Summer walks, featuring an irritated osprey

August 26, 2024February 26, 2026 / Ellen Kolb / 1 Comment

No mountain hikes for me this season, but New Hampshire provides many other places to enjoy.

A brief encounter with an angry bird

The Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail (XNHAT) is eighty-plus miles long, from Woodsville in the west to Bethel (Maine) in the east. Most of the people enjoying the trail are bicyclists, some traveling in organized groups, covering the length of the trail in two or three days. Then there’s the likes of me, hoofing it a few miles at a time during occasional North Country trips. This summer I’ve been nibbling away at the easternmost twenty-five miles or so, through Gorham and Shelburne.

From Hogan Road in Gorham NH: Mts. Madison and Adams

Earlier this month, I was walking on XNHAT’s rough and rustic Hogan Road when I came upon a wide power line cut. An osprey was on its big nest atop a platform next to a power line support. I stopped to take a photo. That was precisely the wrong thing to do. Whether by standing still or by pointing my phone at the nest, I made the big bird think its nest was threatened. The osprey promptly swooped down and dove at my head. When I took a few steps back, it continued to circle me, making it clear that I was not going to get past the power line cut that day. Back I went, retracing my steps to my car, cutting a planned 12-mile walk down to eight. I couldn’t help but laugh a bit. This was one obstacle I’d never anticipated.

I’ve been close to bears, moose, deer, bison, and countless smaller beasties. Never before has one come after me. Respect the talons, I say.

Southern New Hampshire summer sights

Cheshire County: Rhododendron State Park in Fitzwilliam had a fairly tame annual bloom this year in July, but even the few blossoms on the giant shrubs made a pleasing sight. After a walk through the shady rhododendron grove, I continued a mile down a road just outside the park, finding my way to Rockwood Pond and the Cheshire Rail Trail. Black-eyed Susans, Monadnock in the distance, and a retired rail excursion car on display along the rail trail: a lot of variety for one afternoon’s rambling.

At Troy Depot, a Boston and Maine excursion car is on display.

View from a forest, with hills in the distance — _{On Oak Hill, Concord NH}

Concord: I usually head straight up Oak Hill’s two-mile trail to the fire tower, but this time I explored side trails and spurs all over the hill. At the fire tower, hazy skies muted the panorama somewhat, but the breeze on a tower’s top landing always feels great on a hot day. I lucked into finding a fire spotter on duty, so I got to visit the cab for a few minutes.

Milford: Passing through Milford on a muggy Sunday, I stopped to check out a pedestrian path that connects Keyes Field and Emerson Park along the Souhegan River. This one’s pretty close to my home, and yet I’d never seen it. It’s delightful. There’s a pedestrian bridge over the river, letting walkers go between the recreational areas without having to navigate the busy Milford Oval. Informational signage along the trail identifies various flora and provides historical information. Thumbs up to the town of Milford for this little municipal gem.

_{Pedestrian bridge over Souhegan River in Milford NH.}

All photos by Ellen Kolb.

A bit of a challenge: knees vs. trails

July 2, 2024February 26, 2026 / Ellen Kolb

I’m downright embarrassed. I haven’t been on any hilly hikes lately (save one, about which more below). I haven’t explored anyplace new. Nothing long, despite my good intentions about training for an autumn attempt at the Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail. My recent challenges have been on the order of going up stairs without pulling the railing out of the wall.

Shut up, knees. I’m trying to hike here. I’ve been muttering that a lot since a mid-May mishap in which I banged up both knees, one worse than the other. A few weeks ago I tried a hike up South Uncanoonuc in Goffstown, New Hampshire, which with its twin to the north is the first place I go when I test how rehab from injury is going. Nice views, bad judgment. My knees and I have barely been on civil terms ever since. Flat is fine, stairs not so much.

But oh, a stop on a South Uncanoonuc ledge was refreshing. I had a view to the west-southwest, towards the Monadnocks, with Grand Monadnock itself peeking from behind the Wapack range.

photo of hills in distance, pine trees in foreground

I’ve since been walking on easy paths with their own attractions. One of my town’s conservation areas is home to a heron rookery that’s too far away from shore to be captured by my phone’s camera. I pressed my family’s “real” camera into service, to good effect. The juvenile herons are growing fast.

