Cool for a noontime August day, and gray, with foreboding hints of the forecasted afternoon rain in a hazy sky blurring my first view from the Mount Toby summit. Still, what a spectacle it was, even in the poor visibility. I can only imagine the splendor of that same perspective under clear, crisp, blue skies enhanced by autumn colors.
I’ll be back. Promise. I hesitate to admit that during 64 years on this slice of paradise called the Pioneer Valley — and a South Deerfield native from just across the Connecticut River, no less — it was my first trip to Toby’s summit. How could that be? Especially for an inquisitive individual who’s spent a lifetime exploring local woods and waters, swamps and fields and secluded, hardwood ridges populated by oaks and beech and shagbark hickories reaching south to the sun’s daily path and curling slightly southwest toward Cautantowwit’s House, our first people’s spirit land tucked behind the setting sun.
What a place Toby must be to view an orange, summer sunset; better still, a rising harvest moon. How do you suppose a man would go about getting a job as Toby fire-tower ranger? What a heavenly place to be trapped under the silver light of a midnight moon. One could only guess what creative thoughts could be stirred in such a place? Enticing indeed.
The western presence of the mythical Pocumtuck Range beaver — with its Mount Sugarloaf head, North Sugarloaf body and so-called East Mountain tail — is nowhere better than from Toby. Although familiar ridges in the western backdrop — such as Mount Esther, Chestnut Mountain, Hog Mountain, Dry Hill, High Ridge and Cricket Hill — are more distant than from Sugarloaf, Toby offers a broader, thought-provoking view spiced in deep history.
I was surprised by the vastness of forest between the Toby summit and the Sunderland church; likewise, to the ridge obscuring Cliffside Apartments and the Bull Hill plain being slowly devoured by Delta Sand and Gravel off Route 116. Despite spending some time on Mount Toby State Forest’s discontinued roads as a teen a half-century ago, and knowing Toby’s familiar bottomland presence from many angles, I never understood the forest’s great depth until my view from the wooden tower steps.
As kids, we used to party at places like Tyler’s Cabin, behind the Clarke Mountain Road water tower, and Williams’ Cabin, way out in the woods across Route 47 from the same family’s commercial sugar house of the day. I had my first maple sugar on snow there. Remember it well. Plus, I knew the Williams family and its farm, had visited the elderly couple of my parents’ vintage as an adult sharing an interest in local history.
I had heard tales of the mysterious caves below the fire tower, a spectacular waterfall not far away and about the tower itself, where old youth-baseball teammate Phil Gilmore long ago worked on fire-watch, hosting occasional townie guests.
Not me. I was more focused on the Pocumtuck Range and the ridges to the west; had never hunted, fished or poked around on Mount Toby itself despite the fact that the forest was known for its deer and native brook trout. Cranberry Pond? Yes, for a brief period. Then, of course, there were the two excellent squaretail ponds along the old river and ferry road to Montague. That’s a tale for another day. Sad that the more productive of the two brookie impoundments is long gone. Only the waterfall and a brook through the old pond bed remains. Down the road a short way is Chard Pond, where many years ago Peter Mraz caught the second largest squaretail I’ve ever laid eyes upon.
My first climb of Toby stuck with me for days and drew me into studying the mountain’s Indian name, which I had seen and forgotten. My trip through Wright’s “Indian Deeds of Hampden County,” Huden’s “Indian Place Names of New England” and its references to Trumbull’s “Natick Dictionary,” and Bright’s “Native American Place Names of the United States” only underscored what I already knew. The topic of local Indian place names and their meaning offers far more unknown than known.
The books seem to agree on the Mahican name “Kunckquachu,” meaning high mountain, for Toby. It is named in a 1663 Hadley deed from squaw grantor Mishalisk, the same woman sachem who sold the property from the mouth of the Deerfield River south to the fertile, terraced plains along River Road in Whately. In that deed, Mount Sugarloaf is noted as “Wequomps,” which for some strange reason goes totally unmentioned by Huden. Sugarloaf, of all places, not mentioned. Maybe he couldn’t come up with a meaning for “Wequomps.”
Honestly, I also find the Mahican origin dubious. Were our Pocumtucks, the Nipmucks of central Massachusetts and the Hudson Valley’s Mahicans one? Maybe neighbors from the same bolt of cloth with slightly different dialects? Hmmm? Good questions that have not been satisfactorily answered despite all the recent ethnological/anthropological research into our New England tribes, their languages, worldview and culture.
Wouldn’t you love to know more about the unknown indigenous meanings of our mountains, rivers, swamps and high, lonesome shelf caves; how they all fit together? I sure would.
Stay tuned.
Recorder Sports Editor Gary Sanderson is a senior-active member of the outdoor-writers associations of America and New England. Send your questions, stories about our area to him at: gsanderson@recorder.com.