Tag: Peterborough New Hampshire

Cranberry Meadow Pond Trail – Peterborough New Hampshire

Today was just one of those days that everything I touched did not work so I decided to stick close to home with this one and when I told my mother of my plans, she decided she wanted to come along too so off we went!

The first adventure was finding the parking which I did not find on Cheney Street as promised. Then I went to find the parking on East Mountain Road and again failed. Then instead of using my GPS I just asked google maps on my phone which brought me to someone’s yard on Old Street Road. Obviously, that wasn’t it either, so I kept driving and then I noticed some cars parked on the side of Old Street Road. There and behold there was a small kiosk blending in with the woods. I probably drove by it several times trying to find it.

ANYWAY, as I got out of the car several other hikers came out with a series of very happy, very wet dogs. This was a good sign! This path must be both beloved and dog friendly! A sign at the beginning told us this path cuts through private property and as such we should be respectful. No problem! We just wanted to see this beautiful pond it spoke of.

The beginning of the trail was a fairly long boardwalk that brought us over a bog (cranberry bog? Maybe…) It was a mostly flat and well-marked but there were a lot of roots jutting up, which my mother tried very hard to trip over but this time she came prepared – with a walking stick! Luckily all these trails are getting her in better spirits with loser joints and less overall physical problems. That’s why I walk too! Well, that’s one of the reasons…

The trail is 2.2 miles and not a loop so if you take the whole thing, you’ll walk 4.4 miles from beginning to end, back to the beginning. Mum wasn’t up for that, and I wasn’t sure if I was either, so we walked to the pond which is just about the center between both ends of the trail. We had to walk up a small incline to get there and that was enough! Beyond it was a little cut off that showed a fantastic view of the pond and had a little place to sit. A couple was there but they scattered when we showed up which is fortunate as mum needed a rest. It was quiet out here. You couldn’t hear anything from the nearby town and neighborhoods, just the rusting of the wind through all the dead leaves of fall. This scenic outlook was well worth it. Absolutely gorgeous. And it was at the perfect point in the trail to turn around.

I would absolutely encourage others in the area to check out this serene and peaceful place. It might even be worth a little bit of a drive if you want a mostly river path and a view of a breath-taking pond.

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East Hill Cemetery Peterborough NH

Yesterday I passed this cemetery and noted that I had to go check it out because of all the slate stones I could see from the road. Had I not been running errands I would have stopped right then and there but alas I had to wait until today to satiate my curiosity.

The cemetery is easy to find. It’s on Old Street Road between East Hill Road and Glen Drive. It’s marked by a large green historical marker and has space for a few cars to parallel park in the front of it. The numerous plaques and markers denote this is the resting place of a great many Revolutionary War soldiers, including a famous drummer by the name of William Diamond. It was also Peterborough’s first cemetery and wow, did I hit the jackpot here! This had to be the largest gathering of slate stones I have ever seen. This was a sizable and old cemetery. I would have never guessed Peterborough was this bustling so long ago!

But first I had to get in. A sign out front said the hours and a few limitations (no pets or stone rubbings allowed) but when I got to the gate it seemed to be welded shut. It was weird. There was already a car here so someone was already in the cemetery but I couldn’t see them. How did they get in?? I tugged at the gate. Nothing. I contemplated jumping over the wall but there were too many cars going by and I am rather recognizable with neon orange hair and psychedelic bell bottoms. After getting frustrated I said, “OK. I will be back!”

Later that day I was talking to my mother about all this and she said there had to be a way in. “I bet you that gate opened somehow.” So I put her up to the task and we both headed out for attempt number two. As it turns out the gate isn’t welded shut it’s just stuck – quite stubbornly. With enough wiggling and pulling it finally opened.

