A beautiful scene just outside Bristol NH.
Yesterday was a beautiful day, so we took a road-trip to Bristol NH, about an hour from home. Our long loop drive took us through some beautiful New Hampshire countryside, with a stop at a new Mexican restaurant, Cielito, in Bristol. (Recommended!)
I thought perhaps there might be some interesting waterfalls along this route, so I checked my friend Eli Burakian’s book Hiking New England Waterfalls for some ideas.
An endless field of black-eyed susans.
Not far down the road from my home is a luscious meadow, a former farm pasture that the owner has preserved via a conservation easement to the Upper Valley Land Trust. This meadow is popular with local deer, turkeys, and other wildlife. In recent years, the conservators have planted the roadside with wildflowers, allowing me a brilliant commute on summer mornings. Last year, I shared photos of the multicolor feast of wildflowers. This year, the field is carpeted with the yellow and orange tones of Black-Eyed Susan flowers. Today, a mildly foggy morning provide just the right atmosphere for photographs. Click through the gallery!
Another 52WAV peak – this time, with a view!
After two weeks of unusually hot and humid weather, a proper summer’s day finally arrived here in New Hampshire! The forecast was for clear skies and cool-to-moderate temperatures – and my morning calendar was blank – so I headed for Mount Shaw, the highest point in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. I’d had my eye on this peak for a while, and today was a perfect day for it. I encountered nobody on my 90-minute climb to the summit – no humans, that is… but read on for my encounter with the mountain’s ursine inhabitant!
Huge branches = lots of firewood.
Earlier this year, a large branch snapped off one of our silver maple trees. We sawed, split, and stacked it – firewood for a future winter! Yesterday, I climbed a ladder and sawed off the rest of the branch, which was 10-15′ long. It took an hour or more just to saw it into stove lengths, in part because this branch – just a branch, mind you – was thicker than our chainsaw bar. At one point I decided my Greenworks Pro electric saw (which is awesome, by the way) was just not cutting it. (Sorry, bad pun.) So I pulled out my trusty Stihl 026, our only remaining gas-powered tool. It is more than thirty years old, but still going strong!
Two peaks with famous views, on a day without views.
As I drove past Mount Cube on NH Route 25A, early this morning, I noted that the cloud deck was low. Very low. Indeed, all the way down to the road! The view of Mount Moosilauke, to which drivers are treated as they round the bend at the height of land on this sector of Route 25A, was simply a wall of white. And the subsequent view of Mount Cube – although it is much closer – was a fuzzy mix of green hillside and puffy white clouds, some of which touched the road in front of me. I was headed for a hike, deeper in the White Mountains, in hopes of summiting two of the peaks on the “52 With a View” list. These steamy morning conditions did not portend well for good views today. Read on to see what happened!
Animal babies!
The month of June brings the onset of summer – and the emergence of wildlife babies. In this month’s episode of clips from my wildlife cameras, you’ll see young’uns from two or three species, and some really interesting behavior from a raccoon, deer, porcupine, barred owl, and black bear. Sit back, relax, and enjoy!
An early-summer outing to an old reliable.
One of my favorite, go-to hikes is Mount Cube, a pretty little bump along the Appalachian Trail north of my home in Lyme New Hampshire. Not quite 3,000′ in elevation, it nonetheless earns a spot on the “52 with a view” list of high peaks in New Hampshire because it has a delightful view to the west and northwest, from the Connecticut River valley in the foreground to the Green Mountains of Vermont in the background. Read on!
My favorite!
Once again it is strawberry season. I spent an hour or two of Saturday morning picking fresh, ripe strawberries at Edgewater Farm in Plainfield – while a bald eagle flew to and from its nest high in a pine tree between the field and the Connecticut River. According to friends who shared these strawberries for dessert on Sunday, they were some of the tastiest strawberries ever!
Bears, bobcats, groundhogs, and more.
The month of May was surprisingly quiet, as if the animals of Lyme were on the move – not settled in any given location, not often reappearing in the video captures from my wildlife cameras posted in two forests and my own backyard. Some locations that had previously provided multiple daily videos of a busy porcupine couple, for example, became dormant, causing me to explore new locations that may be more lively. One of those turned out to be exceptionally lively, attacked by a bear within days of its deployment! Read on…
Continue reading “Lyme wildlife – May 2025”When you really pay attention, you notice the small beauties of the forest.
I try to get out at least once a week into the forests of Lyme, NH, where I live. Regular readers see my videos from wildlife cameras placed at undisclosed locations in the woods. Although I enjoy witnessing the secret life of Lyme wildlife, and sharing it with you all, I mostly enjoy the opportunity to wander, off trail, with no particular destination in mind. The month of May adds the opportunity to enjoy small wonders along the way.
David Kotz 