Our first full day at the cottage in the Waterville Valley on June 4th saw us getting up a little earlier than we normally would, but we were anxious to begin our adventure, to get the puppies out and start the day. Despite which, we took our time with everything, since after all, we had plenty of time. The morning was heavily overcast and cool.

We decided after breakfast to head out to one of our favourite trails at Smarts Brook, and to do the complete circuit, which took us two and a half hours to complete, moving at a fairly steady clip. As we proceeded the sky cleared and the day began warming up. The first part of the trail passes through a rocky gorge with a mountain stream -- Smarts Brook -- rippling, raging and running through it, the water clear as a mountain stream should be, gurgling and fuming and sparkling in the light from above.

Over time great boulders have fallen from the slopes above to rest in various places throughout the forest and many of them lie steadfast on the floor of the brook itself, posing as restraints forcing the water streaming down from above to find its way around, up, through and triumphantly over the streambed and the boulders littering it. On its way downstream the roar of the water falling is orchestral-dramatic.

The forest at that point, as it is throughout much of the Waterville Valley, is heavy with hemlock, yellow birch, spruce, maple, oak and pines, with a thick understory of dogwood. The dogwood had obviously finished flowering the week before we arrived. And there was also spent trilliums which had seen their day, and lilies-of-the-valley in flower, dangling their little white bells. As we ascended we gradually swerved away from the brook, and silence reigned but for the clear call of a robin.

Ladies Slipper

At the pinnacle of that trail there is a large flat area, the pine flats, that stretches for a short distance. The first time we had come across it years ago it had been recently logged out and looked quite miserable; it has since grown in with mostly pine and spruce and hemlock. It is also where, years later, we saw an abundance of Ladies Slippers in shades of pink, but this year there was a lamentable paucity of them; we saw only a few, but did see many straw lilies in flower; they share similar foliage but the floral offerings are nothing alike.

Straw Lily

From there we dip into a denser forest, always humid with plenty of moss and lichen. The trail was damp as it always presents itself, and a series of ascents and descents eventually took us closer to the brook again, and another broad albeit not very deep waterfall, one my husband painted a landscape scene of, many years ago. For Jack and Jill every part of the trail was a new adventure, and they sniffed with huge curiosity to be satisfied constantly. Jill tends to stay on the trail, while her brother has a tendency to try to be frenetically everywhere at once.

Bunchberry (ground dogwood)

Once out of the dense inner forested portion of the trail, we proceeded onto the Yellowjacket Trail, and that part resembles an old cart track, it is more open, the trail wide and the flora different with a profusion of various types of ferns, lots of straw lilies and violets, and minuscule micro-landscapes comprised of 'ponds' surrounded by luxuriant mosses in flower and the presence of frogs. Ostrich ferns have colonized a small portion of the trail, and bunchberry was also in flower. Yellow Admirals tend always to be seen in that part of the trail.