We had decided last year on our return from New Hampshire in September that we'd no longer make that pilgrimage to the White Mountain National Forest that we've been returning to twice a year, in spring and early fall for decades. When our children were young, before their teens, we first took them there, and the older they got the more accustomed we became to the mountains and the energy it would take to begin climbing them. They, like us, took to the adventure of it all, and we would rent cottages close to either the Crawford Notch, the Franconia Notch or Pinkham.

 

 

They're now far older than we were when we began vacationing with them there, and we've been returning on our own for the past thirty years, a week in June, another in September or October. The last summits we climbed was Welch-Dickey's 4-mile loop and that's almost ten years ago. When Jackie and Jillie were puppies we climbed with them nine years ago to the lookout and went no further. Their predecessors, Button and Riley, accompanied us year after year on our climbs. Button, older than Riley by seven years, climbed most of the Presidential range with us, with the exception of Mount Washington. 

 

The Basin, Franconia Notch

Old habits have a way of nagging at you. We had agreed between us, that at age 86 the long drive, the settling in, the packing, the search for trails in a mountain region that would still serve our need to be out in nature on forested trails without stretching our energy resources beyond what we could muster was unrealistic. Those days were over, we agreed. No trip in June.

 

But in August, Irving felt restless and said he'd been looking at the reservations available and found an opening for us for September and would I agree that we'd give it another go? Reservation made, we left home with the puppies on the 3rd of September and took that drive to the Waterville Valley. On the way, going through Vermont, we saw just how serious that state is about 'clean, green' energy. There are vast wind farms and electrical grids in wide stretches along the route we took. 

 

Sabbaday Falls

We left on a beautiful driving day, clear sky, sunny, mild temperature. We stopped for a brunch and the opportunity to have Jackie and Jillie get a little walk, before resuming the trip. They're great little travellers, content to be with us, uncomplaining, well behaved. When we finally arrived in New Hampshire, to our surprise there were motorcyclists everywhere. We're accustomed to seeing them in June, for the big rallies at Motorcycle Week, but here they were, brigades of them zipping about, many unhelmeted.

 

When we finally arrived at our destination, we were greeted by our hosts, Donna and Byron O'Donnell, who have in fact become dear friends over the past twenty years. Unpacking was a ritual we've been long familiar with. The puppies remembered the cottage; they've stayed at a number of them over the years, and they adjusted well. The days to follow gave us the opportunity to resume our acquaintance with that colossal, beautiful landscape.

 

It was great while it lasted, weather aside. The weather, however, didn't keep us from getting out daily to explore wooded areas on trails both familiar and new to us. And the spectacular natural sites that always draws tourists to gather in honour of nature's grand geological design. Breaks between heavy rain events enabled us to do what we normally look forward to, and a good time was had by all; all being ourselves and our two little dogs.

Today was house-cleaning day, and there was a lot to be done in this house. So it was late afternoon by the time we got ourselves out for our daily hike through the forest trails with Jackie and Jillie. The morning had brought heavy rain again, a carry-over from overnight rain last night. We took our time, we always do, with breakfast. There are newspapers to read, emails to catch up with, and it wasn't until noon that the routine of cleaning began.

Before we left the house for our hike in the ravine, I popped a Cornish game hen into the oven to begin its roast period. With it, new crop baby potatoes. I prepared a few cobs of corn, and cubed pears and sliced kiwi made up dessert. It was a good hike for all of us, we always feel better, even when we're tired, to get out into the fresh air; it pumps up our energy and feels so good. And the puppies need their daily outing in a natural setting, as much as we do.

The contrast between the meal we had tonight and the chicken breast I cooked while we were away in New Hampshire couldn't have been greater. The game hen was done to perfection, its meat delicate and moist. The chicken breast bought at the Hannaford supermarket was dry and stringy, so much so it was difficult to cut with a knife at the table. Our poultry tends to go through a chilling process that tenderizes it. I had forgotten how awful chicken in the U.S. tastes.

But there are other food issues. Strange as it may seem, when we embark on a week's trip like this, we take along bread we've bought here at home, knowing how unpalatably cotton-batten-like bread is there. And though its quality is inferior to our taste, it's also more expensive than bread in Canada. There are other disappointments; boxed cocktail tomatoes and out of a half-dozen, two had to be discarded. Same thing happened in June, only with Georgia peaches, boxed and past their prime.

