Even though there were a few cars parked outside the visitor’s center, the place was rather creepy. The wind was incredibly torrential that day, and the air biting cold. There was no human activity at all. Everything was stone cold and still except that monstrous wind! Still, we braved the fierce winds that nearly blew the camera out of my hands, and reached the summit.

Hill Cumorah is a drumlin, a humpbacked whale-shaped little hill supposedly created by ancient glaciers. Some postulate that drumlins were formed by catastrophic flood waters releasing currents of water under great pressure by glacial ice. They are so notable because they seem to pop up out of nowhere, up from a flatter area of land.

An engraving of Hill Cumorah from the book "Historical Collections of the State of New York (1841)" by John Barber and Henry Howe

I had been here decades ago, as a young person, to see the historic Easter pageant held every year on the hill. I remember the experience well. We’d arrived early; my brothers and I ambled up the rocky walls and steep hill, exploring the site before twilight settled. As dusk approached, more visitors arrived and we returned to where the family was sitting on the lawn. As darkness fell, the colorful lights and bombastic music of the pageant began. It lasted several hours.

This is the site where Joseph Smith claimed to have received the golden plates from the angel Moroni. After Smith transcribed the plates into the Book of Mormon, Moroni instructed Smith to bury the plates. Later attempts were made to discover them… but NO ONE knows where the gold plates have gone…..

The top of the hill is like a park, with numerous monuments and engravings. Besides the unusually shiny Moroni on a pillar, there are plaques detailing the Joseph Smith accounts. I say “accounts” because after a few years, Mr. Smith was inconsistent with his stories. My daughter read a few excellent books about Mormonism a few weeks before we visited Palmyra, oddly enough. If you’d like a little insight into the Mormon story and biography and character of Joseph Smith, she recommends them: “Reasoning from the Scriptures” by Ron Rhodes; “The Mormon Mirage” by Latayne C Scott; “Out of Mormonism” by Judy Roberts.

Can you see how violently the trees are bending? It was so windy I almost lost my camera!

The incline is quite steep, but very invigorating. We walked across the summit, following the concrete pathway around the hill.

My parents never decided to join the Mormon Church. My stepdad believed it to be somewhat ridiculous, riddled with errors and conflicting testimonies from Smith himself, and full of silly folk magic that plagued many of the paganistic settlers of the Upstate New York wilderness. During the 1800s, New York and New England were a “hotbed” of mystical fervor, sprouting excitements such as the Oneida Community (another polygamous commune), the Cardiff Giant, Christian Science, and etc. I think many of the religious movements sprang up from a great dissatisfaction from the dead religions found in conventional Christian churches. It’s such a shame that the Christian churches has strayed so far away from Biblical doctrine that they had nothing to offer people anymore.

After we wandered the site for a time, we decided to leave. I still can’t get over the ferocity of the wind!

As I snapped a few photos, a woman appeared at the visitor’s center. I was surprised to see anyone there! She asked me if I wanted to see inside the cabin. I said “OK,” and two young ladies introduced themselves and escorted me in.

The first thing I noticed was how snug the cabin was from the terrible gusts of wind outdoors. These old cabins may look rickety, but they are actually surprisingly warm and draftless.

The cabin was obviously decorated to imitate a typical family dwelling in the early 1800s. The young ladies narrated the story of Joseph Smith while I snapped photos.

According to the various accounts, young Joseph (Joseph, Jr., as he was named after his father) was about 14 years old (but later Joseph claimed in various accounts he was 15, or 16, or 17, or perhaps 18) when he wandered out into the “Sacred Grove”– the woods behind the cabin. He’d been laboring over what denomination was the “true church” when he claims he saw a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ.

Joseph Smith, Jr., (1805-1844) was born into religious controversy. The religious views of his parents differed as much as those of his grandparents and great-grandparents. Quite a few of his family members had aligned themselves with such systems of thought as Seekerism, universalism, and orthodoxy with a mixture of folk magic, and Indian superstitions. The Smith family was but an illustration of the deep religious divide taking place in America. While mainstream Christian denominations quarreled with and suspected one another, skepticism and radical departures from Biblical Christianity grew at an astonishing rate. This period in America’s history saw the quick rise of unitarianism, universalism, and a number of other similar religious “rationalist” movements. The Church of the Jehovah’s Witnesses (formerly known as “Bible Students”) and Seventh-Day Adventists also find their origin in this point in time. When the Smith family moved to this farm in Palmyra, New York, — a time when spiritual fervor was on the rise with the advent of the Second Great Awakening — the religious controversy that divided the family and the American people, was about to reach its climax in Joseph Smith.

