Jules HoeptingMy name is Jules Hoepting (jewels/joules, hope-ting), a 21-year-old dork who has taken to walking around and testing my phone’s photo storage capacity.
Canadian by birth, I grew up in the flat part of New York, the former basin of Lake Ontario. When I was one year old, my mom moved to Orleans County for an amazing job opportunity I can swiftly sum up as onion crop growing research. (Yes, onions). Initially, she didn’t know anyone, so she took to taking me to local parks to get to know the area.
That’s tiny me standing on the ledge of a hundred foot drop off. Yes, my mother is the one who encouraged me to be there and took the photograph. This is something we still do.
Although I was introduced to parks and enjoyed parks from an early age, I didn’t really fall in love with them until later on. I can happily say parks and I have been in a committed relationship for a few years now.
So, out of all the places in the world, why do I want to get to know New York?
Well, there’s the irony of living in one place for a long time and not really knowing what is there. Sure, I’d been to several parks, but I couldn’t tell you the names of them or where they were located. I had been transported to parks in a backseat of 1999 Toyota Corolla, while I mindlessly looked out the window, imagining the singers from CDs as tiny holograms performing on the window dash.
I started thinking about how little I actually knew about New York and how ridiculous that is. And how ridiculously easy it was to change that.
And COVID-19 was a major motivator.
For summer 2020, my friend and I were planning on going to California and hiking the American Rockies for a month or so. But then all the pandemic precautions happened, highly discouraging any travel out of the state.
So, instead, I walked across New York State.
The Erie Canalway Trail is half a mile from my mother’s house in Albion, where I was staying that summer. What I really liked about the trail was that it was next to water — I am a huge fan of water — and it was really long. Almost 300 miles, to be exact. I could just walk and walk and get in my own head and feel like I was in the middle of nowhere. Assuming I’m not lost, I really like feeling like I’m in the middle of nowhere.
Getting bored of doing the same segments of the trail, I started driving out to new-to-me sections east and west of Albion. I found a detailed, interactive map of the trail online. I made it a goal to have completed the sections from Buffalo to Rochester. Then Buffalo to Syracuse. Then, heck, I figured I might as well just do the whole thing.
On my days off from work, I drove out to untraveled sections of the trail. After a day entailing three hours of driving, twenty miles of walking, and three more hours of driving, I started making weekend trips to walk the trail, staying in cheap motels.
By the time I got to a sign in Albany indicating where eastern entrance of the canal used to be (the eastern entrance is now in Waterford), I felt pretty accomplished. I had learned a lot about canals and New York State from seeing it. From reading every single historic sign on the trail.
I was in the habit of driving to new-to-me places to explore on my days off. I didn’t want to break the habit, so I figured I’d continue to explore new trails, new parks, new parts of New York. Things of that sort.
Hence, the purpose of this blog.
So, scroll on through, and see what wonders I stroll upon.