The Nashua River Rail Trail can still surprise me, even after a hundred or more visits. I spotted a trailside blossom the other day that I’d never seen before. Goat’s rue, if my phone’s plant ID app is accurate; I welcome correction from any reader who knows better. In a year when poison ivy and knotweed threaten to overwhelm the trail’s usual flora, this was a treat to find.

goat's rue blossom amid grassy ground cover

Annoyed as I am to be on limited duty, I can see this will be a beautiful summer. May you find pleasant surprises on your own Granite State walks this season.

Looking down: spring wildflowers

June 2, 2024June 11, 2025 / Ellen Kolb

My spring hiking has been hobbled – literally – by a bruised knee. Sounds trivial, but it’s a nuisance. No hilltop vistas for me in May. Fortunately, with rail trails and local conservation areas, I’ve had options. And May was a month for wildflower hikes.

April showers did exactly what the old rhyme says they do. Before taller plants were ready to flower, ground covers were blooming. I appreciate the tiny flowers that announce the end of mud season. I love the way their colors punctuate the season’s new growth. Certain flowers seemed to be everywhere I walked: purple fringed polygala, starflower, bluets.

Others were harder to find. In the conservation area closest to my house, I searched in vain for two weeks for trillium before finding a single one. I spotted no lily of the valley until the last week of the month.

To my delight, I did find a jack-in-the-pulpit on a trail in the next town over. That odd little plant might be everywhere, but I hadn’t spotted one before. It’s just a few inches high. I only found it because it was tucked right next to a particularly vigorous shoot of poison ivy, and its foliage didn’t seem to match. I carefully nudged the poison ivy’s leaves aside and was rewarded with the day’s prize sighting.

The ladyslippers always seem to spring out of nowhere in May. This has been a good year for them. A friend sent me an email one day about a certain trail we like, saying “ladyslipper alley coming next week.” Indeed! One day they were nowhere in sight even though I knew I was standing where I’ve seen them in other years. A week later, I spied a few pairs of ladyslipper leaves cautiously stretching out as though they were reluctant to give up shielding the flower stalks inside. Within just a few days, the stalks were upright, each one a good eight inches high or more, each bearing a striking blossom. Nothing tiny or modest about these ephemeral spring beauties. They show off like divas for two weeks, then it’s goodbye until next year.

Not everything blooming in spring is delightful. Invasive plants along my local trails threaten to overpower native vegetation. I found a patch of unfamiliar flowers making themselves at home at a nearby trailhead. A phone app backed up by some information from UNH’s Cooperative Extension service helped me identify the plant as garlic mustard. That inoffensive-looking pest will spread all over the forest floor if it’s left unchecked, crowding out the woodland wildflowers. I pulled up what I could, and I’ll be back to pull some more, disposing of it in the trash and definitely not in the compost pile.

June might see me back on the hills as my knee heals. I call North Uncanoonuc in Goffstown my rehab hill, because that’s the first place with any elevation that I go to post-injury. I hope to be there soon.

_{All photos by Ellen Kolb.}

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Granite State Walker makes a move (and it’s not a hike)

April 11, 2024June 8, 2024 / Ellen Kolb

trail junction sign on Oak Hill trails, Concord NH — *_{Trail junction, Oak Hill trails, Concord NH}*

My Substack newsletter Braided Trails will soon include excerpts from Granite State Walker as well as original material inspired by New Hampshire trails. I hope you’ll subscribe.

Mt. Kearsarge in New Hampshire, seen from the Northern Rail Trail — _{Mt. Kearsarge seen from the Northern Rail Trail, Wilmot}

So why the addition? Here’s an excerpt from my intro to Braided Trails:

Readers have been curious or kind enough to follow me down various paths through the years. New Hampshire hikers have kept Granite State Walker going. At Leaven for the Loaf, I’ve reported on pro-life projects and legislation at the state level. My eponymous blog has been a promotional portfolio where I’ve also explored aspects of my Catholic faith.

