{"id":290,"date":"2025-08-25T10:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T14:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/?p=290"},"modified":"2025-09-02T18:32:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T22:32:26","slug":"church-pond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/25\/church-pond\/","title":{"rendered":"Church Pond"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>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&#8217;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&#8217;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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC06089.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-294\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;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. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to check that out after I get to the pond&#8221; I thought to myself. &#8220;I&#8217;ll get a good view of the cliff from there&#8221;. I had brought the &#8220;big camera&#8221; as I&#8217;m trying to get used to it. I had been using a Nikon D3400 for the last eight years, and I&#8217;ve only had this Sony for two years and have not used it as much as I should. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC05993.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-292\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The view was nice from the small shoreline. I wasn&#8217;t feeling it too much, though. It was cloudy, which was nice for photography, but I was hoping for a nice sunset. It wasn&#8217;t happening, so I decided to go check out the herd paths I had seen along the bog boards on my way in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC06013.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-293\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC06032.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-298\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC06340.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-296\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>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. &#8220;There were so many herd paths to the waters edge, how am I going to find them?&#8221; 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&#8217;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&#8217;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&#8217;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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/DSC06374.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-297\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p> I was happy I found my glasses, didn&#8217;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&#8217;d like to see if I can get an even better view of Green&#8217;s Cliff from the back flow area of Church Pond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My knee had been bothering me but I still wanted to go hiking. I twisted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[6,25,24,10,11,23,22,14,17,26],"class_list":["post-290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiking","tag-adventure","tag-bushwhack","tag-bushwhacking","tag-hiking","tag-hiking-adventure","tag-mountain-pond","tag-mountains","tag-nature","tag-new-hampshire","tag-remote-location"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thespiritforest.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}