Thursday, April 10, 2014

An evening walk through Minisink Hills, PA

Getting bored of a predictable walk around "the block" I decided to walk down Hillside Drive to Gap View Drive then out onto River Road and to Laurel Hill Cemetary which is behind St. Mark's Lutheran Church. Some of the tombstones have fallen over and some have been worn down to crooked sun-bleached and weather-worn little stubs that jut up from the earth like teeth trying to chew something that is no longer there. I walked up what used to be the road to the driveway / road that leads to the church parking lot. I followed the road / driveway, hopped over the chain with a half dozen private property signs and walked up to what was last called Shawnee Academy. The many buildings on the property have sat empty for a few years. Previous names of the place have been Wordsworth and Marthworth. It's alway been a place for troubled kids. I was inside the lobby of the main building in 1987 when I had a job delivering office supplies for Town Office Supplies in Stroudsburg. It was very creepy and very, very silent as I walked around a bit taking photos. About 10 or 15 years ago I remember seeing a teenaged girl walking on Gap View Drive near River Road. Suddenly a long white van pulled up next to her and two men got out and wrestled her into the van. I think the van had markings on the side for Wordsworth. As I was walking home on River Road I noticed something very odd-looking and white about 30 feet off the side of the road. I walked through a bunch of dead branches to investigate. It was the perfectly dried and sun-bleached pelvis, spine, ribs, and skull of an adult deer. It probably received a mortal wound from a speeding car and crawled to this spot and took its last breaths. Poor thing. Near the skull were fresh deer droppings.

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