You don’t have to be a literary junkie to love the Mark Twain Country helicopter tour. “Some people want to hear about [landmarks]; others just want to take in the views,” said pilot Tom Freeman, who offers aerial tours as part of the Elmira, N.Y., centennial commemoration of the writer’s death.
For 22 summers Twain and his family stayed at Quarry Farm, his sister-in-law Susan Crane’s estate secluded on Elmira’s picturesque East Hill. To give Twain a quiet place to write — and to smoke 30 cigars daily — Crane had a studio built in 1874 on a promontory. The octagonal study resembled a Mississippi steamboat pilot house and had a desk, chair, cot, fireplace and big windows through which Sour Mash and Twain’s other cats came and went. To allow public access, the literary landmark was moved to Elmira College’s downtown campus in 1952.
Freeman hovers his helicopter over the Victorian farmhouse, then points to a spot overlooking the Chemung River. “That’s where Twain’s studio was.”
Inspired by sweeping views of the river valley and blue mountains just beyond the Pennsylvania border, Twain penned tales about such characters as Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
A scenic five-hour drive from D.C., the quaint town is known for top-ranked Elmira College and its lust for literature. Its 2010 Mark Twain Country festivities include trolley tours through Sept. 25. Trolley guide Mark Delgrosso engages riders with local Twain trivia; the man born Samuel Clemens provoked glares and gasps with his spicy language and played billiards with a pastor at a table hidden in the still-magnificent Park Church.
West of downtown at Tanglewood Nature Center, a 3.1-mile trail leads to Frenchman’s Bluff and its breathtaking view of the glittering Chemung River. Stone meditation benches and signs bearing Twainisms were recently installed along the trail, said naturalist Ian McLaughlin. “Some maxims are irreverent, others deep.”
Twain-iacs can also enjoy free humor-leavened lectures around town, the Aug. 26 Twain Fest and ghost walks.
Soups On Cafe owner Barb McClure came 20 years ago from Manhattan to canoe, and made Elmira her home. “Twenty of my friends followed; only one moved back,” she says. Embracing Twain mania, McClure bakes Aunt Polly-inspired pies — and has cooked up a fall costumed tribute to the author.
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