Bramblings
By Becky Nelson
Sometimes Indigenous People’s Day nee Columbus Day comes with a dearth of color. Many times I have hoped to still have some wonderful foliage mid-October but have been sorely disappointed.
This year has been wonderful.
We took a trip up to the North Country a couple of weeks ago to attend the Fryeburg Fair in Maine, and hit the mountains at just the perfect time with plenty of color. I imagine they are seeing a lot of leaf drop right now, and our timing was perfect. The long holiday weekend always has a lot of folks travelling to our north country for the spectacular showing of maples with their reds and oranges and yellows and the yellows and oranges of other species, but I try to avoid anything north of us during the weekends, just because of the traffic and the crowds. When I hike the national forest trails or drive the Kancamagus Highway, I try to do so when there are very few others doing so.
I was pretty disappointed to see New Hampshire hitting the national news Wednesday morning with images of trails not full to capacity but brimming and overflowing with people. There was an image of the Artists’ Bluff trail with people five wide, shoulder to shoulder and so crowded both going up and coming down it was ridiculous. A native of the area described the chaos with cars as far as the eye could see on the thoroughfares and hikers ill-equipped for any sort of hike in cool New Hampshire mountain weather… sandals, slippers, short-shorts. Apparently, some rescues were necessary with folks leaving the trails and getting stuck in unfamiliar places with no lights or proper clothing in the cold. Yes, it’s pretty, but …
The northern mountains got a coating of snow over the weekend, not unusual for this time of year. For late leaf-peepers not ready for the conditions, this could have been a brutal surprise if on a trail without the proper attire. The newscast surmised that social media and artificial intelligence may have lent to the masses of people trekking to our north, with enhanced images and even artificially produced images of our foliage luring people. Like those trying to enter our northern towns for the eclipse, the traffic and inconvenience and masses of people in sensitive areas must have been horrendous. Our northern towns, which are ill equipped for masses of people even during peak tourist and foliage season, must be suffering. Yes, tourists are a wonderful boon to our New Hampshire economy, but …
Several Vermont roads have actually shut down during peak foliage season because of the nightmare of traffic disrupting residents’ lives and livelihoods. I hope this doesn’t have to occur in the great Granite State with our motto of Live Free or Die, but I can almost see limiting traffic across the Kank or the other little-travelled back roads of our north so things don’t get out of control. Maybe the trailheads should have deputized volunteers or national forest staff at each trailhead to limit the number of people entering the trails and set up a one-in, one-out policy when a pre-set capacity is reached. We need to preserve and protect these areas, and the trash left behind, danger of people not prepared for the hikes and effects of lots of feet over sensitive trails might not be worth the “openness” of the system.
The rain came pouring down in our beautiful neck of the woods on Monday, which had a lot of folks travelling through our area pretty disappointed, too. We had several people stop by the pick your own operation to snag some apples and some raspberries in-between showers and rainstorms, but I bet lots of folks were pretty disappointed in the weather. The traffic was pretty heavy in the county, though there was never the stop-and-go traffic like we have seen to our north. We are blessed to live where we live here in New Hampshire and want to share it with everyone, but we need to somehow protect our little corner of paradise, as well.
