Of Time Gone By

A portion of the stone wall--all that otherwise remains of a hotel lost to history.

It must have been over forty years ago, he reckoned.

     With his headlamp off, the coon hunter stood alone in the cool, nighttime woods, listening for his black and tan hound, Tye, to open on a raccoon’s trail. He waited patiently, for here was something he’d not seen in a very long time.

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     In the silver moonlight, the middle-aged man could make out the remains of an old foundation with its stones aligned so perfectly. The full moon had also shone on another fall's night, decades before, offering a warm familiarity, when he’d been but a boy.

     His memory rebuilt the stone foundation that had once supported three wooden walls of a long-abandoned, two-story hotel. Even back then, so long ago, the fourth wall had already fallen to neglect, revealing the inner rooms that hadn't seen a paying guest in many years. That past night, his father had explained the hotel had once served as a way station for teamsters to get fresh horses for their wagons filled with produce as they traveled from nearby Watkins Glen bound for the markets and rail station in Corning, nigh twenty miles away.

     Then, as he was now, they’d been coon hunting. Their bluetick hound, Duke, had searched through that ancient inn’s rooms on both floors. As the then young boy’s flashlight beam played on the interior, his father had explained raccoon had likely been playing in the old building and perhaps even called it their home. Nose down, Duke had traipsed through the dilapidated structure, trying to sort it all out.

     Further, he remembered there had been a decaying wooden sign nearby. Its faded letters still legible back then and had read, “Bridge Out, April 1917.” He could also recall the deteriorating bridge, then still spanning the creek across stone abutments. Tonight, those abutments, and a few rusting steel girders fallen into the creek bed some thirty feet below, acted as the only remaining testament that a bridge had ever been there.

     A ghostly echo of Duke’s triumphant voice sounded in his mind as the bluetick finally figured the track out. The older man smiled, remembering the wonder of it all. He wasn’t sure how long he’d stood there with that resurrected night from his youth, but the lone hunter sensed something by his side.

     The present had come calling on four legs.

     The coon hunter looked down to see Tye, who'd returned to ensure all was okay. The nearly eight-year-old hound brushed up against the man’s leg, unsure of what had caused his partner’s delay to follow down the trail.

     The man gently placed a hand on his coonhound’s head. “I found a memory, Tye. Go find a ringtail. I’ll be along shortly.”

     Satisfied everything was fine, the faithful dog ran into the night—his image absorbed by the darkness beyond the moonlight’s reach. 

​      A short while later, Tye’s barrel voice rang out in the nighttime, breaking the man’s reverie and reminding him that it was time to honor the commitment and follow his hound wherever that might lead.

     With a flip of a switch, he turned his headlight on and started toward Tye’s beckoning, walking deeper into those woods, each step returning to the now.

     It was going to be a good night.

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A steel girder from a bygone bridge. Once part of a proud structure that had withheld horses and wagons bound with goods and produce, now but a riddle in a creek for those who come upon it.