Blog » Going Outside

A few weeks ago we went on a hike that loops around to the peaks of Mt Welch and Mt Dickey. We lucked into the perfect day for this hike -- a morning where it hadn't rained, and wasn't too sunny. Normally neither of those things would be very important on a hike in the White Mountains -- you're almost always in deep forest, where the sun and rain are diluted by all the trees above you. But this hike (which was about a 5-mile loop) spent a good 3 miles out on open ledge.

In the woods near the trailhead, we spotted these nifty Monotropa uniflora. (Normally I am not a latin-binomial kind of person, but the common names for this plant are "indian pipes" and "ghost plant", and those are both kind of lame.) And the entire ledge was full of these tiny blueberry plants growing in every crack. Zillions of them! On the south-facing ledges, we picked a handful of blueberries each without even stepping off the trail. On the north-slopes, the plants are a few weeks behind and are probably ripe right about now. It was pretty awesome to have some fresh wild blueberries with our lunch on the trail.

It was pretty, but more than a little hairy (literally! hairy algae!) in spots. The ledge is criscrossed with tiny streams (taking water from... where exactly? The sheer cliffs above?), and wet granite is slimy and slippery! Fortunately most of the streams are narrow, so you just have to hop carefully across them. At the very top there's a spot where you have to actually climb through a cave (at the top of a mountain!) to get through to the next piece of the trail.

All in all, a great hike, although I gather from the 80-car parking lot (complete with bathrooms and everything) at the trailhead that this is a pretty busy route on the weekends.

Today we meet a very special duck: Pixel.  Pixel was named by our pals Chris and Bethany over at Avoca Designs.

On the left we see Pixel hanging out in a very tall patch of grass.  On the right, we see a picture showing the lay viewer how to tell Pixel apart from the other Indian Runners: notice the dark patch of feathers (nay:  pixelated splotch!) by her left leg.  As you can see from comparing her underside to the underside of Siren on the far right, she's pretty easy to spot.  (Ha!  Spot!  Pixel!)

The gang has been having a good time hanging out in the very tall grass lately.  Bruce and Spruce spend all day eating said grass, but the small ducks just hide in it.  You will notice their very protective fence in the background:  as of Friday the 23rd, we have had two bobcat sightings in our yard. No one was hurt (thanks to the fence and the early warning system of QUACK QUACK QUACK), but still. We hate the bobcat. (We also had a small-crazy-puppy sighting last night at dusk when a little black and white dog rocketed around the yard for a few minutes before heading through the woods to the horse barn.)

In other news, we went hiking last week and saw this great little eft! I love the efts, because they are so small (this one was the size of a car key) and so very bright orange.

We went out the other day and ended up on a trail that was still covered in snow.   This is an odd time of year to hike -- trails are either still snowy, or very muddy.  This one happened to be both!  We soon realized that we were not the only ones using the trail:

At some point a few nights ago he stumbled on himself in the night and started limping.  We're not sure if it's a sprain or a pinched nerve or what, but it doesn't really matter because all bird injuries are treated the same:  keep the bird warm and fed and don't let them limp around all over the place.  So Bruce is in prison.  He's getting better; he gets water therapy (AKA a warm bath) every day where he can use his leg a little without putting any weight on it. 

He doesn't mind prison too much because all of the other birds sleep right near his prison walls when they're outside together, and he's got grass to eat.  He doesn't mind much of anything as long as there's fresh green grass to munch on.

That is a very Alice In Wonderland question -- how is sledding
like strawberries?  The answer is:  it's rare to fill up on
either.  And yet, we have managed to do both things in the past
year!

When it is early summer here, strawberry season shows up and lasts (and
I am not joking or exaggerating in the least here) exactly eight
days.  We have a friend who has about 2 acres of PYO (that's 'pick
your own') strawberries.  We go and we pick as many strawberries
as we can, which last year took about 2 hours and netted us 14 pounds
of tiny beautiful strawberries.  We intended to make shortcake,
and strawberry pasta, and all kinds of great stuff.  In the end,
though, we pretty much just ate all 14 pounds straight.  It is
rare to feel like you've really had plenty of strawberries, but we
managed.  (Not that we were sick of them, mind you.  Just
wonderfully satiated.)

This week, we decided to make good on our vow to go sledding at the Mt Prospect Ski Area.  We learned a number of things:

1) The ski tow lives!!  There is a warming hut (a yurt, por
supuesto) with a woodstove and everything.  We don't know when it
runs, or for how long, or what it costs, or anything except that it is
hooked up to power and there is a deep groove in the snow where it tows
the skiiers up the hill.

2) The view from the top is really pretty.  This isn't even the
top-top, just the middle-top where we sat down and had some hot
tea.  We also brought binoculars, so we were able to scope out the
cows in that field over yonder.

3) You can totally satiate yourself on sledding.  I didn't think
it was possible -- I've always stopped sledding for some external
reason, like my clothes were soaked, or it was getting too cold, or the
snow was crappy for sledding.  But sledding here was awesome --
the snow was hard, the sun was warm, and you only had to walk up 1/4 of
the hillside to get a long awesome (fast!) ride back down.  The
only (minor) downside was that sometimes the sled went so fast it
squirted out from underneath us and left us in the snow while it
rocketed down the rest of the hill.

Whee!

Spring is officially on its way.  I know this because our yard has been visited by the aforementioned Laziest Bird There Is, the mourning dove.  They left tracks.

Please note the crazy-lazy wandering path of the pair of doves.  If you go out into our yard at pretty much any point during the day, you are likely to hear that distinctive "wheep wheep wheep" sound of doves fleeing in terror.   I have read that the sound is actually their wingtips whipping through the air, but I think that is a marketing ploy designed to make us think they aren't just completely spastic.

