Waterville Valley - 7 June 2007

Takes a lot longer for old bones to recover. Sore feet, sore backs, low energy levels, no great surprise. Driving alongside the Pemigewasset, the pounding run-off from a week of rain hurtling over scattered boulders, we approach our goal for the day's jaunt nestled inside Franconia Notch.

Another lovely day; coo, cloudy, windy. Sun sneaking through from time to time. We start our trek past the Basin on the Pemi Trail, leading to the Basin Cascades trail, and soon our aching old bones begin to groan as we begin an ascent.

On a gravelly trail, buttercups and lilies-of-the-valley fringing the trail. A massive old hemlock, beside a tight packaging of lesser-sized hemlock and oak.

Any height we attain on this day for which we've scheduled a physically modest output, comes at a great cost to our not-yet-rested energy resources. Takes that much longer for us to rebound from the expenditure of our escapade of the day before. Any other time, later in the season, this site is over-run with tourists.

Its splendour is ours alone, today. The trail narrows, becomes boggy in places. It's punctuated by large stones, boulders, the occasional fallen tree. Too recent to have yet been removed. And above all, a tortured network of tree roots necessitating some care in proceeding. Every bit of the ascent exacts its toll; I've no energy to spare.

Occasionally, as we rise, we do a little side-trip over to the wide, open rock face spilling down the mountain side, with its burden of boulders, some room-sized, where the cascading water finds its way around runnels in the rock and obliging channels between massive boulders.

We do these little diversions as much to enjoy the sight of the indomitable mountain stream exercising its inexorable option to claim sovereignty over the massively hulking granite, as to satisfy our need to rest, as we proceed.

Button and Riley are now off leash. Happy to be out and about, intrigued by all manner of new and different scents. The sound of the roaring stream pummeling the rocks is constant and pervasively loud, with an underlying shoosh between violent slaps on the protruding rocks.

The higher our ascent, the more magnificent the complete landscape. Before us, the solidly massive bulk of distant mountains, seen through the veil of overhanging tree branches, partnering the huge rock slides that comprise these basins.

We take photographs of the tumbling water, the colossal boulders, the ornamenting presence of hemlock, oak, pine, beech, birch and spruce. The old grey skeletons of forest giants, fallen across the broad rock face. There is an occasional blue that flutters past us, a swallowtail now and again, and dragonflies.

The pestiferously irritating presence of blackflies is not to be ignored.

Here's a painted lady, there a proudly erect Ladies Slipper. From the insignificant presence of a shy spring flower, to the towering magnificence of the surrounding summits, the cascades link us to nature's greater purpose.