This has been a muted fall in New Hampshire, which is not to say a bad one. There are brilliant trees here and there, but for the most part, this month has been dominated by gold and bronze. Here’s my October sampler, featuring Oak Hill, Horse Hill Preserve, Ponemah Bog, Craney Hill, and Crotched Mountain.
Oak Hill, Concord
It had been a few years since my last walk to the fire tower on Oak Hill. Finally, I got back there. I had been warned about wasps near the cab, but the first frosts must have nipped them.
Oak Hill fire tower, Concord NHWestern view of the Merrimack River valley from Oak Hill. The plume of steam is from a plant near the Concord-Boscawen town line.A small notice announces a new trail on Oak Hill, created by Concord High School students.The day’s best maple leaves, spotted along the two-mile trail leading to the Oak Hill fire tower.
Horse Hill Nature Preserve, Merrimack
The best color this fall has been in the wetlands, not the hills. A walk to the center of the Horse Hill preserve rewarded me with much brighter foliage than I’d seen just a couple of days earlier on a drive toward the Monadnocks.
I’m amazed that the beavers haven’t abandoned this lodge so close to a Horse Hill trail. I guess hikers haven’t been disruptive.Leaf-peeping in one of my favorite spots in Horse Hill Preserve.
Ponemah Bog, Amherst
The shrubs and water plants in the bog were showier than the trees.
Craney Hill, Henniker
The NH Fire Towers page on Facebook clued me in to the Craney Hill lookout tower, once a fire tower. Now, it’s open to the public two weekends a year, during foliage season. I made it to the tower just in time – last visitor on the last day!
Craney Hill lookout tower, Henniker NH.
Crotched Mountain, Greenfield-Bennington
I didn’t stop with the Gregg Trail this time. Two friends joined me for a walk to the ridgetop via Shannon’s Trail. I owe thanks to the folks who managed to get a picnic table up there.
The view from the picnic table atop Crotched Mountain: a hint of color, and distant Monadnock. And oh, that sky.
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.
Among the places to which I’ve returned repeatedly since beginning this blog is Horse Hill Nature Preserve, one of my favorite southern New Hampshire destinations. Here are a few Horse Hill images.
When I moved to this area thirty years ago, what is now the preserve was just a big undeveloped area with a sandpit in the middle. There was once talk of building a housing development in there. The development never materialized, and in 2002, the town purchased the property for conservation. As a community, we made a wise decision.
The area needed a lot of cleanup before it was ready for prime time, and we resorted to some creative maneuvers to get the job done. I remember going there with my son’s Scout troop on a hike. In the sandpit area was debris from the area’s days as an informal target range. Each Scout gleefully stuffed his pockets full of shell casings and carried them out. I can only imagine how many forgotten little brass pieces found their way into washing machines that weekend.
My favorite season at Horse Hill. Photos by Ellen Kolb.
Now, Horse Hill is a year-round spot for walkers, runners, and off-road bicyclists. Horseback riding is allowed, too, for equestrians who don’t mind taking their chances sharing a trail with bikes. As for being a nature preserve, Horse Hill’s wetlands and trees provide habitat for a variety of wildlife.
Horse Hill is popular enough that the town just tripled the size of the parking area, yet it never seems crowded once I’m more than five minutes from my car. Plenty of trails branch off from the main loop, so hikers aren’t concentrated in one area.
If you go, pick up a map first from the kiosk on Amherst Road, and then have fun.
Trails in winter are good for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, and fat tire biking.
Lastowka Pond at Horse Hill Nature Preserve hosts a heron rookery and beaver lodge.
When my daughter gave me a digital camera a few years ago and consigned my little plastic 35mm Polaroid to the junk drawer, I soon discovered my favorite aspect of digital cameras: the delete button. No more paying to develop film with 24 exposures but only one picture worth keeping.
Even the bad pictures can bring back good memories, though. This is one of my favorites, taken at Bald Rock on Mount Monadnock.
Bald Rock, Monadnock State Park, NH. Photo by Ellen Kolb.
Overexposed, lousy lighting, hard to see the intriguing and unexplained inscription on the rock: I didn’t get much right with this shot, except capture a special spot on what is so far the best day I’ve ever spent on Monadnock.
