Today was a gorgeous day for wandering! So I hopped in the car and started to drive randomly in a direction I decided upon earlier. I had no specific destination in mind and was just enjoying rambling down a bunch of rural country roads until I came across a trail head. It turned out being the Bic (or is it Big?) Dickerman Hollis Town Forest. There was enough parking for two cars and luckily I was the only one there so I cuddled up the Prius next to some trees (as Daisy is still in the shop) and off I went!
This trail looks like an old access road and probably was at some point. Now it’s a “multi-purpose” trail that forbids motorized vehicles but seems to be a lovely place to bring your dog or horse. The entire trail seems to be a slight incline which is nice for working up those muscles on your backside! I’m not complaining! I stopped here and there to take photos of the lady slippers that were sprouting up everywhere. This of course further inspired me to take a few whimsy shots – of the crystal ball, a chalice, and of course a random petrified salt shaker I just happened to have on me (because who doesn’t bring a salt shaker into the woods with them?)
I wish I had a map of the area because this one trail seemed to be the trunk line that a ton of other less road-like trails branched off of. This seems to have been a hiker’s dream. Just so many options! But it was later in the day, I was alone, I decided not to be too brazen and stuck to it without wandering off. And when I got to the end of it I had to start laughing. Someone how I ended up creeping into the back of the Monson Ghost Town which I visited last year! And seeing as I was there anyway I kept on walking up the trail that leads to the Blue Herring nursery. I wasn’t disappointed! Unlike last year the birds were all there, at least five nests, one with large homely looking chicks. I sat for awhile and took some better photos than I got last year, even getting to leave some marbles behind as I forgot last time.
On my way back I rescued a dehydrated tree frog that was smushed to the trail doing a fantastic impression of a dead leaf. I walked him back to water and released him in a stagnant little tributary. He should be good now.. And my good deeds for the day continued when driving home I stopped the car to escort an insanely fast little turtle across the road. He wasn’t joking around, he even hissed at me, which is really weird considering it was a painted turtle and not a snapper. They’re usually quite docile! All and all a great day blundering about!
First up the Hollis Town Forest Trail:
Next up Monson Ghost Town/herring Nursery:
Between my body not getting the hint it’s go time, and a bunch of issues at home, I have been severely pokey in getting this year’s traveling started, but today I took my first little road trip of the season, and it was goddamn amazing!
I had decided to go to the Flume Gorge in the spring, before the tourist rush and also when all the water from the melting snow is whooshing down the mountains. I asked my mother if she wanted to go and after a bit of convincing she relented. She was sick on Mother’s Day so this was what I had decided to do with her to make up for it. We were slow getting out, getting into the car around 1PM, and then requiring several stops. I typed in the address wrong and after two hours of driving realized I was still forty minutes away. Could we make it in time?? Yes we could! We got there around 4PM, after mother had smuggled a gas station sandwich into the car while I was filling my tank. It was an egg salad sandwich, which you’d think would be a gamble at a gas station… but it was bizarrely great and much needed.
Tickets to the Flume Gorge cost us $16 per adult, unlike most the trails I go on which are in the middle of nowhere and absolutely free. That’s OK, it was well worth it! I guess my mother had been there before, during peak tourist season, and she didn’t remember much of it. This time around, being the spring, we had almost the whole trail to ourselves and it was gorgeous! The water was lively as we walked over numerous bridges to see see different vantage points. There were a few signs along the trail highlighting various features. A good portion of the trail is on a trellis going over the water and in between two rock walls. It makes for a stunning viewpoint, a brisk amount of exercise, and the sound! I can’t tell you how amazing the sound was! As the water rushed by it echoed against the rocks and became louder and louder until you could almost hear nothing else. I felt so alive! And there were a few beautiful waterfalls, one of which sprayed us with a cool and refreshing mist.
