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.