Outside the Cabin!

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The old stone walls winding through the woods around our camp are remnants of New England's 18th and 19th century (1780-1840).  As settlers cleared their fields for crops and pasture, they piled the countless glacial stones unearthed by plowing into boundary walls and livestock enclosures.   These walls once marked property line, fields, and farm roads when the surrounding land was open pasture.  As agriculture declined in the later 1800s, and forest reclaimed the hillsides, the walls were left standing as silent records of that earlier rural landscape.  Today, they remain one of the most visible traces of New England's agricultural past.

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This boulder and other giant ones scattered around our camp's woods are called glacial erratics- reminders of the last Ice Age.  Roughly 12,000 years ago, retreating glaciers carried and dropped these huge stones as the ice melted away.  Their rounded shape, moss-covered surfaces, and unlikely resting places tell the story of ancient ice that once blanketed New England.  It is called the Laurentide Ice Sheet and it covered almost all of Northern New England 18,000 years ago with the melting occurring roughly 12,000 years ago.  These rocks are a reminder of how powerful forces of nature shaped our mountain and valley.

Near the property at camp lies an old steel barrel, likely dating to the early 1950s.  Barrels like this were commonly used by highway and construction crews for equipment coolant during the building and realignment of the local main road and the new interstate going in at that time.  It would have been discarded before there were regulations prohibiting it.

 In New England's damp, acid forest soils, steel can corrode rapidly, so it makes sense that was rusted when our family started going up to camp.  Today it stands as a small reminder of the mid-century era when modern roads and machinery began to reach even the quiet corners of The White Mountains.  The barrel is marked "DuPont Zerex Anti-rust Antifreeze."  

The cabin's original two-seater outhouse was mentioned in the original logbook - a simple, hand-built necessity perched in the woods.  In the 1940's, it was rebuilt into the single-seat version that still stands today, crafted from local timber and set on the same slope behind the camp.   A  new roof and reinforcements were added in the 1990s, keeping it solid through New Hampshire winters.  With no running water the outhouse remains a reminder of early mountain retreat life: practical, rustic, and still doing its job more than a century later.

Where the pavement ends and the dirt road begins is the beginning of what used to be the old State Route and after turning to go up to camp, it continues into the woods.  It is type VI road, one that it not maintained anymore.  It's open to the public unless it is barricaded.  It's a nice level walk through the forest that ends just before the Resort where the current State Road is.  This road was rerouted circa 1930.  That means in the early days of camp, traffic would run through the bottom of the hill.  Because the front of camp was pretty much cleared out, sitting on the front porch back then not only afforded a wonderful view of the mountains, but also an occasional car passing by.

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Behind the cabin, a loosely marked trail-made by our family several years ago-winds up the mountainside.  It's a short, pleasant hike, especially in the fall or spring when the leaves are down and the views open wide.  From near the top you can see fine vistas of the surrounding peaks and valleys.  Unlike the better-known hikes of the White Mountains, this one has no crowds, no noise-just the sound of the wind in the trees and the quiet, peaceful sense of being part of the hills themselves.

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