Isolated Hill of Bedrock

From the Encyclopedia Britannica, an “isolated hill of bedrock standing conspicuously above the general level of the surrounding area” is a monadnock.¹ The name “monadnock” comes from a Native American word for a mountain higher than and separated from the land around it, such as Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey/Dublin, New Hampshire, our latest adventure on my trip home. Monadnock is said to be the second most climbed mountain in the world, with an estimated 125,000 hikers summitting each year, only behind Mt. Fuji and its approximately 300,000 summitters per year. Its popularity likely stems from its proximity to Boston and a large part of the Northeast in general, its accessibility, and because it can be climbed in less than a day without too much technical ability. No need to drive for hours through wilderness, backpack in, or learn how to use an ice axe. At 3,165 feet it’s not an epic peak² rearing into the clouds, but its location and vistas make it an attractive destination for New Englanders.

This visit was not our first time at Mt. Monadnock; we climbed it three years in a row from 2000-2002 when my brother and I were much smaller, and once more recently. On this trip, despite my campaigning, compromise led us to leave home in the mid/late morning and arrive at Monadnock just in time to hike during the hottest, sunniest, most crowded hours of the day. We parked at the main headquarters where the majority of hikers begin their climb. Because Monadnock is so popular, it’s recommended to reserve your parking in advance, especially for weekends and holidays, though when we were there on a weekday the parking lot was only mostly full.

From HQ, the white dot trail ascends almost 1,800 feet to the peak in a little under two miles. The first ~half-mile section is wide with stone and log steps built into the trail. Here, there were quite a number of other people, so when the trail forked we turned onto the quieter white cross trail, which would meet up again with the white dot trail closer to the summit. Following a short wooded section, we began ascending rock fields that would be just the first of many. After five years in flatland the Midwest, I’d forgotten how rocky hiking in New England can be. About an hour into our hike, we started getting our first views of the surrounding area.

Rocks on the white cross trail

An hour after that, as the trees thinned and we started walking across more exposed rock, we got our first look at the summit, afar in the distance. Shortly afterwards, we met back up with the white dot trail for the last 300-foot ascent to the top. Although Monadnock’s summit is below the climactic tree line, fires set in the early 1800s to create pastureland and clear out alleged wolves permanently denuded these top 300 feet of trees, generating an artificial tree line and the long barren rock slopes of the final ascent. Thanks to our late start, we arrived at the summit in time for a very late lunch (peanut butter and jam sandwich, clementines, and oatmeal raisin walnut cookies I baked the afternoon before), which we enjoyed in the presence of lovely views and the couple dozen other hikers at the top with us.

 

Summit views

Rocks to the top

On the descent, we followed the white dot trail all the way down many, many stone steps, arriving back at the now mostly empty parking lot in the early evening. The New Hampshire State Parks website estimates the white dot trail to take about 2 hours to hike (one way) and the white cross trail about 2 and a half hours, which I think is pretty accurate if you either hike at a moderate pace the whole time or go faster but stop a lot to take photos. It’s a moderately difficult hike – you don’t need much technical ability (caveat: as long as there’s no snow; Monadnock’s open year round), but the distance and elevation gain make it more than your average stroll through the park. Like, I wouldn’t really recommend the hike to someone who hasn’t walked further than their mailbox in the last year, but if you’re a reasonably experienced day hiker it should be within your abilities.

View from the summit

The descent

Snacks/lunch and water are necessary; I had a liter of water (the park recommends two), which is more than I’ve needed for longer hikes, and I never felt like I was going to run out, but I could have done with a little more. It was hot – in the 80s – and above about 2,000 feet the trail’s pretty exposed, so I’d also suggest hats and sunscreen, plus wear shoes with good traction because of all the rocks. If you hike during peak season, expect plenty of other people, but the mountain’s big enough for everyone. So yes, Monadnock’s popular, but for good reason, and I’d recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a lot of rocks and sweat.

¹Monadnocks are also known as inselbergs, from the German for “island mountain.”

