Upriver energy

Along the Upper Delaware River, way upriver, is a teensy place called Lordville, where you’ll find a trail to the top of the valley’s towering sandstone ledges. And within Lordville is another, teensier settlement known as Bouchouxville, which has a Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil energy about it. You’ll find the trailhead past a colorful cluster of jerry-rigged houses and picket fence gardens that would give most building inspectors the vapors. Taken together, they are undeniably fetching.

While editing a local paper in the 1980s and ‘90s, I’d receive occasional anonymous letters from Bouchouxville. In bursts of esoteric poetry, the letter writer hinted at multigenerational mayhem and long-held secrets. One day, all will be revealed! But first, patience. The plot bumped along for years without ever quite thickening.

Lordville has achieved a kind of “weird New York” fame for an unsettling mannequin that eyeballs every visitor from a third-story window of an old hotel, near the end of the three-mile road leading from Scenic Route 97 down to the hamlet, river and trailhead. That mannequin startled me when I first came to hike the Bouchoux Trail some 40 years ago. Old English majors like myself might call to mind the Madwoman in the Attic, a feminist literary theory inspired by the antihero of Jane Eyre, who locked up his difficult wife so that he could run off to the Continent and have mistresses. The Lordville mannequin is mute and troubled, always trying on new feminine identities without ever springing her window trap. A waitress in a polka-dot apron. A schoolmarm in a plaid cloche. A glamourpuss sporting an updo.

I’m pleased to report — or perhaps sorry, for those attached to the stories they’ve come to believe – that writer John Fedorka has pieced together the mystery of the mannequin. He went to Lordville, flagged down the first person he found, and hit pay dirt: the son of the woman who, in the early 1970s, bought the mannequin at an auction and stuck it in the window as a lark. The family has kept up her costume changes ever since. The Lordville funny bone extends to its “Hysterical Society,” whose Facebook photos document more than a century’s worth of community picnics and swimming parties. Lordville’s Dark Eddy was a favorite fishing spot of Jimmy Carter, who as president signed the National Parks and Recreation Act, which designates the Upper Delaware Scenic & Recreational River as part of the National Wild & Scenic Rivers System.

The enchantments continue on the Bouchoux Trail and especially on the ridgetop, known as Jensen’s Ledges. Getting there, two or more can hike side by side. This rough road is steep with a steady incline, like a ramp. The view is worth it, especially this time of year: the sinewy river below is clearly visible through tree branches just beginning to bud. In about 40 minutes we reach the top, which is crowned by a series of sculptures created by stacking bluestone slabs. Among them are a bench, an arch, and, my favorite, a pudgy spindle that seems to float at the ridge’s edge. Over the generous flat ledge, short reaches of the river are visible to the north and south. Opposite the view and across the ledge is a waterfall.

It’s slightly more than a mile to Jensen’s Ledges, but for those looking for a longer trek, the trail continues for another four and a half miles or so – back down to the river, then way back up the ridge, and down to the river again, for 1,043 feet total elevation gain. But why do that, when we have everything we need right here? A smooth ledge warmed by the afternoon sun, the sparkling river beyond, and, for right now, our very own sculpture garden. We shrug off our packs and settle in.

SNEEK PEEK

Trail: Bouchoux Trail to Jensen’s Ledges in Lordville, NY. (Town of Hancock, Delaware County)
Length: Two miles round-trip (out and back)
Trailhead: From Scenic Route 97: Turn onto Lordville Road, continue for about three miles, and turn left onto Bouchouxville Road. Find the parking lot at the end of the cul-de-sac.