J. to deal with this situation -- J. of the auto-body repair business and the flat bed truck with winch. So one fine summer day, L. guided J. to drive the truck across the mile-and-a-half or so of rutted track to winch it out and drive the thing away. Two days ago there were only stray leftover pieces remaining next to a much more beautiful running stream. (More beautiful but not necessarily more interesting to the current and former prepubescent boys among us.) It will always be the Car Loop to us.

Click here for all the photos from Sunday’s walk.