Hiking

On My Small Scale, a Good Year

/ Ellen Kolb

Five hundred miles. The app on my phone assures me that’s how far I’ve walked and hiked this year. Not far by comparison with many (most?) other hikers, I know. Still, I covered some fine southern New Hampshire places. Thirty-three towns, according to my trail notes, plus a probably-once-in-a-lifetime visit to a place way beyond the border. Not a bad year at all.

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August in Winant Park, Concord: mushrooms, not blossoms, bedeck the trails.

Nashua’s Mine Falls might be my favorite city park, but Concord’s Winant Park was a contender this year. I frequently have business in Concord, with Winant only a short drive away. All by itself it justified keeping a pair of trail shoes in the car for spur-of-the-moment hikes.

I visited Miller State Park one late-spring day just before sunset, and had the usually-busy Pack Monadnock summit and fire tower to myself. In thirty years of hikes there, I’d never been on the summit at dusk.

Monadnock at dusk

Mt. Monadnock at dusk, seen from Pack Monadnock

 

Of all the trails new to me this year, the ones in Moose Mountain reservation are the ones most likely to draw me back. I enjoyed an early-fall lunch on Phebe’s Nable. And then there’s Mt. Willard in Crawford Notch: one of the most heavily-trafficked trails in the Whites, but new and delightful to me. What a view!

Crawford Notch from Mt Willard

Crawford Notch seen from Mt. Willard. Take that trail early in the day to avoid crowds.

Each year brings surprises. This year’s was a trip to Italy. I packed walking shoes, of course, and with my husband explored Rome on foot. Despite the exhausting summer heat, I was exhilarated. I’m more at home on trails, but what’s not to love about being a Granite State Walker on vacation?

St. Peter's Dome from

Dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, seen from Janiculum (Gianicolo) Hill in Rome, Italy.

And next year, who knows? Maybe 500 miles, maybe far more. I’m thinking local: redline nearby spots like Horse Hill, Beaver Brook, and the Uncanoonuc trails. See them afresh. Walk on more rail trails, or rather more miles on the trails already familiar to me.  Take better photos. Make a point of hiking with the friends who have offered to share their own favorite trails with me.

I’ll turn 60 in the coming year. Perhaps a landmark hike is in order.

I hope you can look back with satisfaction on your own hikes from the past year. Even more, I hope you’re looking forward to next year’s adventures. See you out there.

GSW rail trail photos in latest edition of New England Antiques Journal

/ Ellen Kolb

Treat yourself to this article by Brian Roche in the latest edition of New England Antiques Journal: Bridging the Gap Between Past and Present: The Preservation and Repurposing of Historic Railroad Bridges. In one of the sidebars, you’ll see some pictures familiar to longtime readers of Granite State Walker.

Hands Across the Merrimack (and Manchester)

Hands Across the Merrimack bridge, Manchester NH

I was surprised and pleased to get a call a few months ago from Mr. Roche, a freelance writer. While researching the rail bridge article, he came across this blog and its posts about the Hands Across the Merrimack bridge in Manchester. He kindly sought permission to use some of my photos.

The resulting article features photos of several northeastern bridges of striking beauty. I’m honored that a few of my photos made the cut.

Mr. Roche spelled my name correctly in his text; it was left to a magazine editor to misspell it in the sidebar. But to err is human, and to publish photos of a New Hampshire treasure is divine.

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Second Street bridge, just west of Hands Across the Merrimack Bridge, along the Pisacataquog trail.

 

Recovery: I couldn’t have done it alone

/ Ellen Kolb

After tripping on a parking-lot pothole and falling hard on my knee last February, I thought I’d lose a year of hikes. February’s a depressing month anyway and such dreary thoughts fit right in.

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Flat trails have been blessings to me this year.

I was wrong. This has been a wonderful year, and I’m grateful for every mile on every hike. This has not been a year for many hilltops, but after using a cane for awhile during rehab, I developed a new appreciation for New Hampshire’s rail trails.