Lean, Black Angus beef, a premium cut, awfully disappointing; touted as lean but greasy tasting. Grape tomatoes with skins so thick they defied a knife. And American-grown oranges that were tough and full of seeds, quite unlike the U.S. oranges we buy here in Canada. So, what gives? Couldn't be nostalgia for home when we're away each time a week, no more. Fact is, we love being there, enjoying the exemplary landscape of the White Mountain National Forest. 

 Just tells you how regional food is. The corn we bought was fresh, the cobs much larger than the corn we buy here. The kernels were tough and starchy-meaty. The bicolour corn we eat at  home is smaller, the kernels also much smaller, but bursting with sweetness and beautiful to the taste. That tough corn is cattle-corn, meant for livestock feed, yet it's stocked for human consumption. Go figure.

Our family, including Jackie and Jillie, eats a lot of eggs. And we always buy Omega-plus, vitamin E-enhanced eggs. In the past I've been able to buy some kind of Omega eggs at Hannaford, but not this time. Mostly they featured free-range eggs, along with ordinary varieties, but none enhanced with chicken feed (flax) that would produce vitamin-E eggs. Our puppies don't know the difference, but we do.

Just as well there's so much more that draws us to New Hampshire than the food. The people are unfailingly friendly. Unless they're visiting Bostonians and they're everywhere at this time of year. Grumble, grumble. Hard to believe, reading this, that we love the place and the people and the exposure to some of nature's grandest landscapes...

Every year we would take a week in early June and another week in September or October to drive to New Hampshire's Waterville Valley. When our children were young we would go there for the express purpose of seeing the mountains in the White Mountain National Forest and year after year we would climb as many as we could pack into a week. These were day climbs, ascend in the morning, descend in the afternoon. We climbed to many peaks, but never Mount Washington.

Little Haystack, Eisenhower, Moosilauke, Lafayette, Cannon Mountain and many others filled out our year-by-year experience. As the children became adults they would sometimes accompany us, sometimes not. Until the time came when we would carry on ourselves. The older we got the more confined to more modest mountain hikes like Welch and Dickey and Rattlesnake. By the time we turned 80 we gave up the former and continued the latter.

For the past twenty years or so we kept coming back to one place in the Waterville Valley near Franconia Notch, and struck up a friendship with the owners of the site. Years ago when they hired someone to set up a new website for them, they asked if we wouldn't mind having our photos taken and one of them still appears on their website, of Irving and me and our elderly little Apricot poodle, Riley.

The last trip we took was in September of 2019. And then came the global pandemic and everything was shut down. So for two years we haven't gone to our summer idyll in the White Mountains. Everything shuttered including the border between Canada and the U.S. for non-essential travel. The very term non-essential is debatable, but clearly it's meant to identify travel that is not absolutely necessary.

We certainly miss those trips. It would take about eight hours of driving to get to our destination. Jackie and Jillie became very good travellers, like their little predecessors Button and Riley. It was Button, our miniature poodle, who had climbed many of the difficult mountain peaks when we were still able to do them ourselves. But Jackie and Jillie became avid mountain climbers too, though the mountains were far more modest in size and height.

Eventually we satisfied ourselves with hiking the mountain trails requiring not too much energy and endurance in achieving height. We'd take Jackie and Jillie to the Basin at Franconia, to Sabbaday Falls, to the Lovequist Trail,to SmartsBrook, and that along with the Rattlesnakes would satisfy our mountain-climbing urges the last five years.

With two years' absence from the mountains, there's something missing. On the other  hand, we have such easy access to a forested natural setting close to home that satisfies our daily need to take ourselves to a natural landscape. In our mid-80s now, it seems a little less urgent for us to undertake an eight-hour drive, pack up all the essentials for a week's stay in a mountain landscape, roam about hither and yon to our hearts' content. But we certainly do miss it.

Usually -- during normal times -- we'll long since have made arrangements for an early summer getaway. Before the end of March rolls around my husband has usually contacted our favourite cottage rental in the Waterville Valley hard by the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to reserve a week for us to indulge in a leisure occupation dear to our hearts.

We introduced our three children early to nature and the natural environment. Trekking about everywhere we could, came about naturally enough, because my husband has always been restless, like a nomad, wanting to go everywhere, to see as much as he could of the world around him, and us, and we have always been engaged together, with the out-of-doors. We took our children from the time they were infants on hiking excursions wherever we could think of. And always on a shoestring.