²The U.S. Geological Survey has no official definition as to what constitutes a mountain as opposed to a mere hill, but geologists often consider prominences more than 1,000 feet higher than their surroundings mountains, the UK government uses 2,000 feet above sea level as their qualification, and the United Nations Environment Programme has a classification system based on sea level, slope grade, and local elevation.

Double Donuts

While I was at home, my list of things to do was as follows: 1) Go to Wegmans, 2) Eat cake, and 3) Attend a Revolution game. Though I did accomplish all three items on the list, this post is about item number three. The last time I was physically at a Revolution game, Bobby Shuttleworth was struggling in net, Charlie Davies had just been traded to the Union, and the team lost 4-0 to the Philadelphia Union. Since then, on the coaching front, they’ve parted ways with Jay Heaps, hired Brad Friedel, fired Brad Friedel, and lured Bruce Arena to New England; the only players still playing on the team are Brad Knighton, Matt Turner, Andrew Farrell, Scott Caldwell, and Teal Bunbury; and the team has won a single trophy – a preseason mobile mini sun cup, which was indeed mobile and mini. So considering my last Revolution game and the entirety of whatever it was Brad Friedel did for a year and a half, my only wish for this game was that they wouldn’t lose, and if they managed to score it would be an added bonus.

There was reason to hope. Bruce Arena had the team off to an 11-3-3 start through the first half of the season, and their 36 points were good to lead both the Eastern Conference and the Supporters’ Shield standings (I don’t think I’ve ever seen them on top of the Eastern Conference this late in the season, let alone leading the entire league). All three designated players were tallying up goals and assists for the stat sheets – Carles Gil and his 15 assists were on pace to beat the MLS single-season assists record, Gustavo Bou had already hit double-digit goals, and Adam Buksa had eight goals and looked good on the field after a disappointing first season in MLS. Alas, it was not (entirely) to be. The Revolution didn’t lose, but on this Wednesday night in August, they were playing Nashville SC, in the rain, with Carles Gil out injured. It was quite a slog. On the plus side, Gold Cup champions Matt Turner (and Henry Kessler) were back from their time with the USMNT, as was Canadian Tajon Buchanan.¹

 

Pregame at Gillette Stadium

When we arrived at the stadium shortly before kickoff, it was already raining. If I’d had more schedule flexibility, I would not have chosen to attend a game against Nashville SC, but here we were. Nashville plays soccer that earns them points, but it can be slightly painful to watch. Combine that with the weather² and Gil’s absence leaving a creative hole in the center of the field, and it was not a great game to witness.

Soccer in the rain

Bou and Buksa started as the forwards, but they’ve had trouble connecting with each other in the past, as ended up being true on this night. Bou got in a couple shots on goal, but Buksa in particular seems to struggle to score without Carles Gil’s service and presence on the field, though his hold up play and passing have looked significantly improved over last year. In midfield, Matt Polster and Buchanan played centrally with Wilfrid Kaptoum and Arnor Traustason on the wings. Polster was solid, Buchanan did okay for being out of position, I’m still not sold on Kaptoum, and Traustason was mostly ineffective. The defense (DeJuan Jones, Kessler, Andrew Farrell, and Brandon Bye) was somewhere between passable and pretty good (they didn’t let in any goals so I can’t say they were bad), and Turner didn’t have much to do but made his two saves that he had to. [The game ended in a scoreless draw, 0-0, so although New England couldn’t put the ball into Nashville’s goal, they at least got the shutout. You have to take the positives where you can find them, because this was otherwise a very boring game.]

Post final whistle, fans fleeing Fortress Foxborough

The Revolution had a couple okay shots on goal, but nothing that really challenged Nashville’s keeper. There was one penalty call against Nashville that was overturned (correctly) after going to VAR where it was determined that the Nashville defender didn’t actually make contact with Bou. It was very wet, though the rain finally mostly died down in the middle of the second half. The stadium looked nowhere near full, and the scoreline did not cheer up those who did attend. At least the Revolution didn’t lose, so that was an improvement over the last game I went to. Maybe next time I’m at a game they’ll manage to score, and if the stars align and Mercury is rising in the opal quarter with Andromeda in retrograde, they’ll even win.