My resources for medical care were not unlimited (can you say “high deductible”?), so I had to be stingy about medical consultations. The ones I had were worth it. I’m grateful to the orthopedist who quickly ruled out a fracture & then encouraged me to keep my spirits up. I owe a lot to the physical therapist who helped me regain strength and balance. Along with the massage therapist who has worked with me for years and the pros at my local community acupuncture clinic, the doc & the PT got me back on the trails.

Hobbling up Pack Monadnock and partway up Kearsarge and Mt. Prospect left me feeling like I’d conquered the world. The Forest Society Challenge inspired me to find new places for walks, making boredom impossible. I managed about 300 miles of recreational walking and hiking this year, which is about 290 miles more than I thought possible right after my accident.

(Watch out for potholes. Seriously. And don’t run in the dark. Voice of experience here.)

This has been a year filled with blessings. May we all enjoy the same in 2017. See you on the Granite State’s trails.

Take Notes

/ Ellen Kolb

When my husband and I went to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks last year, I scribbled some notes at the end of each day. Too sketchy to amount to a journal, they nevertheless recorded some important details. Once we got home, I typed up the notes and emailed a copy of the resulting document to myself for safekeeping.

It was so safe that I forgot I had it, until this evening. I’m laid up at the moment with a cold or flu or whatever the microbe du jour might be, and to pass the time I’m clearing out things from my email inbox that I never properly archived. Lo and behold, there were my Yellowstone notes.

Reading them took me right back to the Old Faithful Inn and the Teton bike trail.

I neatened up the notes, imposing complete sentences on my fragmentary observations. Then I printed out the resulting text and tucked it in our photo album of the trip. Yes, an actual hold-it-in-your-hand photo album. Now, when we or our kids look at the pictures, we’ll have more context than simply “ooh! what a pretty meadow!”

Do yourself a favor and take notes on your next trip, especially if it’s to a place you’ll likely not visit again. No need for elegant writing; my own sketchy notes were hardly poetic. I wasn’t writing for publication. I wrote to capture impressions that I was afraid I’d lose once the vacation was over.

I should have printed out my notes right after the trip instead of relegating them to email limbo for more than a year. They’ve come back to life now.

Take notes. You won’t be sorry.

(I managed to wring a blog post out of the Yellowstone trip shortly after coming home. It’s mostly photos. I hope you enjoy it!) 

Markers here and there

/ Ellen Kolb

Making my way over North Mountain in Pawtuckaway State Park one day, I came across this, embedded in the granite.

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I had never come across one of these survey marks before, but have since learned that they’re pretty common. The National Geodetic Survey keeps an extensive database listing them.

I looked up the NGS data sheet for this Pawtuckaway marker – or “patuccawa”, as it’s engraved on the disk – and saw that there’s been some kind of marker at this location since at least 1851. The data sheet includes references to various landmarks visible from the marker’s location, but I think those references go back a few years. North Mountain is pretty thoroughly forested now. The fire tower on Pawtuckaway’s South Mountain is the place to go for long-range vistas.

The marker has a stern warning about a fine or imprisonment for “disturbing” it. It would take one seriously motivated vandal to disturb that thing, which seems to have been installed to last.

I could make a list from the NGS database of markers nearby, but I won’t bother. I have enough lists of places to see. I’ll let the markers surprise me.

Visits to Nashua River Rail Trail

/ Ellen Kolb / 1 Comment

Look back over this blog’s decade of posts and one place gets mentioned in all seasons: the Nashua River Rail Trail. It extends 12 miles between Nashua, New Hampshire and Ayer, Massachusetts.

I’ve biked it and walked it, and if I were so inclined I could skate on it or ride a horse. (Neither is likely.) I love marking the seasons. I like the sound of the skydiving plane overhead and the sight of the colorful chutes as the skydivers make their jumps. I like seeing what’s being planted at the farm in Dunstable. I am enchanted anew each time I see the soda machine that a trail-abutting family has set up. I LOVE the ice cream stand by the trail in East Pepperell.

There are no bad seasons here.

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