Musings of a Simple Country Man
By Hobie Morris
(Brookfield, NY – May 2014) A recent cold spring morning reminds this simple country man of a mysterious encounter that happened several years ago. While strange and unexplainable ghost stories are not entirely uncommon in the remote rural Brookfield hills, when it happens to you it gets your undivided attention.
In the distance, through the shadow lengthening trees I hear my beautiful wife Lois calling. The late April afternoon is rapidly cooling as the cheerless sun slips beyond the tree lined western horizon. I can see lovely Lois now as she slowly makes her way up the hill from our off the grid home. I turn in her direction and wave. Supper is ready.
I turn back to where my axe is leaning against the tree. Nobody is there. While my back is turned he disappears. I look all around. Not a trace. Had he really been here or had it been only a dream or a mysterious ghost? During supper Lois asks why I’m so quiet. I mumble something. I can’t really tell her yet what I think I’ve experienced. I wonder, will I ever see him again? So many perplexing questions crisscross my mind.
Indeed, I haven’t seen him again. Yet on several occasions, while working by myself, I think I smell faint traces of his pipe tobacco smoke wafting through the trees. The smell I distinctly remember from several years past. I look around. I’m all alone.
Most afternoons throughout the year I cut and split firewood. Several years ago, after a light lunch, I walk up a winding wooded path to where I left my saw and axe. It’s spring and the trees are bare of foliage and occasional patches of snow remain in shaded areas. The air is brisk but enjoyable.
I didn’t see the old man at first. He’s sitting at the base of a large maple tree, slowly puffing on his pipe. Rings of aromatic smoke lazily curl into the cool air. I wonder who he is—hunting season has ended months ago. I approach him. He takes the pipe from his mouth and carefully taps it on a walking stick lying by his side.
Everything about him is very different. His shirt and patched pants are coarse fiber and threadbare. Oval wire framed glasses teeter near the end of his nose. His white hair and beard are long and matted. His face is deeply wrinkled but kindly. His unusually sparkling blue eyes are like marbles. An ancient muzzle loader rifle leans against the tree. It appears well used and carefully taken care of. He speaks:
“Hope you don’t care if I set and rest a spell. Ain’t as young as I used to be.”
“Glad to have you,” I reply, and sit down by him. I introduce myself, telling him that my family has been on this land for nearly 90 years. As I talk, the old man slowly looks around at the giant trees that surround us.
“I used to till this land,” he went on to say. “No trees then, only bare and rocky fields with many stone walls and rock piles. The trees had been cut down by many families before me. The soil wasn’t no good. Too many rocks and too little top soil. It was a struggle to farm these hills. When I was a boy, I helped Dad put up these stone fences that are all mostly fallen down now. We didn’t have horses, just two oxen in those days. I guess it’s best this land is all growed up in trees again…”
He continues to tell many fascinating stories about the different families who lived around here. None of these names were familiar to me. As he continues to reminisce I try to figure out if this old man is a crazy old coot or a ghost. He talks about a past that seems like dark ages to me. Occasionally he re-lights his old pipe. A cool late April afternoon breeze has come up from the northwest. He puts on a ragged, weather beaten felt hat. A frantic burst of snow pellets comes down from darkening clouds and as quickly stops. This unexpected and violent weather seems to jolt the old man into telling me stories about how severe and changeable the weather was in those days. It was a constant struggle to survive. One weather phenomenon especially he still vividly remembers. And this is his story as best I remember.
He is only a small boy. In time his father will fill in many details about the disastrous weather. The old man refills and lights his pipe. Whitish smoke curls up into the spring air. He begins telling one of the strangest stories I’ve ever heard.
“January is mild so fire is not needed much of the time. February is mild but with a few cold days. March is cold and boisterous the first half, then mild in the middle. Winter seemed to set in, in April with ice and snow continuing through May. During this time ice formed and the fruit buds were killed and every tender plant destroyed. Corn and potatoes were replanted and killed until too late.
June is the coldest ever known; frost, ice or snow every night, almost destroying every growing thing. On June 6 snow fell in Albany, 10” in Vermont and Maine, 3-4” in the interior of York State and a part of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. A strange chill is in the air. Unexplainably the sun’s rays begin to lose their power. You can look into the sun directly as if it is the moon. July is cold and frosty. Ice formed as thick as window glass in New England.