But omigosh, what if the hikers don’t like my politics or my State House readers don’t care about my hiking or somebody somewhere is put off by a portfolio from a Catholic scribbler? I’ve tried to keep you all a secret from each other.

Enough already. Welcome to Braided Trails.

“Braid” is a nod to the three distinct blogs I’ve launched since 2006. This Substack is a place where each theme can get its due, in context with the others: braided, not fused. It’s about time I found a space big enough to bring the whole blessed lot of us together. It’s big enough for new readers, too.
https://ellenkolb.substack.com/p/intro-so-whats-a-braided-trail

Intrigued? Then I welcome you on board. Subscribing is free. And if you’d prefer to stick with this blog, plain and simple, that’s fine, too. I’m delighted to write for you in either case.

Thanks – and I’ll see you on the trails.

Spring is here, summer’s coming…and so is *Braided Trails.*

A first impression, a trail to treasure

January 30, 2024February 26, 2026 / Ellen Kolb / 3 Comments

Long ago when I began exploring Granite State trails, I had a little point-and-shoot film camera that I carried everywhere. I have a shoebox full of prints from those early outings: evidence of an utter beginner. I didn’t know how to frame a shot. I didn’t know that it was hopeless with the fixed lens I had to get a focused close-up of a trillium in bloom. I had trouble holding the camera steady.

Even so, a few of those old prints remain special. They documented my first views of places that I later came to love. Some of those first impressions were dramatic, others much less so. I had no way of knowing that the gifts of time and memory would draw me back to certain places over and over again, seeing and learning new things with each visit.

My very first sight of the Pliny Range from the marsh near Cherry Pond was on an April day as I made my first visit to the Presidential Rail Trail. Spring was playing hard to get. I took a photo that captured trees not yet in bud and grasses clad in the dullest of colors. Something about those hills in the distance appealed to me, though, and I wanted to capture them, too. So I snapped the shutter, heedless of the tree in the way.

Image of a meadow with dry grass and bare trees, with a mountain range in the background — _{First impression: Pliny Range seen from Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge, Jefferson NH}

Those hills enchanted me in a way I can’t explain. They invited me back as though they knew I had more to see.

That day of that first impression, I had no notion of the riot of flowers that would line that trail and surround Cherry Pond in summer. I didn’t know how autumn would transform the Pliny Range. I had yet to discover how I’d feel sitting in silence by the pond on a freezing January day with the hills hidden in low clouds. All of that lay ahead. It started for me with a dull spring day preserved in an unremarkable snapshot.

Think about a place you’ve hiked, a place that’s grown on you, maybe even snuck up on you to become a favorite. What was your first impression? Did you know when you first saw it that it would become someplace special for you? I hope you take a photo of each new trail, and don’t succumb to the siren song of the “delete” button. Some of those shots, awful though they may be, will make you smile someday. First impressions aren’t final, but they’re worth remembering.

Image of a pond and meadow with mountain range in the background under a partly cloudy sky — *Fourteen years later: a now-familiar scene*

Fall’s first half: New Hampshire, north to south

November 1, 2023February 26, 2026 / Ellen Kolb

My autumn began with a trip upstate as the leaves began turning. As October ends, I’m near the Massachusetts border, where red and orange foliage has yielded to gold and bronze. The sunlight through the leaves these days creates a glowing aura around everything.

First stop: North Country

Three days on the Ammonoosuc and Presidential trails in early fall added up to 30 miles of walking for me, punctuated with unexpected meetings. Amazing, the encounters I’ve had walking through New Hampshire.

The Ammonoosuc trail follows – you guessed it – the Ammonoosuc River. While checking out the three newest miles of the trail east of Littleton, I met a couple I know from the NH Rail Trail Coalition. We were pleased to see that the new section, between Cottage Street and Oxbow Drive, has a great surface that will be especially helpful to anyone biking the Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail. The following day, I met up with yet another NHRTC colleague while on a gravelly Ammonoosuc stretch between Lisbon and Bath. That surface is in the process of being upgraded from gravel to a smoother crushed stone. Can’t happen soon enough, as far as I’m concerned. My feet took a bit of a beating that day. I gave them a rest as I ate my lunch under the picturesque Bath covered bridge.

