Last week’s walk #2

The plan last week was for H and me to get out and walk as much as we could. And we did, but a little less than we had hoped. One day was a washout—we decided not to take sweet B out in a downpour—and one was shorter than planned because of B’s general unhappiness on the trail—probably a reaction to the previous day’s flue shot.

And the new house was ready for occupancy. Last Tuesday was primarily a moving day. H and A were determined to sleep the night in the new house rather than the apartment, so H picked up the U-Haul, the hired muscle appeared, and by noon most of the really heavy stuff was in the South End.

H, sweet B, Jasper the Wonderdog, and I couldn’t head for the hills until about 2:30, so we chose a short daunder on a relatively nearby target. Belknap Mountain in Gilford is close to Lake Winnipesaukee and lots of other water in what’s accurately called the Lakes Region here in the land of Live Free or Die. When you get away from the tourist traps and strip malls that natural beauty attracts like ticks to a moose, it is—especially at this time of year and on such a gorgeous day—indescribably beautiful. And Belknap—or, more accurately, Belknap’s fire tower—


—lets you see it all: Vast expanses of Winnipesaukee and other lakes as a foreground; then waves of ridges and peaks north to Washington and many of the other great mountains of the Whites (below); off to Maine; Killington, Pico, and others in Vermont; Monadnock in Southern New Hampshire; and even beyond to Massachusetts.

As the book says, awesome.

Our stay at the top of the tower was a little more fraught than it might have been, because B seemed to want to take flight, and restraining her became a nerve-racking chore for whoever wasn’t using Scudder’s to ID the distant peaks (H was much better at this last than I).

We took the slabby Green Trail down, with one slip but no problems. Sweet B was happy and animated from start—


to finish.

The gate at the bottom of the access road closes at 6. We were out by 5:30. At home, B, fascinated by her father’s CamelBak (especially the fastex buckle on the sternum strap) decided she wanted to do some climbing on her own.