On Saturday, I visited my friend Adam in NH and we spent five hours hiking in the Loverens Mill Cedar Swamp. The area was purchased by The Nature Conservancy in 1998 and the conservation was expanded in 2006.
There was a good amount of snow still on the ground and several days of mixed warm and cold weather left the snow with a firm crust but a soft core. We found ourselves randomly falling knee-deep into the snow where the crust was too weak to hold our weight, sometimes falling into hidden pools of water. (Note to self: Wear waterproof boots, not breathable boots, when hiking in the snow.)
We ventured far off the trail and found dozens of untouched boulders and amazing rock formations. These formations are commonly called glacial erratics, although there seemed to be a very strange consistency to them. Evidence of repeated camp fires scarring the rock hinted towards heavy use of the area by Native Americans hundreds, if not thousands of years ago. We even found stone arrow heads scattered around the many small caves that were created by these huge formations.
Both of us forgot to bring a camera, but I managed to take a few photos with my iPhone. We found a huge tree that had been split in half from the ice storm a few months ago and you can't really tell from the pictures, but it was so big that both of my arms only wrapped half way around! I found an interesting fact about the area: Pollen studies have shown that the Atlantic White Cedar (which is actually a cypress, not a cedar) has existed in the area for more than 4,000 years, and its presence is rare because the species is usually found in much lower altitudes.
Boots… sounds like a DJT moment 😀
Finding an artifact that hasn’t been touched in hundreds of years… amazing. I tend to imagine the person(s) that used the object and how it was used when I see something from the past. Even the camp fire scars, I’d be imagining who sat around them for warmth or cooking. I even do this when stepping into older homes. Maybe DJT not imagining but seeing scenes from the past… hmmmmmm…..
Anyhow, sounds like it was a lot of fun. I need to do something like that, but my luck I’d fall neck high, not knee deep in the snow. 😉
Yeah, the whole time I was hiking around those huge boulders I was imagining tribes of Native Americans living all around there. It was incredible.
DJT definitely would have fell neck high into snow if he went hiking with us that day. 😀