Cross-Country Skiing in Massachusetts

As I've said before, I go through phases where I berate myself for never doing anything and decide I need a hobby or a skill or a membership or a cause. Since this often happens in the middle of the night, I am usually more or less fully recovered by morning. (The exception is The Couch-to-5K Debacle of January 2010. But I will spare you the heartbreak and awkwardness of that adventure.)

Anyway, it snowed last night and I feel like winter has started without me. My lawn furniture is still in the yard and we never even pulled the tomato plants from the garden, or mowed the lawn one last time. So here I am with my Lazy Person's Mocha (instant cocoa and instant coffee) listening to Josh Ritter and thinking it's time to do something fun this winter.

My friends have tried to get me to try downhill skiing, but I took a few lessons in middle school and I've fallen down in the snow enough since then that I know having slippery feet on purpose is not my thing. I prefer much more control over my momentum, especially in cold conditions. Which leaves me with cross-country skiing. I have loved it the times I tried it, but never seem to have the time/money/transportation/company I need often enough to make it a habit.

These are some of the best places for cross-country skiing that I have found in central/eastern Massachusetts:

• Weston Ski Track off Rte 30 in Weston. They have 15 km of trails (how metric of them!) and sell trail passes and rental packages for $15 each for adults. The 3-day pass (any 3 days, not 3 in a row) for $39 looks like a good deal, as does evening skiing for $12.75. 
• Great Brook Ski Touring Center in Carlisle is a little more out of the way, but is accessible from 495 or Route 2. It might be worth it though because their trail pass is $12 on weekends and $10 weekdays and evenings. Their adult ski rental package is $13. The season pass is only $60, but I'm not sure I could get up there at least 5 times to make it worthwhile.
• Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation lists lots of state parks and forests with trails open for cross-country skiing, which works if you have your own equipment. Five dollars for parking, at most, gets you into any of these parks. 

Everything else was too far from Worcester, and not a good choice for snowy weather or exhausting activities. I guess this year I am limited to Great Brook or Weston, and maybe I'll find out I'm a skier and buy equipment for next year. Maybe. 

Playing Tourist in Your Hometown

Gather 'round, children, and I will tell you the story of my youthful naivete. When I was 17, I chose a college in Boston because, hey, it's Boston. I looked at other New England schools and the selling point on each tour was that it was "only X hours to Boston." So if that's where everyone is headed, why not go there? I had been to a Red Sox game as a kid, and to the Museum of Science, the Public Gardens, and the Common, and I loved it all.

So I packed up all my worldly possessions (everything was purple - picture it) and my parents moved me into an old apartment building cum dorm (I've always wanted to use "cum" that way in a sentence) in Boston. And then I got busy. I had new friends, lots of homework, and a job or two. I spent most of my meager income on pizza and bus tickets home to New Jersey. (Oh, and laundry. Never have quarters seemed so precious.)

Sure, we took walks and occasionally saw a show or had dinner, but I pretty much stuck to my campus and neighborhood. I loved Boston, but I rarely ventured further than Downtown Crossing because, heck, we had cable in the dorm. And after about two years of that, I was burned out on school so I quit and joined the circus took a year off and got accepted into AmeriCorps.

I spent a year in various towns and cities in the Southeast U.S. We worked hard for room, board and a stipend (but at least we didn't have to come up with laundry quarters, I think they covered that for us) and spent weekends looking for cheap entertainment. We hiked and visited historic sites. We called our families from beaches in November and I, personally, read a lot of books and wrote a lot of letters. But I came out of that year vowing to look at my home city in a new way and take advantage of all it had to offer. I made lists (lists are a big thing with me).

Then (you're hoping I learned my lesson by now) I moved back to Boston and (lather, rinse, repeat) I got busy. I graduated, moved to Montana, hiked a little and drank a lot of beer, moved back to Massachusetts to be closer to my family and any hope of a full-time job in my field, and pretty much stayed busy.

