Upon leaving the Rowe Labor Day Weekend, I figured I should take advantage of my location and find another town to travel to fit the Meditate Mass 351 Challenge. I also wanted it to be one that I wouldn’t get to easily on another trip. After checking out the map, I decided to visit Colrain.
I’d heard of the town before, and knew that it had a lot of apple orchards and other farms. After a side trip into Vermont, we drove through beautiful green country roads along a Green River towards Colrain Center. Now, I knew the name Coleraine as its a popular contra dance tune and it I’d one if the first ones I learned on the hammered dulcimer. When I got to the center, I was really surprised at what I found.
While the rest if the town was bucolic beauty, the town center looked like 1600 square feet of urban blight. There were two abandoned churches, a condemned building, and an apartment block with four apartments and what looked like trash and junk spewed about. There was also this mental object that looked like a small pyramid. The whole situation was sort of surreal.
Granted, there might be a much better center of town, but this is what I found.
So, when where you completely surprised at what you found that seemed so out of place?
