I took a trip to Pittsburg, NH, near the Canadian border over the weekend. I’ve been going up there for more than 30 years now, although the frequency of my visits has dwindled in the past few years. While the moose sightings have decreased dramatically in the last 10 years or so, the other wildlife never seems to disappoint. Here is a shot of a loon pair I got one extremely foggy morning from my canoe. More photos will follow in the coming days.
The joke in many cities goes like this: If you don’t like the weather, wait a minute; it’ll change.
That certainly applies to northern New Hampshire — and all of New England for that matter — but I have come up with a similar saying about the upper reaches of the Granite State: If you don’t like the remote pond you’ve found, keep driving; you’ll find another one.
I’ve found countless gems of water far from civilization during my many travels to the Great North Woods just by picking a dirt road and driving. Sometimes it takes a little persistence — and a few hairy sections of “road” — but ponds are always there to find. And they’re always spectacular.
One pond typically doesn’t look very different from the next, but they all harbor their own secrets and wildlife surprises. To borrow another saying: They’re all the same, but different.
I found a great pond — maybe it was a bog or a fen, but I’ll call it a pond — a few weeks ago during a short trip to northern, N.H. I knew it was going to be great even before I parked the car and unleashed the canoe. I saw the loons right away.
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The loons were the wildlife highlight of the trip, but the short camping trip had meaning beyond the birds and mammals that were seen.
It was the first trip my oldest son Andrew and I had taken in a few years. Andrew, now 20, is a reluctant birdwatcher as it is not a hobby of his, and he pushes back on my requests to take walks specifically to see birds, but he can identify several birds by sight and sound. (Wonder where that talent came from.) He does, however, like the outdoors and is always up for a camping trip. In fact, he initiated this outing and had been asking for several weeks to go camping.
We like to go camping when there are no crowds. That means either during the week or during the off season. In this case, it was both. We each took a Monday and Tuesday off work and left for Grout Pond in southern Vermont on a Sunday afternoon in early May.
We underestimated the time it would take to get to the site and it was already dark by the time we had arrived. We improvised by pumping up the air mattress and sleeping under the stars in the cab of the pickup. Thankfully, it was a dry night. It was, however, a cold night, it being early May in Vermont. The lows were in the mid-30s, but it was actually quite refreshing to sleep outdoors again.
Not surprisingly, I awoke before Andrew and took a walk down one of the trails near where we had parked the previous night. A broad-winged hawk immediately flew overhead and swooped in for a landing in a nearby dead tree. It was the start of a good wildlife watching day.
Andrew eventually woke up and, from the pond’s launch site, we eyed a spot along the pond to set up camp for a few days. I was to canoe to the spot with the majority of our equipment and Andrew was to haul the backpack to the site using the trail that runs along the pond. The plan worked well, and I was pleased that the canoe held up with me and our stuff in it. The 14-foot Radisson aluminum canoe had been hit by a fallen tree over the winter and sustained a good-sized dent at one of the ends. A little water seeped in, but overall, it was fine.
The few people who were there in the morning had packed up and left by the afternoon. Andrew and I now had the place to ourselves.
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Photo by Chris Bosak
Black-throated green warbler in Pittsburg, N.H., summer 2017.
This post will put a lid on my recent trip to Pittsburg, N.H.
Photo by Chris Bosak
White-tailed deer in Pittsburg, N.H., summer 2017.
Photo by Chris Bosak
Tiger Swallowtails gather at the edge of the pond at Deer Mountain Campground in Pittsburg, N.H., in summer 2017.
Photo by Chris Bosak
Family of Canada Geese in Pittsburg, N.H., summer 2017.
Birds of New England.com 