Innsmouth by day
The week before the Expo, my mother and I drove to Innsmouth to open our family’s summer home, as well as that of my grandmother, and the various work that entailed was dull and, on occasion, profoundly annoying, but had to be done anyway (one must be careful lest eldritch horrors start nesting in the attic.) The process has also resulted in some interesting events, such as my nearly getting skewered on a curtain rod, which has at least provided me with some good stories to tell.
As for itself, Innsmouth is a lovely place. The restaurants out here are some of the best, as is the beer and the wine. Indeed, during our trip I had to recover from a vicious hangover, courtesy of four glasses of Innsmouth cider that I downed the night before in a fit of bravado. The people are also great, gills aside. If you know them and they know you and know that you aren’t going to climb out a window and try to convince people in Newbury Port to drop dynamite in Innsmouth waters, they’ll show you a good time, help you out in a neighborly fashion, and invite you to Esoteric Order of Dagon meetings (go at your own risk). They also run absolutely awesome stores, which include some of my favorite jewelry boutiques and sources for antiquities.
Outside of the town itself, the fields and forests in the area are of a vastly different stripe from Dunwich land. The terrain is often unwelcoming, and it is chock full of mosquitoes who all seem to want to take a bite out of ME (aristocrats apparently taste better than plebeians). There is one upshot, however: the woods are home to morel mushrooms, which I, as an intrepid mycophage, pursue with a zeal bordering on the suicidal. During our time there I spent hours scrambling up hill and down dale, basket in hand, pursuing my elusive quarry. I also had to fend off the aforementioned bugs, dodge poison ivy, and even face off against other mushroom hunters. A word to the wise: If there is one person who you do not want to cross, it is the mushroom hunter. We HATE other people infringing on what we view as our territory, and though the meeting I had was relatively cordial, all things considered, neither party involved could fully conceal their distrust and abject dislike of the other.
All good things had to come to an end, however, and I soon had beat a hasty path to the door of the Expo, which I’ve written/am going to write about on my other blog (link forthcoming). Go have a look!
Innsmouth sounds like a nice place. A magical, pastoral land even. But in light of the second photograph, the one I assume you took of the place at night, I'll avoid it. Strange creatures rising out of the ocean while I'm trying to fish I don't need.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, a quick trip to Wikipedia suggested it might just be a concoction born from the mad mind of H.P. Lovecraft.
Still why take chances. I'll stick to Texas - where the Hobbits wear cowboy hats.
It's also where Hyboria was created.
Meh, Texas is too hot for me. I prefer my eldritch woodlands, fish men or no fish men.
ReplyDeleteIt is hot here, come to think of it. Perhaps, eldritchy hot. Hot, dry, and windy. Not a good
ReplyDeletecombination. Still, there are no mosquitoes - yet, and that makes the first three acceptable.
But this is pretty hot, and I fear we're being hit by one of those deadly Gamma Ray Bursts you hear about on the Science Channel. The kind that killed off the dinosaurs.
Hopefully this is a milder version that will now kill off the mosquitoes, leaving us humans
unscathed once again.