Ascending Mount Lafayette

When they were in their early teens we introduced them and ourselves to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a vast national preserve of mountains, forests, lakes and rivers of unqualified regal beauty. Accessing the area took about a six hour drive for us, from where we live in Ontario. And we always stayed at places that gave us ready access to the mountain trails. We explored Pinkham Notch, Crawford Notch and Franconia Notch. Our children were enthusiastic about these adventures and there was nothing to keep us from indulging this passion for the great out-of-doors.

We would set out with them soon after breakfast, with a packed lunch in a backpack that I'd usually carry, with a daily destination in mind; to climb to the peak of one or another mountain. There were many of varying degrees of difficulty and shared enjoyment. It would take us about four or five hours to summit, and less time to descend, and so the day would be spent, then back to the housekeeping cottage we rented, to prepare dinner for a hungry crew.

We eventually acquired a copy of the White Mountain hiking guide, and updated them occasionally, as we became ever more dedicated to searching out new trails and new peaks to ascend. It was usually our younger son who read the trail descriptions, gave us choices, and later wrote up the experience we enjoyed, at the back of the book. We ended up climbing quite a few, from Jefferson to Willey, Webster to Little Haystack, Carter to Lincoln, Tripyramid to Whiteface, Moosilauke to Owlshead. We took Clinton, and hiked the col between it and Eisenhower for a busy day. I think it was Lafayette that was the most difficult, though we had previously climbed up to the Eagle's Nest lookout. Some we ascended more than once; the second time we did Moosilauke a thunderstorm caught us close to the summit. One of the times we climbed Clinton, we climbed into an icy mist and could see nothing below from the top.

Greenleaf Trail to Mount Lafayette

In later years, when the children were grown and off on their own, my husband and I climbed peak duo, the Welch-Dickey loop for the last time when we were in our late 70s. Into our 80s we managed Rattlesnake, not much of a mountain, but the best we could manage. In the last thirty years our hiking and climbing companions were beloved little poodles. And in that period we returned to a facility that allowed us to bring along our family pets. We would go off for a week in the late spring and another in the fall, becoming familiar with our hosts and valuing them as friends.

Now, tourism and such vacations are relics of the past, at least for the time being. And though we can feel regret that we're shut out of a magnificent landscape, all the people we've met there over the years are struggling to get by, laid off from their tourism employment. For them it is a catastrophe far, far beyond anything we might feel, for their livelihoods have been yanked out from under them under the ongoing threat and societal destabilization of the novel coronavirus.

We have many mementos of our years visiting that incomparable landscape, in memories and photographs. We had so frequently taken advantage of the hiking opportunities given us by locating ourselves temporarily with the people whose hospitality we relied upon, that about ten years ago they asked if we would 'pose' for a website they were having put together and of course we agreed. Of the many photos the photographer/webmaster had taken, one was chosen with our little poodle Riley, aged by then and a little cranky in temperament. Just as we miss him and his predecessor Button, we will regret this year being absent with our current pet family, Jackie and Jillie, at our usual mountain haunt.

When our two puppies were out in the backyard yesterday after their dinner they indulged themselves in the usual runabouts after one another and just exuberant about life, about their happiness, about being in the snow, about feeling good, and forgetting in the process to do their business. And then, suddenly, when they prepared to do just that, they froze. One, then the other began piteously lifting tiny paws. The cold had penetrated.

Into the house they went for a brisk rub-down. And we realized the next time they went out, it would be even colder than the -17C that had struck them immobilized. We knew they'd have to be fully dressed to be able to withstand the cold, the wind and be comfortable enough to prepare for bedtime. And that's just what we did when the time came -- on with the woolly sweaters and the little boots, and everything was just fine.

In the morning when we prepared to begin the day, the first order of business being having them out to the backyard to relieve themselves, on came the boots and the sweaters again, since the temperature was now just a tad above -21C. Not much of a wind, but you don't need much of a wind at that level of freezing cold to make everything feel more bitter.

Gradually the temperature rose until in mid-afternoon it sat at -15C, and we prepared to launch ourselves into the great outdoors once again. This time we prepared ourselves to meet the icy-cold that had settled in for the day, tucking sweaters under our jackets. We'd long ago bought tiny baby socks and never used them. Now was the time. The wee socks went over wee and tender pads and over the socks their little rubber boots fit very nicely.

