spring

Spring’s Been Good

/ Ellen Kolb

I had an interesting assortment of  New Hampshire walks and hikes in May, due in part to work assignments in some towns I don’t visit often.  Bugs are out, but flowers are blooming.  Weather has been variable, with 80 degrees one day and 50-and-drizzly the next. Mud season was as messy as ever. It’s all good.

Northern Rail Trail, Enfield

I enjoyed a little piece of this long trail that stretches from Lebanon to Boscawen. Enfield’s section offered views of Mascoma River and Lake, with convenient trailside parking off Main Street.

Mascoma Lake

Mascoma Lake

Northern Rail Trail, Enfield NH

B is for Boston, 132 miles away via the old rail line.

Forget-me-nots

Forget-me-nots lined the rail trail.

Former train depot, Enfield NH

The old Enfield depot now serves as a garage for an emergency services vehicle.

Forest Society Properties, Bethlehem and Haverhill

The Forest Reservation Challenge patch continues to elude me, even after more than two years of trying to visit all the Forest Society’s featured reservations. I haven’t given up, though. On an overcast day in May I found my way to the Dana Forest in Dalton and Bretzfelder Park in Bethlehem.

I saw on my drive north that the Presidentials and even the peaks lining Franconia Notch were veiled in clouds. It was a day for woods walks, not vistas.

Painted trillium
Purple trillium
The Granite State Walker at Bretzfelder Park.
Bretzfelder Park, a Forest Society property in Bethlehem NH
I’ll return to this Haverhill trailhead on a sunnier day.

Closer to Home

The woods roads in Fox State Forest in Hillsborough were deserted when I visited in May, and mud season was in full swing. I arrived armed with bug repellent and proper footwear.

At Fox State Forest: Concord End Road was a good alternative to waterlogged trails.

Along the Nashua River Rail Trail, columbines are in bloom. I’ve noticed that more clumps of these scarlet flowers are establishing themselves here every year. Good to see.

columbines along trail

Columbines along the Nashua River Rail Trail

In Nashua’s Mine Falls Park, a new bridge is in place over the canal, although the bridge is not yet officially “open.” Once it is, the link to Ledge Street will give more families easy access to the park.

bridge in Mine Falls Park, Nashua NH

Mine Falls Park: a new bridge will soon link the park to a Nashua neighborhood.

For all the natural beauty along the Goffstown Rail Trail, there’s some historical interest as well. Whenever I walk past the old county cemetery, I stop to say a prayer and pay my respects. From a now-dead website called nh-roots.org: “In this cemetery every grave is marked with a marble slab numbered which refers to a number in the record book giving a description of the deceased.” I don’t know if that record book has been preserved. The cemetery grounds are kept mown and trimmed, which may be the only remaining earthly tribute to the memory of the people buried there.

gravestones in Goffstown NH

Along Goffstown (NH) rail trail: county farm cemetery, located near the present-day county complex.

Notes From a Midday Ride

/ Ellen Kolb

I broke away from work on this weekday just long enough to take my bicycle out for the first ride of the season on the Nashua River Rail Trail .

IMG__201704117__035415

Feature from mural along NRRT. Ellen Kolb photo.

I like the mural in Groton, in the underpass crossing Route 111. I think local students must have painted it. It’s a map not of local streets, but of the Boston and Maine rail lines, including the decommissioned one that now serves as a trail. Nice bit of history, paying respect to the trail.

A beaver resisted all my attempts to photograph it. I almost missed it, in a swampy area alongside the trail: only concentric ripples gave it away. It’s good to see the wetlands looking like wetlands again, as gentle spring rains heal the effects of last year’s serious drought. Last September I had no more chance of seeing a beaver at trailside than of seeing a pod of whales.

The NRRT was dedicated fifteen years ago, and the road crossing at Route 113 in Pepperell has always required extra caution, from motorists as well as bicyclists. The ice cream shop across the street is one compensation. So is the pocket-sized park that’s been developed just south of 113. The shrubs are in bloom. Benches and markers have been spruced up. Something new – at least to me – is an air pump anchored in place, ready to tend to a summer’s worth of flat bicycle tires. That’s being neighborly.

IMG__201704117__034839

A little history to go with my stop along the trail.

The river that gave the trail its name is not visible from the trail, except for a lovely mile-long stretch in Pepperell and Groton. Every time I see it, I think of the guidebook I received when I moved to New Hampshire more than thirty years ago, which had this to say about the Nashua River in Pepperell, where there’s a dam:

…but for the dirty water this would be a fine smoothwater trip. From [Groton] to East Pepperell, the river is not attractive, as the increase in water level has flooded swampland and killed the trees. [AMC River Guide Volume 2, Appalachian Mountain Club, 1978]

By 2002, the Guide’s third edition told a different story.

The Nashua River has enjoyed a major restoration in the last 25 years. The industrial pollution is gone now. Birds, wildlife, and fish are returning, and paddling the Nashua River is now an enjoyable experience.

Walking and biking alongside the river is pretty enjoyable, too.

swan along NRRT

Nashua River, Pepperell, Massachusetts. Ellen Kolb photo.

 

Spring in Mine Falls Park

/ Ellen Kolb

I shared the Mine Falls trails this afternoon with dozens of other folks eager to enjoy spring’s first weekend. No crowds yet. Conditions reflect transition: trails have some patches of very slick ice, the ball fields are just emerging from the snow, and the low trail along the river is muddy enough for me to wear boots. I didn’t care, and neither did the runners and dog-walkers out there with me. There was tree damage over the winter, but the mess is all off the trails.

No Porta-Johns out yet. Be patient.

I should have brought binoculars and an Audubon guide book. With no bugs out yet, it would have been a fine day to pick a spot in the woods and just sit for awhile to spot the birds. On my walk today, I saw swans in the cove where I usually see herons. The blackbirds were making noise down at the culvert near the millyard. Mallards were poking along the canal shore along an ice-free stretch. A woodpecker — smallish; not sure what variety — was busy near the newest bridge. Of course, I saw robins. One of them seemed to be posing for a delighted three-year-old near the ball fields.