¹Turner played all six games (3 group stage, 3 knockout), let in a single penalty kick goal, and was given the Golden Glove Award. Buchanan had a strong tournament, scored the only goal up to that point against Mexico, and won the Young Player Award. Kessler, on the other hand, was called up to replace an injured player and played the last three minutes of the US’s final game after they’d scored in added extra time, but he still got his Gold Cup medal.

²Rain + midweek = great social distancing conditions. There were allegedly 10,279 people in attendance, but even if that number is accurate, that’s six seats for every fan with Gillette Stadium’s capacity of 66,878.

On Walden Pond

So. I went home. In April, I received my first dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, and was considered to be fully immunized by the end of May. By June, there were less than 20,000 reported covid cases and 200-300 deaths per day in the US, over an order of magnitude lower than the January/February peak, so I booked plane tickets for the end of July. Of course, by August when I returned from my trip some states would be worse off than they were a year ago without the vaccine, but I appear to have escaped from my sojourns on public transportation mostly unscathed. With students still away for the summer, the Blue Bus I took to get between North and Central Campus and the Michigan Flyer from downtown to the airport were both uncrowded. My flights in either direction were fully booked, with mandatory masking that was mostly adhered to on the Michigan end and almost completely followed on the New England side.

After I arrived home, went to Wegmans, and spent several days lounging on the living room carpet, my brother also made his appearance and we started to take some family day trips, the first of which was to Walden Pond. Yes, that Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau went to live deliberately in the woods a whole two tenths of a mile from the road into Concord (to be fair, he directly tells the reader that in Walden, which I do own and had to read parts of during a class I took at Cornell). For two years, two months, and two days from 1845-1847, Thoreau lived in a cabin at Walden Pond on land owned by his friend and fellow transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, the Walden Pond State Reservation is managed by the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation and features a beach area, hiking trails, and a replica of Thoreau’s cabin.

Walden Pond

When we arrived at Walden Pond, our first order of business, after parking, was a walk around the pond. The main path from the parking lot leads to the beach area, at the south end of the pond. From there, there’s an unpaved, but fairly flat trail around the pond that’s 1.7 miles long, part of which is a section of the Bay Circuit Trail that connects 37 towns in eastern Massachusetts. About 0.4-0.5 miles from the beach on the eastern side of Walden Pond there are signs leading to the site of Thoreau’s cabin (just the site; his actual cabin is gone and the replica is by the parking lot). Along the trail there are spots where you can access the lake shore, some with sandy areas where people were picnicking, reading, sunbathing, etc. During our circuit we encountered two or three dozen other people, so you were never very far from people but it also wasn’t crowded at all, and there weren’t any large groups blasting music and screaming, thankfully.

The site of Thoreau's cabin (cabin boundaries marked by the stone pillars on the right)

After circling the pond, we took a short walk up Emerson’s Cliff, elevation 289 feet, sadly possibly the highest hill I’d been on since before moving to Ann Arbor. From there, we got a view of nothing but trees (you might be able to see Walden Pond in winter), then descended to Heywood’s meadow, which was more marshy than meadowy. It did contain a beaver dam, and there was a potential beaver sighting, so that was a plus for the marsh meadow. By the time we returned to the parking lot, the visitor’s center was closed, so we went and concluded our visit with a stop by the replica of Thoreau’s one-room cabin. We visited on a summer weekday, and spent a little over 2 hours there. It was on the quiet side of busy, more so on the beach, less so on the trails, especially off the main pond trail. The only cost is parking, with in-state and out-of-state prices, and the parking lot can fill up on nice summer days and weekends, according to the website. Overall, recommended for anyone who wants to pair their hike and/or day at the beach with some history and vague memories of English class.

Replica of Thoreau's cabin