Day 2 - 5 September 2008

We enjoyed a good enough sleep to set us up for a hot day of sun, no clouds. Two initial stops; for the day's New York Times and at a tourist kiosk for our State Parks permit. As we drive along it's hard not to note the blight-violating assault evident everywhere on the landscape by Fall web worm, obviously encouraged by this summer's peculiar weather patterns that withheld summer's onset until September.

Finally, we pass Campton and soon enter the White Mountain National Forest. The dark verdure of the forest itself offset by a neatly arranged group of scarlet maples; there's the tourist board at it again, in their zeal to produce colour, texture, excitement in the landscape. Perhaps if we peer hard enough through the dark-green verdance we could catch a glimpse of moose and deer, poised to flee at our intrusive glance.

We've decided a relatively easy hike is a good decision for a scorching day. Along a mountain stream, in the forest interior. We'll take the Smarts Brook trail to its conjunction with the Pine Flats Trail, sheltered from the burning sun by the dampness of the encroaching flora and the forest canopy. We figure a few hours of trekking should do it.

There's the initial steep haul, eventually ceding to a more moderate ascent. We are surprised, actually, at just how moist the ground is, richly muck-thick in some places. Hemlock, yellow birch and beech dominate the first quarter of the hike, with an understory of moose maple and dogwood. Lots of ferns, Solomon's seal, bunchberry and baneberry.

Yellow plumes of goldenrod, starry asters, white and mauve, and pussy toes flourish there, under the trees, at the side of the trail. The leafy remnants of spring-blooming Ladies Slippers are everywhere. We're delighted to be here, ambling along, intent on missing nothing. We take fall photographs of the dangling red berries of the dogwood, the Solomon's seal, the bunchberry.

We grin at one another, so pleased with our decision to make this fall trip again. A break from the normalcy of our days, to dedicate the week to exploring the byways of the Waterville Valley. We shepherd the dogs out of dense ferns where they've obviously detected evidence of the presence of indigenous animals. Trying to diver them back to the trail where they're less likely to pick up ticks and burrs.

Clusters of mushrooms growing amidst the lushness of various mosses, lavishing their presence in one miniature wet grotto after another. Emulating in their minuscule perfection, a faery forest. We divert from the trail occasionally to dip into side trails leading to the brook, its waters tumbling and spuming over the granite slabs lining the bed of the mountain-fed waterway.

The water burbling, gurgling, spuming with little whitecaps; finally ascending to a roar as it shoots over the huge boulders strewn across its path. Fallen there from above, at some point in the distant geological record. Gradually, pines, spruce and fir join the hemlocks, displacing the dominant hardwoods. Blueberry bushes line up alongside immature conifers, siding the trail.

Glancing skyward, uninterrupted blue reminds us of the sun's fierceness this day. In the forest, however, a shifting, cooling breeze prevails, despite the dampness. Button and Riley shun the offer of a cup of water poured from our canteen, despite their panting, tongues hanging loose, sideways in their muzzles.

Soon, though, they descend through an opening in the underbrush, make their way to a shallow edge of the flowing brook, and lap the water there. Leaving us with concerns of giardia. How, we wonder, would beaver-fever affect them? Leave them feeling ill for a few days? Time will tell; they've never before suffered ill effects.

A fantasy of fungi abound. Gleaming white, funnel shaped. Rich pink, delicate disks. Oyster-shaped, thin-walled, fragile and pale. Bright orange, flanged in vertical gills. Multi-storied, light-brown mushrooms, growing akimbo, one atop another, over the bottom of a defunct tree trunk.

Orange-tinged, multi-storied colonies of fungi, erupting out of the soil, hidden by ferns; show-offs, wanting to be admired for their uncanny resemblance to sea anemones, to salmon-hued corrals. Their abundance and diversity entertain and amaze us.