Small Travel: Grafton Lakes State Park
I live in a part of New York State that hasn’t changed much in the nearly 25 years that I’ve been here. Sometimes this is maddening. “How is it that we have only two new restaurants?” I’ve whined to friends, in the way that only those plagued with first-world problems do. (“Why does that have to open here?” I’ve simultaneously bemoaned, after noticing a Dollar General going up in my rural town of about 3,000.) But oftentimes, the things that changed the least are the things I have the most affection for. One of these is Grafton Lakes State Park.
The park is in Grafton, a conservative rural town not unlike the conservative rural towns that surround it. Measuring about 46 square miles and with just over 2,000 residents, it has an almost ridiculously low population density, which makes it feel like either the world’s best-kept secret or most out-of-the-way place. Of Grafton’s total area, 1.24 miles are water—and much of that is located at the state park, in six different ponds.
Grafton Lakes State Park is somewhat unusual for the region, in that it sits on a wooded plateau almost in smack-dab between the Taconic and Hudson valleys. At 2,500 acres, it’s one of the area’s larger parks, and has 25 miles of trails for hiking, biking, and horseback riding (and, fortunately, no ATVs, though snowmobiles are allowed in the winter). While there’s no overnight camping at the park, there are picnic facilities and pavilions available for rental. And there’s an all-access nature center at Shaver Pond, which houses environmental education programs and the state’s DEC Air and Acid Rain Deposition Monitoring Site.
I first discovered the park a few years after moving to the region—which tells you that I didn’t get out into my own local area nearly as much as I should have, preferring the “farther reaches” and conveniences of cities like Albany and Pittsfield. But once I discovered it, I was hooked—specifically by the water, the real draw of the park.
That first year, I sat on the beach at Long Pond—which is pretty enjoyable, as non-coastal beaches go—for hours, a book in one hand and a bottle of iced tea in the other. This was back in the day (aka, the mid-’90s) when I didn’t feel compelled to have a cell phone tethered to my person, and could get lost for half a day without wondering if someone—whether family, friend, or boss—was trying to get in touch with me.
I find myself visiting for no reason at all, except, perhaps, the best one: to float on or sit by the water, simultaneously thinking of everything and nothing.
Years later, while in the middle of a nastier-than-it-needed-to-be divorce, I came to walk the Dickinson Hill Fire Tower Trail at Grafton Lakes by myself, my attention not on my disintegrating relationship for once, but on the crisp air and the early May mud that squelched underneath my boots. Six years later, on my third date with my new husband, I was back on the trails again. This time he and I made the nearly 3-mile loop around the lake on the Long Pond Trail, in a drenching rain that began only a half mile into the hike, leaving rivulets of makeup I’d carefully applied running down my cheeks.
I still hike at Grafton Lakes, but most of the time I come here for the water. Plenty of visitors have the same thought, and cluster on the beach or else stake out spots along the shoreline for catching rainbow and brown trout, perch, bass, pickerel, and walleye. All of the ponds at the park have launches for kayaks, canoes, sailboats, and rowboats (motor boats are prohibited), and this is, for me, the best way to experience the calm, glassy waters of the lakes.
On our most recent trip, we met up with friends for a group kayak on Long Pond. We weren’t the only ones out there, but the pond is plenty big enough to accommodate. For two hours we alternated between brisk paddling and floating, sharing the water with rowboaters and paddleboarders, plus a lone double-crested cormorant who sat, watchful, atop a steel lake marker. We ate lunch right from our seats, our boats pulled up between the rocks along the shore, paddles crossed over one another’s to keep the boats together.
Even though I know I can still come here in the winter—ice skating, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing are all allowed—something about Grafton Lakes calls to me in those transitional days between the last of the sunny summer days and the changeover to fiery fall foliage. I find myself visiting for no reason at all, except, perhaps, the best one: to float on or sit by the water, simultaneously thinking of everything and nothing, watching the sun track over the ponds and slip down past the trees until the world settles into the hush of night.