Smith later claimed that an angel named Moroni appeared to him in 1823, had him transcribe and then bury some golden plates (which have never been recovered) and start up a new church, the Mormon Church, named after the Book of Mormon.

Smith’s new “church” was extremely controversial and contained a blend of the Christian doctrines and folk magic with which he grew up. He attempted to convert some of the local people, but was driven out of various towns for “corrupting public morals” with his practices of divination (deciphering pebbles in a hat) and polygamy (which was a very common mark of the other wayward religions that sprang up during this time period, such as another polygamous mystery religious community, the Oneida Community founded by John Humphrey Noyes). The polygamy charge is uncertain, as both Smith and his wife Emma denied any polygamous relationships, but some records show that Smith had married four other women. After Smith’s death, Mormon leaders incorporated polygamy as a Mormon doctrine until 1890, when it was repealed under pressure by the U.S. Congress.

Smith and his followers fled to Ohio and continued westward. Smith died in Indiana while in jail for treason.

Near the log cabin is a very large building– a “temple.” The place was totally devoid of any people. The wind blew fiercely and the place was very creepy.

I snapped my photos, said thank you to the ladies, and we left for the Hill Cumorah site. I’d visited Hill Cumorah when I was about 13 years old. We attended the Easter pageant there. My parents were seeking God, and considered joining the Mormon Church at that time. I’ll have more on that story to come.

Did you know that the circular saw was invented by a woman? Tabitha Babbitt, in 1812. The dishwasher was invented by Josephine Cochran. Kevlar- the material used for life-saving bullet-proof vests was invented by Stephanie Kwolek in 1966. Isa Forbes invented the electric hot water heaer in 1917. Anna Anna Connelly invented the fire escape in 1887. And Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate-chip cookies in 1930. (Source: FactMonster)

Not to mention, a woman invented a blog about New York Travel.

As a history buff, I find it very fitting that the National Women’s Hall of Fame is in Seneca Falls, NY. Seneca Falls was the birthplace of the women’s rights movement. According to Fame inductee and suffragist Paulina Kellogg Wright Davis (Susan B. Anthony gave the eulogy at Davis’ funeral, by the way), the women’s rights movement (as well as the abolition movement) was the direct result of the stunning wave of religious revivals in Upstate New York. Charles Grandison Finney, a lawyer from Adams, NY, was converted to Christianity and began a blitz of revivals named the “Second Great Awakening” that converted hundreds of thousands of people throughout Central New York. As a matter of fact, Central New York from Utica to Rochester was nicknamed the “Burned Over District” because people closed bars and gambling places, attended churches, cleaned up their lives, and became honest businessmen and women.

Charles Finney permitted women to pray in public in mixed-gender prayer meetings, a scandalous move at the time. He was extremely outspoken in his support for women’s human rights, for the abolition of slavery and for the removal of bars and other places where men got drunk. Finney was president of Oberlin College in Ohio, the first American college to allow women to learn alongside blacks and men. One of the ladies who attended Oberlin College, Antoinette Blackwell, who became the first woman minister of a recognized denomination and led a pastorate for a Congregational Church in Wayne County, NY.

With Upstate New York ripe for change, the first Women’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls. Lucretia Mott, that famous Quaker women known for her amazing speaking abilities, joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and others to petition and organize the women’s rights movement.

The National Women’s Hall of Fame is on 76 Fall Street. It’s a tall, narrow building, almost inconspicuous.

The National Women’s Hall of Fame was started in 1969, to honor American women for exceptional achievements throughout history: “to honor in perpetuity those women, citizens of the United States of America, whose contributions to the arts, athletics, business, education, government, the humanities, philanthropy and science, have been the greatest value for the development of their country.”

When you first walk in, you see a bell. It’s the original bell from the old Seneca Falls Knitting Mill, off the Erie Canal.

