When we're in the Waterville Valley for a week's stay our first destination for a hike is always Smarts Brook trail. That's now; when our children were young 40 years ago our more usual route would be up the Sandwich Mountain from the trail. Exertion of that kind is way beyond us now, and we're more than content to hike along Smarts Brook, enjoying the varied geology of the landscape.

This is a trail that virtually has 'everything'. From a robustly gushing mountain stream, to a dense forest, boulders strewn alongside and upon the stream runway, a bit of a gorge sided by dramatic striated red-and-black granite, the challenge of a moderate ascent, the change from forest to a more open old cart-track of a trail on the second half of the circuit, and the added attraction of flowering shrubs and wildflowers in season. In some areas along the trail there are parts that resemble nothing so much as mysterious grottoes, they have a Rip van Winklish atmosphere about them.

So it's little wonder that we and Jackie and Jillie enjoy the trail, and little more wonder that when we have the opportunity we take the trail for an afternoon hike more than once during a week away from home to enjoy the mountainscape and hiking opportunities on forested trails in the White Mountain National forest.

We hiked in the Great Smokies too years ago, but never liked it quite as much. We did part of the Appalachian trail with our youngest son many years ago and liked it all, but it has always been the Presidential Range of the White Mountains that captured our fascinated interest. The Adirondacks failed to impress us as much as the White Mountains. And when we hiked the Coastal Mountains in British Columbia that put such ranges in a vastly different perspective; with the emphasis on vast because it seemed so much more estranged from human life. We hiked through forests and up mountain trails close to Tokyo in Japan. It's all different -- at the very same time that it's all related.

In any event, we returned to Smarts Brook on the 23rd, finding a less occupied parking lot, but it's quite a long circuit and hikers were dispersed on the trail and we came across no one else while we were out hoofing along. It was slightly less boggy on the trail in the areas that tend to be, where melt- and rain-water runs down the slopes onto the trail and eventually into the brook. Inevitably some serious issues of erosion are quite evident, caused primarily by weather, but also wear-and-tear on the trail system hosting so many booted feet over the years.

Spray from the mountain stream, particularly at high-water-level times makes the forest seem almost semi-tropical in areas. Lush mosses and lichens proliferate everywhere, on the trees, and on the forest floor. There's an impressive array of lichens, some of which do not closely hug the bark of trees but grow to resemble miniature green ferns. Others have a lacy pattern, and they're silver-hued.

We spend almost as much time peering closely at these little details that make up a small portion of the forest's ecology as we do viewing the larger picture, the forest as a whole in its beauty as it obeys nature's laws and works as an immense 'lung' taking in carbon dioxide and exuding oxygen. The soft breezes, the moist air, the fragrance of green vegetation, the feel of the forest floor underfoot, views of the sky through the forest canopy, all serve to enhance the quality of our lives. Nature's elixir of life.