We had retrieved Button's winter coat for Jillie because she's such a little tank her own winter coat wasn't loose enough to take a woolly sweater under it without bursting open repeatedly. Jackie's skinny little frame leaves plenty of room for woolly sweater and jacket firmly in place. So then we were all prepared and ready to set out. And then we did, hauling up the hoods on our jackets this time for additional protection from cold and wind, and set off for the ravine.

Bundled in all that gear we thought Jackie and Jillie might feel somewhat restrained, but nothing of the kind. Off they gamboled down the first long hill that takes us into the ravine, and turning left as we mostly tend to do, they took the first of the trails we would embark upon for the circuit for this day. This also just happened to be a sunny day after the initial overcast, though the forest interior was still dusky, although illuminated by the snow, not the sun.

Cold be damned, there are some habits that insist on being recognized, respected and repeated ad infinitum, and that's precisely what we tend to do. Walking a tad more briskly this afternoon, to be sure, but enjoying it all; the firm footing on the snow-and-ice-tamped trails, secure enough that we could stride with complete confidence in our hillside ascents and descents. Taking pleasure watching the antics of our little dogs, appreciating the brief periods when the sun was able to penetrate the snowy canopy, and basking in the beauty of our surroundings.

It's a fairly short drive from the cottage where we stay in the Waterville Valley to get to the Franconia Notch, in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire. About a half-hour, and it's a pleasant drive, mountains enclosing us from every viewpoint on the highway. We had, hours earlier, seen a sobering sight, not associated with the forests, mountains and lakes of New Hampshire. When we took Jackie and Jillie out for their first brief stroll on the grounds, we suddenly became aware of a slow procession of trucks on the near highway, and stopped to watch from our vantage point.

First there was an official fire department vehicle, then a fire truck, and then a succession of municipal trucks, driving very slowly, lights on flash mode, but no sirens, no sound whatever. There was a mournful quality to the procession, as though it was that of a funeral. It was in fact a memorial to the accident in nearby Maine when a propane gas explosion levelled an institute for the handicapped building the day before. A civilian worker and a fire captain lost their lives while responding to the emergency call of a strong gas odour. As they went about evacuating people, the gas exploded, destroying the building, killing two, injuring and hospitalizing seven others.

We continued on with the day, leaving the cottage to head out to the Notch, planning to visit The Basin, where an ancient streambed down mountainsides had carved a wide, deep bowl at the mountain base where the foaming, fuming water thrashes wildly in a circular motion into the basin and onward to join the Pemigewasset River. Not far from the basin there is what is called the Baby Flume, where the geological feature of the basin is repeated, funnelling the furious water on its way with a tremendous velocity.

With Jackie and Jillie on leash we negotiated a relatively short, tricky-footing trail from the main trail in front of the basin where most people tend to gather, toward the baby flume. It's a worn trail, almost as worn as the major basin trail we would later take, both generously laddered with tree roots and rocks, surrounded by forest. It's quite a sight to view the water gushing downstream into the flume, and onward, and we stayed awhile simply to goggle with wonder.

And then we made our way back, past the basin, and on up toward the trail, a steady climb over a damp trail that many hiking boots have over the years tramped through, creating the inevitable erosion of the soil that lies over the granite of the mountain. There are a number of flattened areas of wide, grey granite that beckon the hiker to break their momentum and mosey over to sit on the rockface and contemplate the water falling in great gushing streams down the mountain, over a series of cascades created by the geology.

We keep climbing, as the footing becomes more complex and noted this time that the trail wasn't quite as swampy as it often is, for we've been doing this climb to enjoy this beautiful landscape for decades. Eventually we stop when we feel we've achieved enough height and we're tired enough from the exertion, and make our way through a brief sidetrail to the granite slope inviting us to rest awhile and refresh Jackie and Jillie with water and cookies.

Our eyes are drawn to the rocky surface, to the walls rising above, to the huge erratics that have fallen down the mountainside to settle where they have fallen, immovable and impressive, the water coursing steadily around them, finding their way back to the runnels that time and water has etched into the carapace of the mountain. We see stunted evergreens and some truly massive trees as well. And wonder how tree roots can even establish themselves on the soil deposited over thousands of years to create a forest on a mountainside.

All the more when we see trees growing where none should, where the soil is barely there, and roots cling desperately more to mineral than soil. A beautiful, clear, sunny and windy day.