37 B

You know you’ve been recovering benchmarks for way too long when … well, you’ll have to wait until the end of the story.

I put 37 B on our list for today as almost an afterthought, because it seemed a bit out of the way. But we had plenty of time, so we decided to add it in to our journey. We took T 335 west from Vernon toward the intersection with Wilsey Rd./Dietz Mountain Rd. “Dietz Mountain Road,” I kept muttering, “Dietz Mountain Road. Why does that sound familiar?” Rich didn’t know, but he thought it sounded vaguely familiar too. Along T 335 we saw nothing more interesting than a woman with flocks of chickens and dogs in the middle of the lane (not an unusual sight on these back roads), and as we approached the T-intersection we saw a very prominent ledge straight ahead. It looked just like the kind of ledge we’d use for a benchmark, and with no better description than “in ledge of rock” we figured it was possible. But first we wanted to ask for permission at the nearby house. The middle-aged woman who came to the door had no idea about the mark, had never seen it and really didn’t even know what it was for, but allowed us to search the ledge and the other small outcroppings in her yard. We poked around for about ten minutes, but the large ledge was covered with fallen leaves and the smaller ones with a thick layer of moss. We came up empty, and returned to the house to thank her and let her know that we hadn’t found the mark.

All was well and good until we got home and I created a page for 37 B on my website. WordPress gave it a permalink ending in 37-b-2, which means there is already a 37 B in the database. OK, I figured, maybe there was a 37 B in Florida or Arizona or somewhere else that I’m not thinking about. I checked out the database entry and … you guessed it … we already found this mark back in 2005!

We can’t really figure out how we didn’t remember it, other than we came to the spot from the north and probably came upon the disk in the woods north of the house before we even saw the large rock ledge that drew our attention this time. It’s strange that to both of us, nothing about the area looked familiar. And we know that the house isn’t new (in fact, the homeowner told us that it’s well over 100 years old). At least we know why Dietz Mountain Road sounded familiar!