The lady who greeted us as we entered, Christine, informed us that the organization had purchased the knitting mill and plan to relocate the Hall of Fame to the knitting mill in the near future. The knitting mill, a short walk from the current Hall’s location, employed many of the Seneca Falls women who fought for equality. We walked down the street to see the mill. It is definitely larger and will be able to contain larger displays.

Doesn’t it look like a scene from a Currier and Ives painting?

Back to the Hall of Fame. We meandered the narrow halls, checking out the displays of the inductees. There are hundreds of inductees. Most ladies I knew or had heard of. However, there are some ladies missing, women who I believe should be on the walls (such as Phyllis Schlafly and Shirley Temple Black).

There were very few displays in the building, just a few here and there. I liked this one, filled with Votes for Women paraphernalia.

It’s nice to know that the National Women’s Hall of Fame is growing. They do take submissions for inductees! You can nominate a woman through the online nomination form at their website. Additionally, you can pay $100 to nominate a women (such as a mother or sister) to be included in the Hall’s Memorial and Tribute section.

I look forward to seeing the new location with new displays at the Knitting Mill. I’ll definitely be back for that!

Hot off the presses and just in time for the busy migration season, the Wayne County Office of Tourism is now offering a comprehensive guide to assist professional and amateur birders find the songsters. The nine page guide book easily fits in your pocket or camera bag, and features 10 “Best Bird Locations” in Wayne County.

The back page is a map which easily directs you to each location. Some areas are directly in the Atlantic Flyway, while others are in the deep woods, where the elusive Veery Thrush hides. Bird watching is the number one hobby for outdoor lovers, and with this exciting and informative guide, you can now locate hundreds of birds in Wayne County.

The Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge is HUGE, and it’s probably the closest thing to an American “safari” if there ever is one. The guide is free. The Refuge is a MUST SEE! For your free guide contact the Wayne County Office of Tourism at 800-527-6510, or email tourism@co.wayne.ny.us.

Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge is part of the Montezuma Wetlands Complex– a huge marshland of 50,000 acres in Seneca, Cayuga, and Wayne counties in Upstate New York. It’s designated as “one of the best examples of undisturbed swamp woodlands in New York or New England.” This area is an important stopping point for North Amerian migratory birds and local waterfowl. The NYS Thruway slices right through it, so although I have never visited the park itself, I’ve been there. We’ve seen enormous blue herons swooping down between the tall cattails, and stunning bald eagles perched atop scraggly trees as they watch the cars zip by.

Observers on the drive have recently seen a horned grebe, yellow-headed blackbird, Eurasian widgeon, glossy ibis, and whimbrel. Some 100,000 Canada geese and 15,000 snow geese congregate on the Main Pool during spring migration and 100,000 mallards and 25,000 black ducks are present in the fall. Montezuma’s location within the Atlantic Flyway and the attraction of the Finger Lakes region of New York bring in large numbers of waterfowl during both fall and spring. Numbers dwindle after the pool freezes over at the end of November.

Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge is a jackpot for bird watchers and nature lovers. The marshlands have extensive trails and offer all sorts of activities. We once drove to the area, but had no map and got hopelessly lost, lol. Be sure to call for directions if you go! And bring lots of bug spray, camera batteries (the scenery is gorgeous) and waterproof trousers– it IS a swamp, after all. You can also canoe, kayak, hike the 3.5 mile trail, and visit the visitor’s center. Observation towers and an osprey webcam are available for gawkers. Wow! We really want to visit.

Bird life is abundant. I have several kids who are “into” birds, so this is a real treat:

Cerulean warblers are one of the over 220 species of birds known from the Island. Marsh hawks and bald eagles are seen seasonally. Second growth hardwoods are the most common habitat type and there’s interesting variety to this cover type, too. Kentucky coffee trees, a rare occurrence in NY, are found on Hickory Hill. The leaves of this member of the Pea Family, which are doubly-compound and contain about 70 leaflets, can be almost 3 feet in length. White-tailed deer, fox and beaver are common mammals. River otter have been seen occasionally. Deer, turkey and waterfowl are popular game animals.

A good site to learn more about the Refuge is here. It includes a history of the marsh, the development and near-destruction of the march during the construction of the Erie Canal, and the efforts made to have this designated and protected as a national natural landmark. The website says this is a great time to visit the Refuge, because the birds are on their migratory paths now.