Ammonoosuc River in Littleton NH. All photos by Ellen Kolb/Granite State Walker.

I was in the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge a few months ago, when Joe-Pye weed and Queen Anne’s lace were blooming all along the Presidential rail trail. When I returned in early fall, nearly all the blossoms were gone, except for a couple of hardy little asters holding out against the equinox. Milkweed pods had burst and left their seeds floating across Moorhen Marsh. Frost had nipped the north country and its mosquitoes, making the walk to Cherry Pond even more pleasant than usual. My last view of the pond had been when it was covered with water lilies. This time, the pond was a mirror for Mt. Starr King and the Pliny Range.

If I were to search this blog’s sixteen years of posts, I’d probably find a dozen photos of the views from the Cherry Pond observation deck. Even when I know I’m standing in the same place and pointing the camera in the same direction as I did on an earlier walk, I’ll get a unique image: different light, different season, different shades of earth and sky.

_{Cherry Pond in the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge, on the Presidential Rail Trail, Jefferson NH.}

I decided to re-visit Mud Pond trail, also in the wildlife refuge but north of Cherry Pond, with its trailhead off of NH Route 116. I was there some years ago when it was brand-new and awaiting finishing touches. Now, it’s a small gem. Bonus: it’s designed to be accessible to anyone in a wheelchair, with switchbacks and boardwalks and easy grades along its half-mile length. It ends at Mud Pond, which really deserves a better name. It’s pretty and peaceful, and the observation deck must be a birdwatcher’s dream.

_{The trail to Mud Pond in Jefferson is designed for maximum accessibility, leading to a good spot for birdwatching.}

Walking for a cause

Mid-October, I walked 13 miles on the Rockingham Recreation Trail in Auburn, Candia, and Raymond with a group raising funds for a shelter in Manchester. We couldn’t have picked a better October day. From a foggy sunrise over Lake Massabesic all the way to full midday sunshine in Raymond, I enjoyed good company.

I hadn’t passed by the old Raymond Depot in awhile, and it was fun to see it again. The littlest rail car – I call it a putt-putt, though it probably has a more dignified name – always looks a little lost on the siding, dwarfed by the more conventional rail cars nearby. They’re all part of the old rail line’s history, so they all belong there.

Raymond Depot along Rockingham Recreational Trail

One piece at a time

Just a few days ago, I attended a ribbon-cutting for a trail in Salem, New Hampshire. A trail segment, to be more precise. A 300-foot segment, if you must know.

Okay, let the eye-rolls commence. But I drove the better part of an hour to be there, because getting that segment finished took years, and I wanted to thank the people who had made it happen. This is the Salem (NH) Bike-Ped Corridor at the Massachusetts state line. Its significance: it’s the south end of what will someday be the Granite State Rail Trail extending from Salem all the way to Lebanon, just this side of Vermont.

A piece of the Salem trail is already in use further north of the newly-christened segment, extending into Windham and Derry. This is the same old rail line that includes what’s now the Londonderry rail trail, which will someday connect with the South Manchester trail, which will someday connect with yet-to-be-built trails in Hooksett and Bow and Concord, finally connecting with the Northern Rail Trail that’s already complete from Boscawen to Lebanon.

This is how long trails are built, whether they’re remote or urban, flat or mountainous: one piece at a time, even if some of those pieces are only be 300 feet long. Over time, those pieces add up.

Pocket park on the Salem Bike-Ped Corridor

I seldom get to Salem, so I spent time after the ribbon-cutting ceremony walking south along the Bike-Ped corridor into Methuen, Massachusetts. It was easy to ignore the traffic noise from nearby heavily-developed Route 28. Instead, I concentrated on the sights, sounds, and fresh clean smells of the wetlands and pocket parks along the way.

“Past peak,” say the foliage reports. Don’t you believe it.