There's no reason to be critical about our accommodation at the cottage we normally rent for our week away in the Waterville Valley of New Hampshire. We've a small bedroom with a firm mattress, an adjacent bathroom with shower, a small living room with a giant flat-screen television that we look at only for weather updates, and a functional kitchen alongside it.

There's a nice inground swimming pool right next to the cottage we rent, and the owners of the site also keep a small menagerie of animals on their well-treed lot with a view of the mountains in the distance. They have two miniature goats in a compound and they're about ten years old. There's a sweet little rabbit, in its hutch, and a group of colourful hens that are known as good layers.

When we get up in the morning first off Jackie and Jillie are taken on a little roundabout walk on the property, and then we get down to the business of showering, preparing breakfast, and deciding where we'll go for our first forest walk for the day. Not much of a debate, since we generally go off to the Smarts Brook trail for our introductory walk in the woods, a place fairly familiar by now to Jackie and Jillie.

Often when we are there part of the trail is fairly muddy, but not this time. There is some serious erosion on the trail, and the network of roots and rocks make it somewhat tricky going, but we take our time. As you enter the trailhead the sound of the water rushing over the rocks scattered throughout the bed of the brook becomes louder as you progress into the forest.

From time to time we venture off the trail to approach the brook, to admire the ferocity of the stream's volume and the sound it makes -- thunderous at times -- as the water is being transported downstream toward the Pemigewasset River.

The trail begins to ascend and it becomes not only a forest trail but a fairly typical mountain trail. The brook itself morphs gradually into a bit of a gorge. The higher we climb, the deeper the brook, and the steeper the walls of the gorge. There are erratics perched here and there; sizeable boulders that at one time tumbled off the mountainside.

The streambed itself is heavy with fallen boulders, the raceway becoming an obstacle course of the rushing water as it bubbles, burbles and streams over and around the rocks. When we reach the top where the forest plateaus and turns into the Pine Flats trail, there are no more exertions required to clamber upward. The constant humidity of the forest creates areas that are thickly and heavily mossed, resembling a fairytale setting. Odd, colourful fungi can be noted from time to time.

Hemlock, yellow birch, maple, pine, spruce and fir crowd the forest interior. It hasn't been all that long ago that the area was logged out, less than two decades ago, and though there are tall, thick trunks of pine, yellow birch and hemlock, most of the trees are just beginning to attain some girth. The understory of Moose maple, sumac and dogwood ensure there is no 'spare' room. All the colourful spring wildflowers we enjoy seeing in June are but a memory.

The bracken includes ferns, false Solomon's seal, fall asters and little else. We've never seen the blueberry bushes to bear fruit. The foliage of Ladies Slipper, trilliums and straw lilies, and the presence of silver lichen on the trees comprise a complex and beautiful landscape. One that keeps calling out to us to return, year after year.