By now I had gone online and realized that this cemetery was only 77% photographed and there were five open requests out to find five separate grave markers:

William Wallace (1698 – ??) Jane Mitchel (1721-1791) Jane Chamberlin (1820-1822) Benjamin Chamberlin (??-1819) and William Robbe (1692-1791)

Two of these were babies during their deaths about a hundred years ago. Who is searching for the grave markers of long dead babies!? I mean I understand the adults – it’s probably a genealogy thing, but babies never grew up to have descendants and with almost a hundred years since their death there’s no one in living memory to want to see their memorial either… It sounds really crass but often times the memorials of infants and babies are… ephemeral. They’re small, often lack a lot of information, sometimes they don’t have any writing on them at all. In the case of stillbirths they’re frequently buried without a name. Today the death of a baby is a tragedy but a hundred, two hundred years ago? It was just another every day event.

Possible gravestone stump to the right…

Still – knowing someone was looking I was determined. I WILL FIND YOU! EVEN THE BABIES! I looked to see if there were any more information on any of these individuals and came up pretty empty handed. In fact the information online about everyone here seemed shockingly scarce for what I felt to be quite a historic place. But alas even the revolutionary war soldiers had only the shortest and most cryptic of descriptions online – birth place, birth and death dates, time of service, if they were married or had kids, and nothing more. Pretty basic stuff. I also found no pennies here. These historical figures were…. completely and utterly forgotten.

It was weird. The cemetery seems like it’s kept really well. Some of the stones were repaired or replaced but most were still in pristine condition. This made the missing stones all the more confusing. It was a bright hot day and almost the whole cemetery is in full sunlight with no shade. I started in the corner and made a beeline for the back where I figured the oldest stones may be. And sure enough I found the Robbe family plot which spanned two centuries and seemed to have all the Robbe’s… except for William. Where are you hiding William? Do you even have a stone here? Or did you ever get one? Or did it somehow get destroyed? There was a rock in the ground which I couldn’t tell if it was just another random rock in the ground or a part of a gravestone that no longer had a top. Hmmmm. The mystery thickens!

And by now the mugginess and heat where getting to the both of us so I had to call it a day. I’m not done yet though. I will be back… perhaps with a map of plots in hand to help guide me. And in the meantime I joined Find a Grave and will offer my photos and finds as they are warranted since I am already touring these places anyway. Might as well make myself useful!

There’s also a two trailheads on the same street and well… I am going to need to check those out too…

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Gallivanting in Peterborough NH

Today had drop dead gorgeous weather but being a holiday weekend it was coupled with an inordinate amount of insane drivers so I didn’t really want to go too far… and I did have to go to the feed store to pick up a bag of food for my lovely bunnies. So I decided I’d got to Peterborough, which was two towns over, forsaking the feed store in town and the one that was one town over. Peterborough is about twenty minutes away but why just go directly there when you can meander? Little was I to know I was about to take a four hour ride into the most beautiful bits of nowhere.

I decided I would forsake all main roads and start going down a few rural dirt roads which I felt were going in the right direction. My hunch proved right! But before I made it to the feed store I started seeing the most wildly beautiful things. The first little discovery I found was on Sharon road. It was an abandoned bridge attached to a road that the wilderness has taken over. I stopped the car and parked on the shoulder of the road so I could explore further on foot. The bridge itself was beautiful made with intricate stonework. The river it spanned was even more stunning and I was delighted to see that it was still connected to an abandoned road. Of course I had to know where it led so I sauntered across the bridge and walked into the forest. This place was wild. Clearly there had once been a paved road here but over the years the plant life had grown up and reclaimed the land as it’s own. This place reminded me of a fairy tale – wild, mysterious, overgrown, and the smell of the river was absolutely heavenly. The “road” didn’t go very far, it just attached itself to another road running parallel to the one I had left not too far away. Still it was a wonderful little find and in 80 degree weather it was probably just long enough!

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From here I wandered badly on a bunch of little roads that I found interesting. I criss-crossed the river several times and found another adorable bridge – though this was far more modern I had fun crawling under it. Judging by the tags an dthe empty beer bottle I wasn’t the only one to find it!

As I crawled back up to my car I couldn’t help but feel so lucky in having found this whole area. It was so quiet, alive only with the gurgling of the river. Occasionally I’d find a farm here and there, or other properties that clearly used to be farms, places that owned vast acreages. It was breath taking and I was often rewarded with the sight of deer, wild flowers, and views of Mount Monadknock.

