This afternoon, in the light rain, I set off for the Old Post Road with my friend Randall. I was telling him about doing some preliminary research on the area surrounding Moose Hill (Moosiap), and about a map I found on the internet detailing this region.

We hoped to find the signpost that I passed a couple of days ago on South Walpole St. It identified the area with the two beautiful old houses from the 18th century as part of the original Post Road from North to South. Today's Old Post Road connects S. Walpole and Sharon south of the Moose Hill Sanctuary land. The Old Post Road would have been the main thoroughfare for travelers and mail carriers and local erranders. It would have been as beautiful then as it is today. It would have carried Boston-to-New York traffic, and vice versa.

It's mid-October, the sugar maples are showing riotous colors, and the dense ferny wetlands on both sides of the street give the whole route a mysterious air. Kind of Poe and Hawthorney.

After about 6 or 7 minutes into the foresty heart of the S. Walpole St., a white sign on the right of the road marked a walking trail leading off to the right. This was sudden, and unusual, too. (No one on foot has ever traversed this road while I've been on it.) It's not a big hiking trailhead. It's just a little pathway into the woods. And that pathway, says the sign, is the old Indian trail that preceded the Old Post Road. The pathway is as old as the people who've ever lived here, but I think not too many current day residents of Walpole or Sharon are exploring this corner of Moose Hill and Plimpton Park and Wolomolopoag Pond.

I want to find out more.

Randall and I turn around at the sign, and follow an unmarked road opposite the hiking trail. The road follows an old downhill slope, and gradually opens up with big farm houses on both sides of the road in a little valley. We continue on, the road now leading up a fairly steep slope, and come almost to the top of the mystery hill. On the right is a field and an old New England stone fence, and it looks solid and well-constructed. On the left is a huge mansion of simple white clapboard. It has an addition of beautiful old brick on its downhill side, thus giving the whole place an odd mixture of 18th and 19th century materials and styles. On the enormous chimney, painted white, a huge cursive letter "C" brands the house with pride and of course familial specificity.

The "C" House on the mystery hill: who lives there? who used to live there? how can I live there?

And just opposite the driveway to this "C" House was another set of signs. One notifying drivers that they've come to a dead end; one with a very old signpost for Old Post Road; and a street sign whose name I forget. I swear this is unmapped land, and an unmapped intersection.

The 1700 "C" House family were certainly lords of this place, and the activity must have been brisk back then. I wonder how they got along with their Indian neighbors, who must surely have been descended from followers of King Philip. I think it's time to read about King Philip's War and the rebellion of the native tribes. All I really know is it began in 1675 and ended the next year with the surrender of the Nipmuck tribe and the murder of Philip.

In the meantime, I think I'll plan a hike or drive along the original Indian trail, now "Old Post Road", and see how lost you can get when you're only a short, four century junket from Interstate 95.