I rarely go into Boston anymore, unless I have company in town. I am about an hour away, but there is always something to do in the house, or kittens on the internet! But I'm still trying to enjoy my local area when I can.

Let's band together, put on our sandals, hike our black socks up to our Bermuda shorts, smear zinc oxide on our noses and shuffle aimlessly through our hometowns noticing things and taking pictures of them. For effect, it helps if you stop and ask directions to the place you are standing in front of. It's charming, I assure you.

Halloween Sight-Seeing - Salem, MA

This historic fright site gets extremely crowded around Halloween, because of its reputation as the site of the Salem Witch Trials in 1692. It is currently home to the Salem Witch Museum, The New England Pirate Museum, Nathaniel Hawthorne's House of the Seven Gables and countless other museums and tourist sites that capitalize on Salem's haunted history. The Haunted Happenings website offers detailed information on Salem's attractions, so in lieu of reinventing the wheel, I will suggest that if you must go during October, you avoid Halloween and the weekends surrounding it, take public transportation and skip the wax museum, which is cheesy at best.

If you (or your out-of-town guests) insist on visiting Salem during October, your best bet is the Peabody Essex Museum, which is a beautiful art museum featuring the incredible 200-year-old home of a Chinese merchant, relocated to the museum. Like everything else, it is probably mobbed during the Halloween season, but it should be a relative oasis of calm in a sea of costumed teens.

Wachusett Mountain BBQFest

This weekend was BBQ Fest up at Wachusett Mountain. The mountain is an easy day trip from Boston or anywhere in central Massachusetts. There were awesome barbecue vendors, lots of booths selling food and crafts, and a beer tent with Shocktop, Sam Adams and Woodchuck Cider. I had a 1/2-pound hot dog with melted cheddar and pulled pork from Firefly's Barbecue. (I swear I shared it with Kevin!) My brother and sister-in-law said it was very similar to the layout and vendor assortment of Applefest last weekend, so I am glad I didn't get tickets for both. Later in the afternoon I had fried dough and a Woodchuck cider. Why is it that in Connecticut, you can get fried dough with marinara sauce and Parmesan cheese, and in Massachusetts it only comes with powdered sugar or cinnamon sugar? What is this world coming to?

Kevin and I rode to the top of the mountain on the Skyride (ski lift). The views from the top of the mountain were fantastic. I went to the top once before, during Taste of Wachusett a few weeks ago and that was a little better because the skies were clear.  But even on a cloudy day with intermittent rain showers, we could see the Boston skylilne, Mount Monadnock, Worcester, Springfield, and probably the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. We saw Mount Greylock to the northeast and identified the windmills in Winchendon that we kept passing on our camping trip in July.

Basically, the view from the top of Mount Wachusett is a to-do list for other trips I want to take in Massachusetts. Seeing them from 2000' up makes them seem so close! There was also a terrific view of the foliage. Kevin and I agreed that we need to climb Mount Wachusett sometime soon, too, instead of taking the slightly alarming trip up in the chair lift.

On the way out, I bought an assortment of dip mixes from one of the vendors: a super-garlicky one, pumpkin dip and gingerbread dip. I'm thinking ahead to holiday parties this year, for a change. We got a shuttle bus from the parking area to the event, which made parking painless. Overall, I wish BBQFest had a few more BBQ  vendors and a few fewer miscellaneous vendors, but the quality of the food was excellent and the setting is unbeatable. Music from The Volunteers (whose website lists them as the "premier touring show band" of the U.S. Army) made the long lines for lunch at each food vendor less monotonous. This is a great event for families, couples and friends, and I hope they do it again next year.

Foliage vs. Raking Leaves

I love fall...mostly. I love the cooler air and the fact that it is neither too hot nor too cool for most outdoor activities. As a teacher and life-long nerd, I love the beginning of the school year and all its sharp pencils and new shoes. I love leaf-peeping and apple-picking and cider donuts and hay rides and Halloween costumes.

