On our second, (and first full-day) in New Hampshire last week we woke to sunshine streaming into the cottage bedroom window, but a closer look revealed a heavily overcast sky. We went off to our favourite haunt, Smartsbrook in the Waterville Valley, wearing rainjackets against threat of rain. Just as well the atmosphere was cool, enabling the rainjackets without discomfort.

It usually is cool and windy there, at this time of year, and as such, perfect for a long hike in the woods. The site is lovely, the mountain stream thunderous as it rollicks over the streambed filled with boulders and rocks fallen from the mountain above. Some of the erratics are thickly moss-covered, host to ferns and tree saplings; a rocky nursery, appearing as a micro-forest within a macro-forest.

We saw dogwood in flower, though most had passed their best-before date; we had just missed the blooms by a week or so. There were ample ferns maturing, and some still unfurling, among them the very large specimens like ostrich ferns that loft their tall flowering brushes in late summer. Yellow Admirals were also there, in abundance, flittering and fluttering from tree to underbrush.

At one end of the circuit, pine, hemlock, spruce and fir, along with oak dominate the growing environment, while at the opposite  side, yellow birch and maple do. The common understory is dogwood and moose maple, among the bracken. The forest interior is unfailingly humid, though cool and tending toward a twilight atmosphere. The trail, as it progresses with upturns and downturns, tending to be dry, then muddy. Over the years this trail, popular with both locals and visitors alike, has begun to sport increasing numbers of stout, flat wood bridges interspersed over the boggy areas.

The two halves of the trail making up the three-mile circuit also divide between their tiny bloodsuckers; mosquitoes more prevalent on one side, blackflies on the other. Throughout the walk we randomly came across the delightful presence of Ladies Slippers, Painted Ladies, Straw lilies, Bunchberry, Mountain sorrel with their tiny white blossoms, purple violets, raspberry canes and wild strawberries.