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the black mud of Franklinton Vlaie
Sunday, May 17 2026
location: 940 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
It had been so warm yesterday that I hadn't needed to have a fire. It was even warmer today, eventually becoming positively hot (though that might've been a relative thing; temperatures just barely made it to 80 degrees Fahrenheit). Eventually I drank my coffee, ate my toast, and then took Charlotte for her late morning walk (Neville did not come). We headed down the Mossy Rock Trail to the dock, where I retrieved the trail cam. (Later, back at the cabin when I looked at the photos on its SD card, there were none of interest, and the several pictures that had been captured were from Charlotte, me, or the apparent movement of lake water.)
Today on our walk, I wanted to explore sectors of our parcel I hadn't paid much attention to. So after crossing the outflow creek and walking through the old Boy Scout campground, I took a path that was a hundref feet or more west of our boundary with Joel's now-denuded parcel. In the past, I'd mostly hugged Joel's parcel's boundary, since it was so easy to follow. But now that it's a sun-drenched swath of destruction, I can see it from some distance away and stay parallel to it. This allowed me to find a small (but perhaps perennial) and unnamed brook draining part of Joel's parcel and heading westward in a series of sharp turns until it gets to East Bifurcation Creek, which it reaches in a little waterfall just north of our parcel on land belonging to Adirondack State Park. I wanted to name the brook something more imaginative than "Northeast Brook," so I tried to come up with a name that begins with "NE," perhaps something like "Nellie" or (confusingly) "Neville."
We crossed East Bifurcation Creek near the waterfall where the brook emptied into it and from there I generally followed the north border of our parcel westward to get a better sense of that boundary (which I haven't followed in the past west of East Bifurcation Creek). That boundary comes very close to the southern edge of the Six Acre Bog and, in the west, doesn't turn southward until fairly close to where West Bifurcation Creek enters Virginia Creek. I headed southward a little west of our boundary and found that our parcel is fairly close to the highlands above West Bifurcation Cliffs (or "Dominic Cliffs" as Gretchen prefers.
Back at the cabin, took advantage of the nice weather to do a little puttering on the upstairs east deck, where I am making some modifications. The warm weather had brought out the little black flies that take a long time to land on your skin before eventually biting, but they were largely absent from the upstairs deck.
Later in the afternoon, I did some of the usual pre-departure cleaning ritual, which also included feeding the leftover black bean chili from last week to the dogs. It had developed that familiar smell of food going "off," and I didn't want to eat it. The dogs, on the other hand, had no problem chowing down. It was a lot of food for them.
Later I took a beer with me down to the dock, and Charlotte (but not Neville) tagged along. The little black flies were miserable down there, tormenting me as I tried to glue some additional delaminated chips from the masonry water urn Gretchen normally keeps on the dock (and that I foolishly left outside over the winter). I carried some of the chips and the urn with me out onto the floating part of the dock and tried to work there, but the flies followed me and kept attacking (though in diminishd numbers). None of the ærial predators (such as dragonflies) are out yet, so the black flies evidently feel safe flying out over open water.
While I was down there, I picked a scab off a large carbuncle that had formed near the middle of my back just left of my spine. I've been aware of this nasty presence for several weeks now, and periodically I scrape off the scab and try to drain more of the nasty crap it contains. Today I managed to do very well at this and, for the first time in weeks, it shrank down to a half-inch wide bump suggesting a mild injury instead of a deep-seated infection my body had felt the need to wall off and contain.
I was still reaching back periodically to feel for what fluids that carbuncle was leaking as I walked back to the cabin via the Backwards Cliffs Gorge, which is a way that Charlotte loves to go. The swarms of marauding black flies ensured that I kept moving at a rapid pace.
On the drive back to Hurley, I was a little worried about the dogs needing to poop after eating all the aging chili, so I stopped at the parking area of Franklinton Vlaie, the eighty acre pond amd surrounding marshland at the headwaters of Catskill Creek just south of a subcontinental divide between the Schoharie and Catskill Creek watersheds south of Middleburgh. Soon after I parked, I encountered a squirrelly-looking white guy who called out that there were some red wing blackbirds to be seen. I asked if there were other interesting birds, and he told me about a bald eagle with eaglets. I asked if he'd ever seen a loon, and he said he heard one once. "This might be about the farthest south they go, then" I said. He told me how fun it was to go kayaking on the vlaie and didn't mention fishing once, so perhaps he was more of a kindred spirit than the looked. When our conversation came to its logical end, I walked down to the nearest edge of open water across a grassy field. The idea was for Charlotte and Neville to get a restroom break and perhaps a drink. But the place where we ended up was a bog of anærobic black mud dotted with two-foot-heigh tussocks of grass (or perhaps sedge). I was able to step from one tussock to another to avoid the water, but Neville didn't want to do that. He flopped on his belly in the ooze and would be soaking wet and filthy for the rest of the drive. I used a cloth grocery back to towel him off before putting him in the passenger seat, but that didn't help much. Neville seemed much happier for the rest of the ride; being drenched with muddy water cooled him down and he was no longer strenuously panting
On the drive through East Durham, I kept seeing another kind of bird acting a bit recklessly in the roadway. These appeared to mostly be sparrows ducking out to retrieve food items. Perhaps they were roadkilled (or windshield-hit) insects.
Back home in Hurley, Gretchen and I watched Jeopardy! with our various meals. She had protein-rich angelhair pasta with brussel sprouts and I ate the burritos from the Garden Café that I'd taken to-go Thursday night and then forgot to bring to the cabin. Later she got me caught up on all the things that happened in her social network while I was gone. This included details from Fern's break-up with Joshua, two visits from our neighbor A (one included her boyfriend Jamie), and a story about hanging out with Jasmin from Rochester (as well as one of Jasmin's friends, who has a sixty-unit real estate empire).
A shagbark maple (I think this was a red maple) near the old Boy Scout campground. There are no hickories in the Adirondacks. Click to enlarge.
Looking across East Bifurcation Creek from atop cliffs to their east. Click to enlarge.
Looking west downhill towards Dominic Cliffs from one terrace up above them. Click to enlarge.
Woodworth Lake this afternoon. Click to enlarge.
A large mystery egg shell on Shane's parcel late this afternoon. It might be a duck egg, as it is not a turkey egg. (Those have small brown spots.) Click to enlarge.
Neville walking through the grass down to Franklinton Vlaie. Click to enlarge.
A view of Franklinton Vlaie. Click to enlarge.
Neville wallowing in mud in the Vlaie. Click to enlarge.
Neville returning to the car as a muddy dog. Click to enlarge.
Neville and Charlotte returning to the car after their mud bath. Click to enlarge.
Neville just before I loaded him in the car after his mud bath. Click to enlarge.
Neville as a very muddy passenger after his mud bath at Franklinton Vlaie. Click to enlarge.
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