I won’t lie, for a first outing this was a bit extreme. It was three hours of driving to get there and much of the trail was steep, either going up hill or up stairs. Still, being as empty as it was we both could take our time and we had a great day. This was one of the most scenic places I have been so far and well worth the visit! The only complaint I have is that my camera hates taking photos in direct sunlight so a good deal of my snaps came out washed out. I still have to learn how to muck with the lighting setting to avoid this in the future. But with that being said I had a fantastic belated Mother’s Day celebration with my #1 mom, who I took a number of adorable photos of but I am fairly certain she’d kill me if I posted them here.
Today Mother Nature decided to bless us with 48 degree weather and a light drizzling rain which did a fantastic job of blanketing the town in dragon’s breath and washing a good deal of snow away. I figured it was the perfect time go out for a little walk, take a few spring snaps, and just enjoy myself. I’ve been cooped up in the house all winter, my health clubbing the crap out of me on the slightest whim, and cabin fever has made me more than a little anxious to return to the woods. So that’s what I did, I took my camera, slung it over my shoulder, and returned to a familiar haunt – The Old Woods Trail in the Betsy Foskett Wildlife Preserve in Rindge NH. Today I hoped to capture the strange and eerie feel it had to it since being clouded in mist.
I heard the water rushing by before I got that far. All this melting snow had added a liveliness to the pond’s tributaries. And the smell! There’s no fresher scent on this earth than the smell of freshly melting snow. It tickled all my senses and gave me such joy. It appears I was one of only two visitors in the recent past, unless I feel like counting all the dog tracks I found. I think it’s kind of sweet these dogs migrate to a path their owners probably walked them down whenever they escape their own confines. The wildlife was clearly used to their cold weather privacy as I seemed to have accidentally startled a gaggle of Canadian geese who honked loudly and upset a duck on the other side of the pond who quacked back just as angrily.
I made it maybe halfway down the path before my body decided to slam me. Just because mentally I am ready to be out running for the hills doesn’t mean the rest of me agrees. I begrudgingly headed back home before even reaching the stone wall I was so intent on visiting. Oh well, there will be other rainy days when I will return! For now I am at peace with what I could accomplish. It feels like going home to be back on the trails!
A few months ago a friend of mine bought a motorcycle and asked me where he could find some nice winding roads like you see in the commercials. I shrugged, “Up the mountains…” I had forgotten this whole conversation when he asked me recently if I would like to join him for a trip into the White Mountains. Sure, why not. I didn’t ask what was in the White Mountains that was so interesting, I just assumed he wanted to go up Mount Washington… because that’s what everyone does. I should probably note, even though I live in New Hampshire, the three hour drive has kept me away from such a trip until now and… well…. I vastly underestimated a great deal of things.
I should probably mention yesterday was one huge clusterfuck from sun up to sun down and how I managed to get anything done is beyond me. I learned that morning, by randomly looking it up, that Mount Washington was closing for the season the same day I was going up it and also it closes at 4PM. And they stop allowing people up it forty-five minutes before closing. He showed up at 11ish. We had time…
The GPS again thought it’d be hilarious to take some bizarre route… Clearly it was drunk today. None-the-less I drove until 1PM and then took an exit to find a gas station, as was the plan, but by this time I had already lost my follower. How I don’t know. I was trying to behave myself. He scooted off ahead and was several exits further than me so after a brief discussion we decided to just head north and try to make it, although by now we’d just be slipping under the radar. My GPS said I’d get there at exactly 3 but after several miscommunications, and taking a wrong exit, it was now reading 3:17. Crap. I had to put a move on. So I sped up, zipping through the mountains. It was GORGEOUS. Suddenly I was surrounded on all sides by vibrant oranges, yellows, and reds, every tree blushing as I went by. If I created the world this is what I would make it look like! The fall foliage made me skip for joy. And the mountains!
Forgive me for thinking so little of mountains in New England but I didn’t think the White Mountains were anything special… I mean I have been all through New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts, and although all these states have mountains they’re just cute little tree covered hills for the most part. But the White Mountains? They were proper mountains! They started to grow in size I drove closer and they took my breath away. They towered above me as I drove past all these places I had heard of but am yet to explore – the gorge, the White Mountains National Forest, the Basin… I will definitely be coming back!! This reminded me of my days out west when I was floored by the sight of the Rockies. These weren’t quite as grand but for New England they were still pretty impressive! I can’t believe this was hiding here all along. New England continues to surprise me and keep me in absolute awe.
