Sky Watch

This weekend my cousin paid us an impromptu visit, and to make the most of her brief stay we decided we'd take a day trip up to New Hampshire and hike Pack Monadnock (little brother to the Mount Monadnock I climbed last summer). When we reached the summit we were surprised to find a naturalist poised at the edge of a rocky outcropping, scanning the skies with single-minded concentration.

It turned out he was a graduate student working for the New Hampshire Audubon, monitoring this particular spot on the southward journey migrating raptors. How often would he be at his post? "Every day until Halloween," he said, with an expression of contented bliss.

We were impressed to see he'd already counted four bald eagles that day, and he told us he'd recently seen a passing flock of some type of hawk (broad winged? I can't remember) numbering about 500 birds. Though on our way up we saw a single red-tailed hawk kiting above us, suspended motionless in the air, and that in itself was pretty spectacular, too.

Big Shoulders

This weekend I climbed Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. I don't think it's known as a particularly difficult climb in general, but the trail we chose was much more challenging than any of us expected.

On some of the steepest sheer rock I felt as though nothing stood between me and a cracked skull but the non-skid soles of my boots. Those boots were the ones climbing the mountain - I was just standing in them. I don't know what people did before Vibram.

Two days later I'm still finding it painful to go up and down stairs. (And stand up. And sit down.) I don't go hiking much.

It was great though, a beautiful day and gorgeous views at the summit. As we climbed I kept thinking of Chicago's Monadnock Building and wondering if it were named after this particular peak. I've since learned it's also a general geological term. From the New Hampshire State Park web site: "Monadnock, which comes originally from the Abnacki Native American word for mountain that stands alone, is now a standard geological term for any singular mountain that rises above the surrounding plain." The Monadnock Building, a pre-1900 brick "skyscraper" (it's only 16 stories tall), is massive and rather squat, much like the mountain. The name is perfect for it.

We came across some wild blueberries on the way up. I remembered a friend telling me about a man she knew in Seattle who liked to go camping in the mountains and make himself pancakes with the wild blueberries he picked. ("Pitter-patter!" she said in commentary.) I'd always assumed wild mountain blueberries were a Northwest phenomenon, but here they were, waiting to be made into crush-inducing blueberry pancakes by any enterprising Northeasterner at hand. I tasted a few but they must not have been quite ripe: a little too tart.


We did our share of bitching and moaning on the way up - and even moreso on the way down - but the unobstructed view from the summit sure was sublime.


At the mountain's bare peak, puddles of water had collected in various stone grooves, and acting on a tip from one of the many children jumping around up there (I swear, kids as young as three were running up those trails. Sheer rock face? So what!), I peered into one of the stagnant pools and glimpsed this tadpole, mid-morph. It is in for a rude awakening when it finally crawls from its watery nursery.


3,000 feet down is a lot of hops.