Eventually I made it to the feed store. I bought my bunny food. I came out feeling like I still needed to poke around for a bit. So that’s what I did. I turned into a plaza I had driven by hundreds of times and learned all sorts of things aout Peterborough’s history! Here there was a sign that told of the founding of the town, badly damaged with age, apparently no one has paid much attention to it for some time. Here, right aside the road, was another view of the river which was choked with water lilies. As I walked  back to my car I noticed another car drive around the building. I pondered this and decided to go for it. That’s when I found myself transported through time. I had no idea this building was an old mill but it’s backside made t his obvious. Even more stunning was a dam and a waterfall which must have been used once to generate electricity. Who knew this was in cute little Peterborough?!

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Thiền Viện Bảo Chơn Meditation Center Peterborough NH

Lately I have been doing a lot of “Sunday driving.” That is whenever I go anywhere for an errand I decide to wander aimlessly…. for miles… in any direction I don’t know. I do this for a lot of reasons. For one I am on the look out for abandoned houses and cheap large acreage properties. For another I am learning my surroundings and exploring places I have never been. I was doing really good as of late, bothering no one as I ambled about. Today however curiosity tried to kill the cat again.

Just to let you know Sunday driving can be deadly. My worst story is actually from my trip across the US. At some point in Nevada, or Utah, or one of those crazy desert states, our GPS decided to kill us. It wound us through the desert on a long “primitive” road that must have stretched for 40 miles into the middle of nowhere. The only hint of humans we saw the entire time was a large oil rig surrounded by a handful of very pissed Native Americans who were probably wondering who these damn white people were. We didn’t stop and ask for directions. They looked like they might be armed…

Today was almost as cringe worthy. I drove by a couple white stone lions perched next to the road. I wondered what they were so I turned off thinking it was maybe a cemetery. And that’s when I found myself driving up to a Buddhist temple… Ever have the thought, “And how did I get here exactly?” go through your head? I do a lot and I do mean a lot. Sometimes it’s when I find myself in a stranger’s apartment with a friend gluing down my eyebrows. Other times, like today, it’s just because I drove into a different realm just down the street from where I live!

My mother was with me. She saw the beautiful stone gardens and wanted to get out to look…. So I parked, looked shiftily up at the temple itself and watched for people. There was no one, thank God, or Buddha. So she walked up to the statuaries. By now a whole ton of people suddenly appeared, mostly laughing Asian women. I clicked a few photos as I was walking, pretending not to snap photos, because I don’t know the rules of this place. I was super curious – what’s up with the giant bell? And the gardens? And the temple? Do people come here all day or was this a service of some sort? So many questions, unanswered, because I didn’t have the balls to go into the temple and ask. Partially because I didn’t want to be the blundering white person again and partially because… well if I am honest my mother is the most embarrassing person on the planet. It’s funny, as a teenager I didn’t notice this much, but as an adult I am constantly face palming and pretending we don’t have a shockingly similar appearance. Today she was asking me to read the “Chinese.” I told all Asians aren’t Chinese. “I know that!” Did I mention she’s also loud? (PS this in no way means I don’t absolutely love my mom, I do, it’s just I like to do so quietly.)

***I apologize for any missing photos and galleries as I continue to work getting Catching Marbles fully migrated to a new host. Please come back soon for restored photos and thank you for your patience!***

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


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Peterborough Farmer’s Market

Decided to check out the Peterborough Farmers Market to see if it was worth setting up there sometime. They only had a handful of vendors but they were very nice people and with a surprising range of products you may actually buy (not three tables worth of toilet cozies which is more normal.) They had people there selling all manner of plants – flowers, vegetables, herbs, and plenty of sellers of organic and free range eggs, sheep, and beef. I was pleasantly surprised! They also had a woman selling granola… which is soooo Peterborough to me. All and all it wasn’t bad. I still don’t know if it’s the appropriate venue for what I have but maybe. Doesn’t hurt to try I guess.

If you are enjoying Catching Marbles please consider adding a dollar or two to my limited gas money fund so I can continue going on adventures and sharing them with you! Thank you!


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