But all of that comes with a price. I hate raking leaves. I get blisters from the rake; I finish the day tired and usually sweaty. And then, to add insult to injury, the leaves on my locust trees fall about 3 weeks later than all the other leaves in the yard. And then the neighbor's red maple drops its leaves after that. And then the locust drops its long, thin seed pods. Is it all worth it?

One October, a long time ago, I was in Charleston, South Carolina. Although the mornings were chilly, the days warmed up to the 80s and we spent the whole afternoon stripping off layers as we worked. I was in Miami by Thanksgiving and we had a campfire after our turkey and stuffing and roasted marshmallows on stripped palm fronds.

Another year, I was in Montana, which gets plenty of cool fall weather (it dropped to about 15 degrees on Halloween night that year) but has few deciduous trees up in the mountains. I took this right around this time in October, at Hyalite Reservoir near Bozeman, MT.

In both places, I missed the leaves changing colors. I missed stomping the crunchy ones on the street, and nesting in the piles. Driving through New Hampshire last weekend, and cruising up I-84 this weekend, I loved seeing the leaves start to change to arresting reds and startling oranges.

I've seen it all, from the disturbingly warm to the dishearteningly cold and rocky, and here I am, dreading the annual leaf drop while I stare out the window all day, watching the world prepare for winter. Well, at least my compost has it pretty good. It will never be starved for brown material this winter.

Walktober

In a modern suburban world of parking lots and gym memberships, it seems like no one walks anymore. But The Last Green Valley is trying to get everyone out to play. The Last Green Valley, a Connecticut and Massachusetts non-profit organization, is in the middle of it's annual Walktober event, which is a month-long series of walks in 35 towns stretching from East Brookfield, MA to Norwich, CT.

How is it that after growing up in Connecticut for 15 years, I have never heard of the Last Green Valley or this 21-year-old walking event? Looks like I've been missing out.

This is the part of Connecticut and Massachusetts where I never get off the highway.  I-84 runs through the northeast corner of the region on its way out of Sturbridge, and I-395 runs through the Green Valley from north to south. This makes the walks convenient for drivers coming from central Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. And it looks like it's worth the trip, since The Last Green Valley, Inc. describes the area as 78% farmland and forest, with more than 130 miles of trails and 118 historic sites and museums. This is my kind of walking, a mix of tamed and wild land with some history thrown in for good measure.

Looking at the pictures from last year's Walktober - which had a turnout of 25,000 walkers, according the Hartford Courant - I think I'll wait until another time of year when these trails aren't so crowded. I learned that lesson (once again) at Purgatory Chasm this September. I'll pass on crowded walks with great foliage and wait until it gets cold and quiet, or lush and green in the spring.

Quechee Gorge

OK, it hardly counts as a hike because Kevin and I got out of the car, walked halfway across the bridge that crosses the gorge, walked a quarter-mile of the trail to the bottom of the gorge, got stopped by an orange plastic fence and a "Keep Out" sign, and dragged ourselves back to the top and got back in the car. A good portion of the trail, and a noticeable amount of soil along the banks of the river, had been washed away by the recent flooding. Everything was generally damp and muddy and not very pretty.

I would love to go back on a) a day cooler than 85 degrees, b) a day that is not the beginning of a foliage season holiday weekend and c) a time when we could wander all the trails. This weekend it was just one stop on a long apple-picking and family-visiting adventure.

Nonetheless, Quechee Gorge is very impressive. Or maybe I'm just a nerd for rocks. When I was a kid, my uncle got me a rock tumbler, so my dad bought me a full-sized rock hammer. (I say that as if someone makes rock hammers specially sized for 9-year-old girls with purple backpacks, but I do not believe those are currently available.) We used to take walks through various trails and parks near home and I would collect a bag full of rocks, or chisel out bits that looked interesting.

