and so it begins

both this online posting of thoughts, and the winter of 07/08.

Yesterday I made time to snowshoe through the woods off Little Pond Road here in Concord. Approximately one mile by one mile in size, with a small piece called Walker State forest in the northwest corner, the rest of this land is owned by Concord Hospital, St.Paul's School, an ex-governor, and the City of Concord. Cris-crossed with trails and nothing else, it's a great treasure of peace and clean-air recreation within about a mile and a half of the state capitol. The land slopes generally from southeast to northwest about 150', and is covered in maple, beech, birch, hemlock, white pine, and oak, and is probably third-growth forest. Stone walls, cart paths, and even some old wheels bolted to the trees on the back side of the hill from apparently an old rope tow add some good New England history interest to the forest. (it's not yet listed on nelsap.org)It's a great place to wander slowly, drinking in the clean air, or blast around the corners and leap over logs by foot, snowshoe, ski or bike.

Madison (the dog) and I made our way along the (plowed, with only 2" of snow on it) access road and off onto the trails. The trails have a good 8-10", enough for snowshoeing and skiing, and judging by the tracks plenty of folks have been up here doing both. I ran into one retired gentleman enjoying an afternoon ski, carrying a broken pole from a recent fall on his way home.

A cloudy day, the weak late-afternoon light was still able to penetrate the cover enough to cast that special deep-winter light on the snow covering branches and ground, and lend extra color to the beech leaves still hanging on to those silvery trunks.

I found running with snowshoes to be difficult, as I remembered, especially after using weights in the morning, but I was able to run 70% of today's three-mile route, and emerged from the woods with snow up my back, sweaty and happy. The dog was esctatic.