This has been another pretty nice day, but tonight we have rain starting, as predicted, and then we can expect a stretch of much cooler, less enjoyable and mostly wet weather for the remainder of the week.  I was surprised this afternoon when I noticed one of the big maples alongside the road below our house has begun to turn.  It's one of those really old maples that has shaded any number of Wilbur Ewen's cows, crackled with ice over horse-drawn pungs headed for West Danville to meet the train, swayed in stormy darkness during hurricane-force winds and withstood January blizzards to survive and offer cooling comfort to summer folks walking for their health.  What tales could be told if only that old tree could talk.  It might have been a sapling when Joe and Molly hunted here before settlers came; and it no doubt was standing tall when wagon loads of goods went by headed for Walden and points north on Market Road.  There were children walking beneath it on their way to school on the Plain - Bernard, Stanley, Phyllis and Athalene Ewen; Freda Maynard and Mabel Bolton passing by on their way to the pond for a swim; Dr. Burbank in his buggy headed for camp with his fishing gear.  There's no doubt the old tree has been around for all of that and much more, and will likely be around for a long time to come.  But today it is showing some stress, perhaps from the hot weather, and the leaves are turning - early, I hope.  It is usually one of the prettiest trees on this road, and tourists often stop on their autumn pilgrimage to photograph it, but I don't recall it starting to turn quite this early.  There are other maples that are usually ahead of it, but I saw no sign of them turning when I looked today.

Cabot Historical Society President Bonnie Dannenberg and I took a "tour" along the Bayley-Hazen Military Road today.  There are markers along the way, a relatively new one put up in the very early 2000's, when sexton Velma Smith and I were locating and recording "lost" burial sites.  This one was for the first person to die in Cabot, Nathanial West, in 1786, "by a log rolling over him;"  Aura Scott, young son of Cabot's first doctor, Parley Scott, in 1813; and all those others who were buried "at home" with a simple wooden marker or a slab of field stone crudely lettered, or like the seven Webster children buried in the shade of a young maple tree near their home. We know people died in "District 1" and we have dates for some, some I'm sure were never recorded.  We know where the tree stood marking the graves of seven children, but it has recently been cut down, the ground leveled.  The graves are lost, but those early settlers are honored with this simple field stone and bronze plaque at the intersection of the Bayley-Hazen Road and Route 215, near the Walden town line.

Bonnie and I went on to find markers for "the first settler" in Cabot, the first school, Smuggler's House - also known as the "Yellow Tavern."  There are other markers, one for the road itself that I forgot to point out to Bonnie, and one in the woods on private property where the soldiers spent the winter, waiting for the British who fortunately never came.  There were some skirmishes, but no big battles.  I expect the British wanted to avoid the icy blast on Cabot Plain that winter as much as the soldiers who camped there - in the protection of a ledge and forest thicket.

Bonnie was somewhat unfamiliar with the side of town known as Cabot Plain, and was an eager "student."  Some of her ancestors once lived on the Plain, and we were able to find the farm and she got pictures.  We had a good time, and tried to imagine what it must have been like when there were houses, businesses and lots of traffic over the Plain - when it was the bustling business hub of town.