Indian corn is killed everywhere except in some favorite spots in Massachusetts. August is worse. Corn not frozen, is cut up and dried for fodder. Ice formed half-inch thick and almost every growing green thing is destroyed in this country and in Europe. With crop failure came the death of livestock as the worst famine of the 19th century deepens. This year would be the coldest one in the Northern Hemisphere since 1400 AD.”
The old man tells about an Earlville man who had a hard frost every month and no crops except for potatoes—and few of those. He had one ripe apple that hung on a branch over a well. The warmth of the well water kept the apple from freezing. Local farmers turned their livestock into the woods to forage for food, a diet barely sustaining them, with the exception of sheep that seemed to do well.
“The first half of September is the mildest of the season. Then it became cold and frosty and continued through October. November is the coldest ever known. So much snow as to make good sleighing. December is mild and comfortable.”
Not only was there great scarcity this year, but well into the next year. In many places people had to subsist on milk, greens, fish and game. One person, it is told, used up two acres of Canada thistles for greens. People survived by lending what little they had to people in greater need.
The old man later learns that these horrible weather conditions that affected his family and much of this region extended all around the world. It was truly a world-wide famine of unprecedented magnitude. In Europe there were riots, arson and looting in many cities. New and deadly strains of cholera and typhus caused deadly epidemics in many parts of the world. It is estimated that over 100,000 people died during this period from this calamitous global cooling.
The people starved but also lost their land as the value of land went down. Farmers in debt for their land (such as the leased land) which was public land sold to individuals for so much a year often could not pay their yearly bills.
Another bizarre weather phenomenon this year is an incredible display of Northern Lights occurring throughout the year, especially in the Fall. The entire northern hemisphere is brilliantly lighted and streams of electricity shot so high they could be seen almost to the Equator. This grandeur is so overpowering that many people feel the world is on fire. In November a great comet appears in the sky. Its tail with its breadth covers the entire northern sky. Many people believe the Judgment Day is at hand and begin preparing for it.
Eventually the sky clears, the air warms with renewed sun warmth and the seasons return to normal. But the people never forgot this year without a summer—the most frightening year of their lives.
In the distance I faintly hear my beautiful wife calling. The old man says “got to go now,” as he slowly and stiffly arises from where he’s been sitting. He picks up his walking stick, puts his unlit pipe in his shirt pocket and grabs his old rifle. Momentarily I turn from him and look in Lois’ direction. When I turn back the old man is gone. With saw in hand I begin walking down the hill to where Lois, with her beautiful smile and lilting laughter, is waiting.
That evening, as I sit relaxing by our wood stove, I begin to try to unravel parts of the mystery. I realize after some thought that his family’s name is on my property deed. Now it dawns on me why he said he once farmed the land we were sitting on.
Another part of the puzzle I would address the next time we went to the Kirkland Town Library in Clinton.
I research the bizarre weather climate that affected the entire globe, causing such widespread famine, pestilence, unrest and death. Putting together all the bits and pieces of information the old man told me I eventually discover what happened.
On April 10, 1815 the over 14,000 foot Tambora volcano in Indonesia erupted in a colossal, massive explosion that was heard 1,600 miles away. This explosion, which blew off over 4,300 feet of the volcano, is the largest and most powerful eruption ever recorded. Eruption columns went 27 miles into the atmosphere and an estimated 100 cubic kilometers of rock, ash, SO2 and sulphuric acid produced a massive acidic rain that reflected significant amounts of solar radiation that noticeably cooled the global atmosphere the following year, leading to an uncommonly cold summer.
The old man apparently never knew what had caused this year without a summer. But wait a minute, something here doesn’t add up! If the old man had been a lad then, he would have to be close to 200 years old. The year was 1816. Had he been a strange figment of my at times fertile imagination? Possibly an aberration or ghost in human form? Everything about this encounter seems so real to me. It continues to mystify me.
Every time I work up in my woods, I’ll occasionally glance around. I guess I’m hoping to see him again. I have so much to tell him. From time to time I think I smell his pipe’s tobacco smoke. Maybe he’s here with me after all—in the trees, the leaves, the air and sky. I like to believe that the old man is really here–and everywhere.
Hobie Morris is a Brookfield resident and simple country man.