Eventually I ended up close to the Auto Road but my GPS thought it’d be funny to drop me off in the middle of the woods… so I turned around two or three times trying to find this place. My friend had already made it. The gorgeous weather and the fact it was the last day to go up made the toll keepers more lenient. they were still letting people in but by now it was well past 3PM. I looked it up online – apparently the Glen House was near by. My GPS also didn’t know what the Glen House was and when I attempted to get navigation on my phone the internet kicked out. What can I expect in the mountains? I was irritated. Very irritated. And I had skipped lunch to race here.
Finally my GPS read “Approaching Mount Washington Auto Road.” I was ready to fling that piece of shit out the window… “WHY couldn’t you have told me that an hour ago?!” Low and behold there was the road! I drove in and went through. The guy at the gate told me I had ten minutes before they start shuffling people off the mountain. I smiled, forked over an outrageous $29 and continued on! I had my follower back, waiting for me just beyond the gate he drove up behind me.
I’ve been up and down mountain roads before. I’ve driven on narrow roads. I’ve even driven on roads with cliffs or embankments. I had no issue with any of this but I can’t say I expected this road to be like one of those death roads like you see in photos of South America. It was just wide enough to let two cars through, practically kissing mirrors as they passed. To one side was the mountain, no ditch or breakdown lane, just a wall of unforgiving granite. The other side of the road was a sheer cliff face – no guardrails, no nothing to catch you if you didn’t drive exactly where you needed to. It was a winding snake of a road with no room for error ‘least you wanted to topple off and die… and apparently people do… every year. Probably should have known that before I tried it. I was actually doing pretty well but it kept going… up and up and up… and then other cars started to come down and we both had to inch by each other going two miles an hour, a feet that the Prius was not really up for if I am to be completely honest. Prius has a habit of sliding backwards whenever I am going under 15 miles an hour…. so this was actually more difficult than just passing another car and trying not to die. It’s at this point I started cursing loudly and to myself. Then the car would pass and I would be OK again… until I glanced over to my side. I could suddenly see just how far up in the air I truly was and just how fucked I’d be if I messed this up. No room or time for stopping I just kept climbing! So did my friend on the motorcycle. I wondered at times if I was going too fast or slow for him… but he stayed back there.
This was the longest seven and a half miles I have ever driven. By the time I got to the top I threw the Prius in the first parking spot I saw and leapt out to kiss the ground. I MADE IT. And I couldn’t feel more invigorated or alive as I did just then. There, just beyond the ground I was so thankful for standing on, there was the most amazing view I have ever seen. Stretched out for miles and miles there were dozens of peaks and mountain tops all layered like cards in a deck. A raven flew on the currents as wind swirled and swooped. I couldn’t help but think of all the Nordic myths where their gods live at the top of the world, looking down.
There was remarkably little cloud cover today so I got a few pretty decent snaps. We were able to wander the summit w here there were a few tourist attractions – a building that I think was a restaurant, a gift shop, a train stop, the actual summit, a weather station… a little marker gloating over the record for the world’s fastest wind recorded here. It was 231 miles per hour if you’re wondering.
This was the perfect time to come up the mountain because on the way down there was no traffic coming up it, being closed and all. This meant the trip down was a lot easier! I could glide down the middle of the road and be just fine! The rest of the cars ahead of me did the same and before I knew it the smell of burning breaks became all too apparent. There are many turn offs on the way with little signs alerting us to stop and let our breaks cool down. I saw many cars turn off… but the Prius is small and only smelled for a moment. I let it sit when I got to the bottom…
Once I got to the feed store I decided to take an equally ridiculous route home. That’s how I ended up in Sharon, a town I had no real reason to be in. As I drove down some beautiful rural streets I noticed a cemetery smack dab in the middle of nowhere. (My GPS claimed it was 80 McCoy Road. I just discovered the “Where am I?” button and am bouncing with delight at that one!) And when I say smack dab in the middle of nowhere I mean it. It was a small cemetery surrounded on all sides with forest, contained within the boundaries of a stone wall. From afar it didn’t look that interesting – very typical marble stones from the 1800’s. White marble ages poorly and that’s why I tend not to have any interest in them but it is still October and I did promise more spooky places so off I went.