This was the day I realized that I could go to the mountain and not feel like a failure for skipping the summit. I sat by this rock and ate my lunch in regal solitude. I felt absolutely no need to join the crowd I saw on the peak above me. With a breeze and a view and a PB&J, I had everything I needed.
Trips to Monadnock don’t always work out that way for me. Last time I went, I kept moving up the Pumpelly trail despite a sore knee. The pain finally got so bad I had to turn around, hobbling slowly downhill, not getting to my car until well after sundown. On another day, a beautiful December afternoon, I dawdled on the summit and figured I’d make up some time on the descent. Bad move. I lost my footing, fell down hard, and slid on my back headfirst, certain that I was going to crack my skull on a rock. Instead, my backpack took the hit, which was more luck than I deserved.
I’ve had good days to offset those misadventures. The day at Bald Rock beats them all.
About ten years ago, I came across A Field Guide to New Hampshire Firetowers, a labor-of-love booklet by Iris W. Baird and Chris Haartz. It’s a gem of local history, and I used to take it with me whenever I headed out for a tower hike. (I just learned that Baird passed away earlier this year; may she rest in peace.) They worked to collect information on every New Hampshire fire tower and former fire tower site – more than ninety locations!
View from the tower site on Mt. Kearsarge, Warner NH. Photos by Ellen Kolb.
The Pitcher Mountain tower, Stoddard, NH, is a short and easy hike from the parking area on NH Route 123.View from the decommissioned tower at Stratham Park, looking towards Portsmouth and the NH coast.Loveliest fire tower to be found anywhere, in my opinion. Weeks State Park, Lancaster NH.
Northernmost active tower in New Hampshire, on Mt. Magalloway in Pittsburg, not far from the Canadian border. The view on a clear day extends beyond New Hampshire to Maine, Vermont, and Quebec.
It’s fall, the prime time for Granite State walkers of all ages. Crisp air and fewer bugs make every trail more inviting. And then there’s fall foliage, which I thought would be a disappointment after our region’s drought. How wrong I was.
I have a map of New Hampshire that I’ve marked with sites of historical markers, Forest Society reservations, and state parks. It’s a great guide for daytrips. Last weekend, I consulted the map and headed east to scout some trailheads for future exploration. I meandered all over the place, just for fun. Here are a few of my discoveries.
Effingham
The drive to the Green Mountain trailhead at the end of High Watch Road was the stuff of travelogues. There’s a point on NH route 16 northbound from Rochester where I got to a rise in the road, and suddenly mountains were in view, swathed in colors.
View to the north from High Watch Road. I’m pretty sure that’s Mount Chocorua in the distance on the left. A hike for another day, perhaps. Photos by Ellen Kolb.
Once on the trail, I nearly threw away my watch. There was a fire tower up there, after all, and what views it promised! But this was a scouting trip, and I had a schedule to keep, so I contented myself with a short walk in the woods and a silent promise to come back someday.
New Durham
State Route 11 connects Rochester and Alton, with New Durham along the way. A 55-mph speed limit makes scanning for trailheads a bit tricky. I plugged the coordinates for Cooper Cedar Woods into my phone’s GPS and hoped for the best. It worked, which is always a pleasant surprise to someone who surrounds herself with low-grade electronics.
In Cooper Cedar Woods, New Durham, NH.
The wooded tract features a simple loop trail less than a mile long, and I had it all to myself. The fragrance in the air was amazing. It was some indescribable combination of trees and their fallen leaves, unique to that particular location. I could hear Route 11’s auto traffic nearby, and yet it seemed to be a world away.
Rochester
Champlin Forest, seen from Route 108 in Rochester, NH
Early in my road-trip day, I was one of the walkers bringing up the rear at the Foley Run in Rochester, a joyous 5k event in memory of photojournalist James Foley. Main Street’s trees were at their showiest, right on schedule for the visiting racers.
After a quick post-race snack of bagels and fruit, I drove south of town to a quiet parking area tucked across the road from the town’s airport. Here was the Champlin Forest, another Forest Society property, with about two miles of trails meandering through it.
I came home with many notes that will help me plan future trips, including return visits to these three places.
Granite State Walker 