Submitted by Pat
Stats
Date: June 9, 2025
Weather: Cloudy, upper 60s
Mileage: 8.41
Elevation Gain: 916
Trails: North Mountain Tr, Chase Tr, North Mountain By-Pass
Nancy and I spend a third day hiking in Pawtuckaway State Park on our own except for ravenous ticks and mosquitoes and a few black flies thrown in for good measure. The day is cloudy, the air hazy with smoke from the wildfires burning in Canada. We meet at Danielle’s Diner where we chat up the wait person who is packing up her home and moving to North Carolina. Nancy and I catch up with the doings in each other’s lives and plan our hiking day.
We decide to enter the park on Reservation Road. We encounter a parking area with a sign that reads Parking .3 above a No Parking sign. I know we are going to hate walking those last 3/10s of a mile back to the car after a long day, but that’s a perfect example of a difference between Nancy and me. I follow the rules while Nancy does everything she can not to. The juxtaposition of our personalities makes me smile.
We drop off my car in the lot and drive her Jeep a short way up the road to a pair of gates with access to a portion of the North Mountain Trail that we still need to trace. After saturating ourselves with Ben’s, we head out the seldom used trail. The grass is high and it’s hard to follow the trail at times. Maybe twenty minutes into the hike, I look down at my legs to check for ticks and see I have at least ten dog ticks crawling up my legs. I freak and begin frantically pulling them off while simultaneously alerting Nancy to the situation. Nancy hates ticks and they are hard to see on her black pants. We pick them off, grossed out and unwilling to walk in any more tall grass.
This section of the North Mountain Trail is an out-and-back. When we arrive back at her car, Nancy changes into shorts and puts on gaiters. The temperature hovers in the low sixties and despite the cool day, we are sweating. It drips into my eyes, off my elbows, down my poles, my hands, my back and belly. A cool breeze keeps the mosquitoes away as we climb the longer section of the North Mountain Trail. Oven birds call into the forest, letting everyone know where they are. The clouds and the smoky air make the forest feel close. I miss the lightness and joy I feel when I’m in the sun. The clouds depress me. I am emotionally sensitive to weather.
We reach the summit of North Mountain, take a selfie, and continue on. The ridge is a beautiful walk, sometimes on slabs, sometimes on dirt. The forest is young, and the forest floor is free of undergrowth. We hop from rock to rock and tread lightly on pine duff. Before we truly begin the descent, we sit on a rock on the trail and eat – she a cookie and I, my sandwich. It feels good to stop and rest. Nancy knows how to rest. I don’t. Another wonderful difference between us.
When we finish, we continue the descent. Eventually we reach a trail junction and take a left on the Chase Trail which is only .6 out-and-back. I’m not having the best hike. I feel tired, and that tiredness and lack of fitness makes for a long day. We return to the trail and continue down the North Mountain Bypass. Rolling hills where every ascent slows me down. I plod on, occasionally commenting about my struggle but mostly I walk in silence. When I have a bad hiking day, I usually withdraw into myself and become taciturn, even morose – I get stuck inside my head. Nancy is a good cheerleader, and while she isn’t having the best hiking day either, she summons up support for me. Buoyed by her love, I pick up my pace and actually speak every so often. It feels good to let in her kindness.
I am elated when we reach the road and only slightly bent out of shape by the 3/10s we must walk back to where I parked my car. Sucking wind, we hike up the road to my car. Nancy does a quick change out of her wet things because she is going to visit her sister in Portsmouth while I pull a couple of seltzers out of her cooler. We stand and swat at the cloud of mosquitoes that descend upon us. Grinning, we say our good-byes and off we go, initially unable to pick up any GPS service. It’s interesting that my phone finds satellites for my GPS program when I hike but can’t find a satellite through the map program until I’m at least have two bars of service.
The drive home speeds along and imagine my surprise when I open the back door to get my pack and what do I find? Nancy’s pack and her poles and she has two hikes scheduled before I see her again. She feels so stupid when she calls to verify that I have it. That doesn’t usually happen to us. But thinking back now, I see exactly how it happened. A moment of inattention and the pack is forgotten.
One more trip to Pawtuckaway and our patch!