There was a little white gate facing the road. It wasn’t open but there were no locks on it either. There was also no markers telling me which cemetery this was but Google figured that one out for me. I opened the little gate and walked in. There wasn’t much to see at first, this was a small cemetery of maybe 100-150 stones, none drew me to them but the feeling of this place was surreal. It was like I was walking into a bubble where time was lost. The stones here had once been repaired, a few split in half were fused back together with supports and propped back up, but even this effort seemed to have been a long time ago. Moss grew over the supports. This place felt utterly forgotten. That’s when I noticed something weird. Off to the side of the cemetery, past a little stone wall, there were new plots and they were really new. It was if most of the cemetery was the 1850’s or so and then 2017. Hmmm. I headed over to check them out.
These new stones were scattered like confetti on the grounds. They faced all directions and made no sense what-so-ever. Stranger still were the stones themselves. While most were rather ordinary there were a lot that were… odd. The most normal of which was a very modern stone with a modern etching of a lighthouse, a beach, and an old Studebaker driving down the road in front of it. It read, “On the road again.” That just made me shiver a bit. Why had I approached this one stone in particular while trying to take photos for a travel blog? A message from beyond… perhaps. Or just a coincidence. The next stone however was even more startling.
It was on the very edge of the cemetery and didn’t even look like a gravestone, it looked more like building debris. It was raw cut granite, very raw, with the tool marks used to quarry it still visible. It also had an engraving… of a mouse or a rat. I’ve seen a lot of gravestones and many of them have remembrances of cats and dogs on them, sometimes horses or birds, but this is the first mouse/rat and it belonged to an old couple. I might expect to see this on a young Goth’s stone, you know someone who died in the 90’s at age 25, but an elderly couple?! This seemed to be another possible message from beyond… as I used to breed fancy rats and mice many years ago. They brought me such joy I had often joked about getting one as a tattoo or memorializing them on a cemetery stone. I smiled. I liked these people, whoever they were.
Back in the old part of the cemetery I noticed a bizarre corner that seemed more confetti-like than the rest. I noticed those stones were also new and even had a bench overlooking them. They seemed even more raw than the rat/mouse stone. In fact one of them appeared to just be a rock that was already in the area, engraved thusly. Here there were a whole row of educators, scientists, mathematicians, and a few house wives scattered between them, though one was very sweet in stating, “Wife, mother, and a great woman.” She wasn’t going to be left out with the three descriptions! This also made me smile. I bet you these were some damn interesting people. At the very back another natural rock was affixed with a plaque remembering “the angel woman.” I wondered what this meant…
ust as I was leaving I noticed two stones which had been scrubbed clean. They were from the 1800’s and had been so thoroughly cleaned up they looked brand new. I wondered why these two stones? Before I reached the car I also found a tiny orange grub-like caterpillar. I tried taking a photo but he seemed incensed I was trying to handle him , rolled into a hedgehog ball, and clenched all his tiny feet together. There was no unrolling him.
I love going to the feed store – mostly because I rarely ever end up there without distracting myself first. Today was no different. I took a long, winding, and nonsensical route to my destination trying to find prime foliage for a nice snap or two. Indeed I got a good look at the mountains but the foliage was pretty dismal. After waiting weeks for it’s late arrival we immediately got rain afterwards… for several days. Now the trees are mostly bare. SIGH. Still, I did manage to find a trail…
I’m struggling to figure where it was exactly but I believe I just found the tail end of the Common Trail off of Grove street. There was a turn off right next to the bridge so I decided to check it out. As usual it was where I needed to be, a serendipitous and joyful experience. It wound close to the river and provided a wonderful flat walk for most of the way.