I managed to do this for several years without learning anything about geology, except how to identify quartz. The best way to identify quartz is to go outside in New England and point at a rock. There is about an 80% chance you are pointing to some kind of quartz. At least that's how I remember it.

So, considering the views obstructed by tourists and the fact that my ample common sense (read: fear of heights) prevented me from seeing much over the bridge railing, I have to take the state of Vermont's word for it that the gorge was formed by glacial activity.

Even as a quick road-trip stop, the gorge was worth seeing, but it definitely deserves more time on another trip.

Back to Leominster State Forest

Last week, my brother met me at work and we drove back to Leominster State Forest. I figure there are only a few more weeks before the sun starts setting too early for afternoon hikes, and I am trying to get in some extra time in the woods before winter sets in. Plus, I love Leominster State Forest because it's so close to home, and it's so easy to feel lost in the woods.

This time, we started off on Wolf Rock Trail, hiking east toward Rocky Pond Road. The trails in this part of the forest were a little better maintained than Ball Hill Trail I took last time. There was a set of logs laid across a low, wet part of the trail, and a boardwalk on another section. The trail is still more rocks than soil and Sean and I felt like we were cheated out of some nice scenery by watching our feet the whole trip.

I wish I could tell you which trail we were on at that point, but I couldn’t figure it out, even with the map in my hand. From Wolf Rock Trail, we took a sharp left up a hill and took a beautiful hike up through fields of ferns, and then came down a steep, boulder-strewn slope. It may have been Berry Hill Trail.

I’m glad Sean grabbed the bug spray, because there were some serious mosquitoes down by the water. But all things considered, this was an excellent after-work hike.

Total time: 50 minutes

Book Review – Turn Right at Machu Picchu

After years of working as a travel writer, Mark Adams decided to follow the route of early-twentieth-century explorer Hiram Bingham through Peru to Machu Picchu. Bingham, sponsored by Yale University and the National Geographic Foundation, was considered the discoverer of Machu Picchu after his first trip in 1911 (despite the facts that farmers were growing crops on the site when he arrived).

Machu Picchu has been a place of conflict and mystery from the 1600s when Incas fled there to escape Spanish conquistadors up to the present day. What was its purpose? Did Hiram Bingham steal artifacts that are now part of Yale University’s collection? Who owns the land on which Machu Picchu sits? Adams’ book is thoroughly researched and explores many of the major theories about Machu Picchu, although some mysteries remain unresolved.

While the historical parts of the book were interesting, the best parts described the trip itself. Adams has decided that he wants to retrace Hiram Bingham’s expedition, and in his initial meeting with his guide, John Lievers, he throws out the idea of hiking the Inca Trail. From this starting point, Lievers rattles off a suggested route for a one-month hike that sounds intimidating, if not impossible.

They set off from the city of Cusco, Peru with a crew of four local men, six mules, and a giant bag of coca leaves, which are used in Peru to treat the symptoms of altitude sickness.

Adams is thrown into the world of the serious outdoorsman with little hiking or camping experience, which makes for an entertaining book. Some stories are hilarious and others are wince-inducing, like the day he learned to wear two pairs of socks under his boots after destroying his toes on a long downhill hike.

By the end, Adams reaches Machu Picchu, appreciates the spectacular architecture and astronomical alignments, pooh-poohs the mystical attraction that draws pilgrims from all over the world to the site’s New Age energies, and climbs Huayna Picchu, a mountain peak at the north end of Machu Picchu to see the sun rise over the ruins.

I don’t love the idea that it took one expert guide, six mules and a four-man team to get Adams to Machu Picchu, because I like my adventures a little more self-sufficient. But it was an entertaining read and although the historical exploration isn’t really my thing, I learned some stuff about the politics of discovery.

Did the book inspire me to book a ticket to Peru? No. But it did made me think that maybe I won’t wait until I’m turning 41 like Mark Adams to take off and have more adventures.