Friday, March 16, 2007

WAS IT MARTHA KEYES'S SPIRIT?

The moon and stars literally aligned a couple weeks ago, when there was a full moon and a lunar eclipse in the North East. My wife and I had a snowshoe/bonfire party in our back yard. I marked the trail up the side of Wachusett Mountain with tiki torches directly up into the land once owned by the Keyes family, where Lucy Keyes disappeared and the place where Martha Keyes haunts. As the Earth's shadow obscured the moon, about 25 of us set off on our tramp into the dark woods. Following the tiki torch trail we snaked our way directly into Lucy Keyes territory.

I had set up a mid-tramp resting point at a flat-topped rock with a bottle of Patron Tequila. I fondly dubbed the rock "Lucy Keyes Rock," as it is exactly mid-way between the site of Lucy’s house and the lake she and her sister visited that fateful day. The moon was completely shaded as we drank a toast to Lucy’s mother, Martha; our headlamps and the tiki torches the only illumination of our solemn honorarium.

The rest of the tramp was beautiful and inspirational as the moon revealed itself once again and brighten the woods, triggered in part by the tequila warming our bellies. The flame of each next torch flickered through the trees in the distance as we trod through the 8 inches of fresh snow.

We returned to our house and lit the bonfire that roared into the night.

The next day I hiked up into the woods to retrieve the torches and the bottle we left stashed at Lucy Keyes rock. Each of the torches had burned itself out and I gathered them one by one. When I arrived at the rock I opened my backpack and loaded up the half empty Patron bottle and the plastic cups we used for our toast. I went to grab the torch closest to the rock and in the bright daylight sun, I almost burned my self when I discovered what I could barely see... it was still burning. It was a good 16 hours since I had originally lit it. I couldn’t help but think this was Lucy’s eternal flame.

As I extinguished the flame and gathered up the torch, I heard something. Was it a tree creaking in the cold wind? Was it a distant coyote? Or was the high-pitched cry Martha’s keening voice calling for Lucy?

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