Rivers have become a source of great spiritual connection for me. Whenever I am down, hesitant, or anxious I seem to serendipitously find a river to play in. There’s nothing like a good river. Today I found a little bench halfway up the path that denoted a sweet little spot to while away the hours. There were some rocks jutting out clear to the middle and I forsook the bench to crawl out upon them. Here I sat with the gurgling of the water blocking out all other noise, the smell of the crisp autumn air mixing with that of the fresh cold water, allowing the sun to kiss my cheek as the water flowed beneath my feet. Nothing else mattered anymore, I was instantly overtaken by a sense of absolute zen.
It has become a custom of mine to splash in the water of any river I come by, reciting the closest thing to a prayer I will ever utter as IÂ bathe my arms and hands in the brisk churning waters. “May you take away all negativity in my life and wash it down stream. May only positivity flow towards me.” Perhaps this is why rivers have gained such spiritual meaning for me. Rivers don’t stop for anything. Whenever they come across an obstacle they still a find a way, making a space for themselves even when there isn’t one. It’s a lesson I try to keep close to my heart as I overcome obstacles in my own life.
I watched the river for probably an hour. No other people came by but a squirrel and a chipmunk did visit for a while and a frog tried to commit suicide darting under my feet in the same second I was stepping down. How he escaped that I don’t know but I nearly took a header into the river trying to avoid crushing the poor little beast!
Today’s my birthday. It’s also the first day in weeks I have been well enough to leave the house for an excursion longer than grocery shopping. Being cooped up, and feeling myself age like a fine wine, I was desperate for some fresh air. Sadly it was raining… apparently everywhere. I wanted to go to the White Mountains, raining, hike up one of the local mountains, raining, go to Vermont for some foliage photos, raining. I wasn’t going to take no for an answer though, I NEEDED TO GET OUT. 
That’s how I ended up in Mason NH. I had this gut feeling that I’d just know when to turn off. And wow. Despite spending some of my childhood in Mason I know remarkably little about it. There are winding dirt roads everywhere with just stunning views of forest and trees, hills, pastures, farms, huge farm houses, tiny cabins, just such a wonderful diversity! Yep… this was working. This was feeding something in my soul that was starving. It fit in nicely with the music I have taken up listening to once again – a poignant and heady mix of 60’s folk and classic rock. I’m thirty-two years old today and I feel like I can almost see time passing me by. I don’t have a career, a home of my own, a relationship, or children, I blow effortlessly in the breeze like a leaf gliding to the earth. Perhaps that is why I had the ethereal tune of Can’t Find my Way Home whispering through my mind all day. “Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
I had looped around a great deal of dirt roads and kept coming back to the 143 so I drove that for a little while until I spotted a big green sign aside the road denoting a historical landmark. As it turns out I had driven to Uncle Sam’s childhood home. I didn’t even know he had any connections to New England. I parked aside the road, took a photo of the sign and the house which was obviously owned by someone who I was hoping wasn’t home and watching, and then meandered only about 50 or 100 feet down the road where I noticed a trail head. Yup, this is where I was supposed to be. I could feel it.
It was cold. And wet. And cloudy. My camera wasn’t happy with any of these conditions but I told it to buck up, we’re doing this thing. It actually turned out to be a sweet little trail! The rain made it all the more magical to me, the damp seemed to add a sense of whimsy. Moss covered rocks lined the path to either side, a few stone walls were scattered throughout likely marking property boundaries from a few hundred years ago, and since it was such a wet day there were salamanders everywhere. They were the bright orange kind you see so frequently here if you’re the kind of person who looks under damp logs which I am.
The salamanders weren’t the only critters out today. I also go to see a number of chipmunks. For being so common they sure are hard to photograph! I feel the aggravation of wildlife photographers as I set my eyes on these tiny fuzzy beasts. They chipped and alerted me to a spot a little off the path which had clearly been used as some dumping ground for spare metal and glass at some point. Pieces of cars and machinery I couldn’t identify scattered the ground next to a rusted out metal wash basin filled with broken glass bottles from God knows when. I inched up to it slowly, hoping it wasn’t an active campsite of someone who was just deranged. Luckily it wasn’t and I took a moment to look at the rust and decay. I smiled knowing nature was taking care of this mess.
