Aspen Allegations - A Sutton Massachusetts Mystery

Chapter 1

What is life?

It is the flash of a firefly in the night.

It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass

and loses itself in the sunset.

~ Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior

The woods were lovely, dark, and deep. My footfalls on the thick layer of tawny oak leaves made that distinctive crisp-crunch sound that seemed unique in all of nature. The clouds above were soft grey, cottony, a welcome relief from the torrents of Hurricane Sandy which had deluged the east coast two days earlier. Sutton had been lucky. Plum Island, Massachusetts, a mere ninety minutes northeast, had been nearly blown away by eighty-mile-an-hour winds. Here we had seen only a few downed trees, Whitins Pond once again rising over its banks, and the scattering of power outages which seemed to accompany every weather event.

I breathed in a lungful of the rich autumn air tanged with moss, turkey-tail mushroom, and the redolent muskiness of settling vegetation. Nearly all of the deciduous trees had released their weight for the year, helped along in no small part by the gale-force winds of Tuesday. That left only the pine with its greenery of five-needled bursts and the delicate golden sprawls of witch hazel blossoms scattered along the path.

It was nice to be outdoors. Two days of being cooped up in my house-slash-home-office had left me eager to stretch my legs. The Sutton Forest was far quieter than Purgatory Chasm this time of year, in no small part because hunting season had begun a few weeks earlier. The bow-and-arrow set were out stalking the white-tailed deer, and they had just been joined by those eager for coyote, weasel, and fox. I wore a bright orange sarong draped over my jacket in deference to my desire to make it through the day unperforated.

A golden shaft of sunlight streamed across the path, and I smiled at where it highlighted a scattering of what appeared to be small dusty-russet pumpkins. I stooped to pick one up, nudging its segments apart with a thumbnail. A smooth nut stood out within its center. A hickory, perhaps? I would have to look that up later when I returned home. I had finally indulged myself with a smartphone a few years ago when I turned forty, and while I liked to carry it for safety reasons, I preferred to leave it untouched when breathing in the delights of a beautiful day.

The woods were quiet, and I liked them this way. The Sutton Forest network stretched across the middle of the eight-mile-square town, but it seemed that few of the ten-thousand residents knew of this beautiful wilderness. In comparison, Purgatory Chasm, a short mile away, was usually bustling with a multi-faceted selection of humanity. Rowdy teenage boys, not yet convinced of their 'vincibility', dared each other to get closer to the edge of the eighty-foot drop into the crevasse. Cautious parents would climb along its boulder-strewn base, holding the hands of their younger children. Retiree birders would stroll Charley's loop around its perimeter, ever alert for a glimpse of scarlet tanagers.

Purgatory Chasm had an exhibit-filled ranger station, a covered gazebo for picnicking, and a playground carefully floored with shock-absorbing rubber.

Here, though, there was barely a wood sign-board to give one an idea of the lay of the land. The few reservoirs deep in the forest were marked, as well as where the forest proper overlapped with the Whitinsville Water Company property. That was it. Once you headed in here you were on your own. The maze of twisty little passages, all different, were as challenging to navigate as that classic Adventure game where you would be eaten by a grue once your lantern ran out of oil. A person new to the trails would be foolhardy to head in without a GPS or perhaps a pocket full of breadcrumbs.