My knee had been bothering me but I still wanted to go hiking. I twisted it a few days prior on the treadmill, and with a little rest and some naproxen, it started feeling better. I thought I’d find a fairly flat hike with a nice view. Our small mountain ponds in the White Mountains are perfect for just that. I didn’t feel like 2.4mi was long enough starting from the Passaconaway campground, so I parked at Sawyer Pond Trail off The Kancamagus Highway and took the ski trail to the Church Pond Trail junction.
After wading through the Swift River and a short jaunt through wooded forest, the trail brought me out to a large, red pine barren near the pond. I could see Green’s Cliff through the scrub brush and there was evidence of moose with lots of small herd paths that seemed to lead out to the waters edge. “I’m going to check that out after I get to the pond” I thought to myself. “I’ll get a good view of the cliff from there”. I had brought the “big camera” as I’m trying to get used to it. I had been using a Nikon D3400 for the last eight years, and I’ve only had this Sony for two years and have not used it as much as I should.
The view was nice from the small shoreline. I wasn’t feeling it too much, though. It was cloudy, which was nice for photography, but I was hoping for a nice sunset. It wasn’t happening, so I decided to go check out the herd paths I had seen along the bog boards on my way in.
I bushwhacked my way to the shoreline through the dense, woody, brush. This was my favorite view. It was starting to get late and I wanted to be back to my van by dark. I wasn’t going to take the ski trail back, but by making a loop by exiting through the campground and road walking just over a half mile back to Sawyer Pond Trailhead.
Just as I reached the swift river crossing, I heard a loud crash in the water. I looked around, thought maybe a branch had fallen off a tree, but when I looked to my right, I saw three beavers swimming around, gathering twigs for their home. I sat and watched them for close to an hour. A sandpiper also flew over to the shoreline, so close to me. It was a nice end to the day after losing and then finding my glasses.
Yeah, I dropped my glasses in the herd paths bushwhacking back from the waters edge. I was just about to finish hiking the bog boards, when I looked down and realized my glasses were not in my front pocket of my pack. I knew I lost them in there. “There were so many herd paths to the waters edge, how am I going to find them?” I went in where I thought I did previously and pushed the brush all around me to see if I could see them. I got back to the waters edge, didn’t see them, and started becoming disheartened. Not so much that I had lost my glasses, but I had not left no trace. I have two more of the exact pair at home, the glasses didn’t matter, but the eventual trash did. As I made my way back to the trail, I was being careful in trying to go the way I originally came out. If you bushwhack, you know it’s never exactly the same way out, just vicinity. A downed tree looked familiar, so I stopped to gather myself to climb over it and when I looked down, there were my metallic rainbow, cat eye glasses looking up at me, all neatly folded, sitting on a bed of moss, right side up. Not a scratch or ding on them. I picked them up, let out a little woo and booked it back to the trail.
I was happy I found my glasses, didn’t litter, and got to see some wildlife. I definitely want to come back here during peak foliage. This trail is a loop and I’d like to see if I can get an even better view of Green’s Cliff from the back flow area of Church Pond.