Super X-treem Close Up:

I would also like you to notice that these tracks are, of course, the very definition of the term "pigeon-toed".

Tate objected to my term "sea cows of the lawn", arguing that there already are cow-like creatures who hang out in grass -- namely, cows.  So I submit that the doves are maybe more closely related to dugongs, the SouthEast Asian cousins of manatees, who are sometimes also known as "sea pigs" and "sea camels".  Later in the season, when there is some grass showing, picture comparisons of the doves and dugongs will surely confirm my suspicions.

One thing I love about winter is feeding the birds.  This time of year, the only birds we have are chickadees, mostly because we are too lazy to have the variety of seed-holders and suet-holders and all the other things that it takes to attract different breeds. (Unlike some people... Hi Mom! Hi Sarah!) Also, we really don't have a good place to hang birdfeeders.  The one we do have, we hang from our lilac bush.

Now, our lilac is not particularly tall, and usually the birdfeeder is about 3 feet off the ground.  But with all this snow we've been having, now the birdfeeder is about 6 inches above the (current) ground level.   This has brought out everyone's favorite winter rodent, the squirrel.  Also known, among members of my family, as "those little bastards".

When I refilled the feeder the other day, as I walked up to it, I thought, "Ooh, look at the neat frost marks!  Hey.  Those aren't frost marks."  For you, dear readers, I've braved the cold and snapped an exclusive Super X-Treem CloseUp^TM of the middle birdfeeder rung:

Holy cracked corn, Batman!  Look at those claw marks!  People, that is powder-coated steel!  (Well, maybe.  Like I could identify steel on sight.  It's, uh... some sort of silvery metal!)  I'm not sure why the little buggers don't just reach inside the hole and pull out what they want, but such are the whims of squirrels. 

Last week we went cross-country skiing for the first time this winter.  It was sunny and cold and awesome.  We went to the Zealand Valley, which has a network of cross-country and snowmobile trails (not the same trails, thank goodness, because snowmobile tracks are terrible to ski in).   The Flatiron trail is a ~2  mile loop (and is indeed very flat).  It spends some time winding through woods, some time wandering next to the river, and opens onto big fields (or maybe frozen-over marshland?  It's hard to tell under 4 feet of snow). 

Some of the open spaces were alot bigger than they seemed at first.  Fortunately, it was not too windy out there, even though it was only 13°F.  After our skiing, we went over to a buried picnic table and literally dug a hole down to the bench so we could sit and have some hot tea (yeah, thermos!).  My pants froze to the bench.

Today, 6 days later, it is 46°F, and raining.  What is up with that, weather?  It is hard to get a good night's sleep when the rain keeps making snow and ice fall off the roof in huge chunks all night long.  Hhmph.

Have you ever read Backpacker Magazine?  It's really great.  We got a subscription through one of those "Your airline miles are going to expire soon" things, and it's one of the only magazines I actually like enough to pay for it when our free year runs out.  Every time I read it, I feel like going outside and hiking somewhere.  (And I don't even like backpacking!  I like sleeping in my own bed.)

Their most recent issue is the 2008 Gear Guide, and they have a special section in it for "Green Gear".  But it's not like most 'Green Product' lists.  Instead of pointing you to all the fanciest bamboo-underwear and recycled-vinyl bags, they actually give you information! Backpacker has done research and compiled a report card of what exactly each 'green' company does.  FiveTen, for example, uses all kinds of scrap and recycled rubber in their shoes. Chaco buys wind credits to offset their energy use, and pays employees to bike to work.

I think it's extra-cool to know exactly what companies are doing to earn the Green label.  Not only does it allow you to support programs you particularly like (hmmm... should I buy from the company that recycles fleece, or the one that is powered by reclaimed methane*?), but it also puts companies on the spot.  If the best a supposedly-green company can come up with is "Our brochures and packaging are 50% post-consumer content", it's not very impressive compared to a company like GoLite (carbon-neutral!  Product recycling!  Alternative transport!). 

Way to go, Backpacker!  It's nice to learn more about these green companies, and decide for ourselves which ones to support.

* CowPower is a supremely great name for a methane program.

If you plan on visiting Franconia Notch State Park, you might read in every guidebook available (even "Snowshoe Hikes in the White Mountains") that the trail up to Lonesome Lake is "easy".  Internet, I am here to let you in on a secret:  the people who write guidebooks are mountain goats. 

 

We have now done this trail in both the summer and the winter, and let me tell you:  it is not easy.  It is far from easy.  I think the mountain goats call it "easy" because it is a smooth dirt trail in summer and has good footing.  But here is the truth:  a good portion of that trail goes about 75° straight up the side of the mountain.  It is so steep that you have to lean on trees when you stop to rest (every 37 steps, on average) so you don't fall backwards down the hill.

And!  When we got to the top, to the Lonesome Lake, the fog was so thick that it seemed like we were standing at the edge of the world.  It was a total white-out, with about 5 feet of visibility across the lake. 

On the plus side, there was alot of new snow, and the Lonesome Lake Hut (way at the top of the trail) is staffed even in the winter, so we got to meet a nice caretaker who offered us hot tea.   The hut is solar-powered, so we chatted about batteries and sunny days and down-filled slippers (the caretaker is pro, and I think he'd know). 

We have gotten a solid 18" of snow in the last 48 hours, and it's still falling.  We are buried.  We'll post a message here if we need canned goods. 

Check it, ya'll.  A big pretty flower.   I grew it myself!

The stalk is about 2 feet long, and I am concerned that at some point soon it will realize that it is absurdly top-heavy, and the whole thing will topple over in the night.

The sky really was that color this morning, and the snow really was that blinding.  "Hey," you might say, "isn't that what white balance is for?"  Hmmph, I say.  Go tell it to Ansel Adams.