3 June 07 - Waterville Valley, N.H.

Heavily overcast, dark clouds skimming the mountains, following last night's series of violent thunderstorms. Violent enough to shake the foundations of the cottage we're staying at for the week. Sound-blasting enough to wake Button from her sleep of exhaustion, to make her whimper slightly in puzzlement and distress. Most unlike her. She's not the kind of little dog who requires reassurance at such times. She generally takes things placidly in stride.

We drive off on our day's jaunt, in a light drizzle. It's Sunday, roughly eleven in the morning. A little rain won't keep us from walking about in the woods, enjoying the air, the sounds and sights and smells of the forest. Where the late springtime canopy of leafs is more than sufficient to keep us comfortable and dry. On the way to the White Mountain National Forest we pass the William Tell - packed with the Sunday brunch crowd.

Given the cold, the wind and the rain, we're up for a trail walk, just nothing too ambitious. A two-hour circuit will do us just fine. And where to go? Well, back to Smarts Brook Trail, only this time we'll do the circuit in reverse. See everything from the opposite perspective, as it were. Which means we've got a long steep haul at the trailhead; instead of descending that portion as we usually do, when proceeding from the opposite end, we're now ascending.

Lots of Ladies' slippers nodding their bright pink heads here and there, in singles and small clusters, among the violets, the lilies. Button is ahead, with her graceful loping prance. Riley, as usual, trots resolutely behind us. He's bored, he's seen all this before, what's with us anyway, trudging along on this wet trail when we could be comfortably ensconced on a lawn chair in front of the cottage, basking in the sun?

The boulder-strewn gorge rises beside the trail, the rain-swollen mountain stream gushing over and around the rocks, over the slabby rock face, swishing and hurling itself downward. White spume of the rushing waters looks cool, inviting. The sheer rock walls of the canyon ahead are wet, coloured iron-oxide red; glistening, cracks hosting luxuriant mosses.

We pass a nicely rotted old nursery log hosting its own little forest of pine and spruce saplings. A miniature forest within-a-forest. There's a movement beside the trail, barely seen from the corner of my eye; was I just imagining? Just a little toad. Imagine there's more where he came from, just not to be seen, shy and withdrawn.

We trudge across the bridge leading to the Yellowjacket trail, and begin the dark, deliberately slow passage through the forest, at times alongside the brook, at times widely diverging. Swallowtails appear lazily flitting about, settle on some leafs, determine them inadequate and continue with their quest for an appropriate place to lay their eggs.