Towards the end of the trail was I super happy to find a huge cluster of mushrooms which I think were Hens of the Woods, edible. I am not that ballsy to try my hypothesis but I did enjoy finding them! They smelled delicious – which probably means I’ve misidentified them and can kill a small village with them. That tends to be how these things go… In any event I took a photo of this find next to my shoes to compare them for size.
I had meant to go to two covered bridges today but being as I got out of the house rather late and kept finding happy detours it was getting dark… still, I had time for one more little excursion. I hadn’t visited Ashuelot before and I was delighted to find it’s this adorable little historic town with one of the most charming covered bridges I have ever come across. I parked aside the road and marveled at the fact it had not one but TWO pedestrian pathways over the bridge. The river below gurgled and churned and blocked out all noise from the traffic surrounding it. There was something so unbelievably peaceful and fun about this particular bridge even though it seemed to be situated near a lot of activity. A sign on the front even advertised “Dinner on the Covered Bridge!” some sort of quaint annual event.
Yet again Keene beckoned me to come over and slog through some bureaucratic business, my least favorite thing to do in the world, so I made sure to give myself some time to reward this endeavor with a trip to the fabric store and then an excursion into the middle of nowhere… I guess my intention was to complete my covered bridge tour in the area but that didn’t really go as planned. Instead I found myself yelling at the GPS to shut up as I parked aside the road to explore something unusual I had found near a covered bridge I had already blogged. I wasn’t sure if it was a trailhead or someone’s private property. I was up on Sawyer’s Crossing Road in Swanzy and there was what looked like a turn around where parking was available and stickers in all the surrounding trees reading “Yale Forest.” A closed gate seemed to have a path going around it and another sign read something about no motor vehicles, camping, or fires. I parked Daisy and headed in.
This place was a neat little find! It looked like it had been a road at some point, a paved one, and then it was abandoned and forest took over. I love seeing these sites where civilization gets turned back into wilderness. We always think that progress is a one way street, forever marching forward, but I find time and history have a way of swinging like a pendulum. Clearly this road must have had farms and houses on it on at some point. What happened to them? Why were they now a forest? I had no answers.
Off the road path a little ways there was another turn off and what could have been considered another path. I was feeling a bit brazen and marched into the woods. Eventually I found two yellow dots on various trees, denoting I was in fact on someone’s path, though where it led I had no idea, and it was clear the only people using it were probably deer. It was so quiet and sweet! I walked for quite a ways but it was already getting late in the day and forests have a way of getting dark a lot quicker than the rest of the world, I decided if this were to happen I should at least have the brains to be on the road path – even in the dark I could find my way back to the car from there, so after munching on some delectable wild black berries I turned myself around and walked back to the old decaying pavement.
The forest was awash with life – ferns, mushrooms, trees, odd flowers, lined every side. I was delighted to spend time photographing a great deal of them. I walked and walked until the pavement stopped and then I wondered if I should continue on… I could hear cars so I must be near the end… I continued on and ended up on West Swanzey Road. Of course that was useless to me but it was interesting to see where it came out, just at the Cheshire Horse, a nice equestrian based feed store. I headed back, smiling, laughing, and enjoying the brisk new weather. I came across the first red and orange leaves of the year and noted to myself summer was over. Part of me already started mourning as I was just getting used to the heat and was still loving the sun, but another part of me recognized this summer was amazing and to wish for it to continue might be just a smidge greedy. So instead I opened my arms and yelled, “Welcome Autumn of 2017! Show me what you’ve got!” And I can’t wait. It’s going to be bonkers and so much fun as the world around me turns into a dazzling array of colors. It’s going to be even more amazing to be surrounded by such beauty and weather. I have found I have fallen head over heals in love with New England and cannot wait to make a proper home here some day. As I chase my passions like the wind chases me I have absolute faith good things are coming.
It’s in these small reflective moments I realize just how stagnated the rest of my life was. Now I am out and about, adventuring, mingling, talking to people, pursuing my art, I realize it’s taking more and more to keep me intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally satisfied. It’s been a rush and I wonder if anyone will ever be able to keep up with me now.
