After a month of busy weeks and weekends (for work, family, as well as travel), I find two days to get away to New Hampshire for an old-fashioned, so-obligatory-it’s-sacred New England foliage run. Not counting last year’s trip to Colorado, it’s my first Northeast autumn tour in awhile (sans child, grandparents, or friend), and I use the opportunity to dive into a part of southern New Hampshire I haven’t really visited before: the region of rivers, ponds, hardwood forests, and villages surrounding Mt. Monadnock. By all reports, New England fall colour has been erratic this year, as the region’s woodlands have been under drought conditions since the summer. Indeed, on my drive westward along Route 2 and then north through Winchendon past the MA-NH border, I can see from the highway that the lowland maples are well-past their prime, and even the hardier yellows are transitioning. Everywhere - and especially at the edges of rivers and swamps - there are barren trunks and branches; it’s a telltale sign of stressed trees to see significant leaf drop so relatively early in the October. As I encircle the region’s namesake mountain, it is clear that despite coming ahead of the Indigenous Peoples holiday weekend (later than most years thanks to the calendar) I am still a week or so past peak.
Nevertheless, there are sweeps of colourful forests and pockets of beautiful scenery - especially on leeward hills and slopes, and in sheltered coves and bays. I find that I actually enjoy this quieter, muted presentation of autumn more than the explosive, riotous fiesta that accompanies peak colour. Perhaps it’s because I can slow down, take some deep breaths behind the shutter (and the steering wheel), and sink into my surroundings, whereas peak fall photography has the tinge of a manic episode - nervous exhilaration bordering on breakdown. Instead, I take my time on the route, turning off on a whim to scout winding dirt roads that weren’t on my radar, pulling up beside abandoned homesteads and farmstands, and carefully looking for intimate scenes to photograph in the forest and by the water. Some of my favorite compositions come in these open-ended moments of exploration: strolling through the white pine forest beside Meetinghouse Pond, and cutting through the woods to the abandoned railroad south of Jaffrey, where I am overnighting. The Monadnock region as a whole (and Jaffrey in particular) has a somber, melancholic atmosphere this week, a feeling of being slightly left behind, slightly past its prime, headed inexorably toward darker and colder times. “Dark does not drive out dark, only light can,” reads the window of a shuttered storefront in town. Skipping sunset (non-existent due to incoming storm clouds), I buy a sandwich and drink at the local Subway and head over to parking lot at Station 16 Ice Cream to enjoy dinner al fresco at a picnic table, under a canopy of string lights - along with a kiddie scoop of Campfire Smores ice cream, which is as good as it sounds. I ask the girl running the stand when they close for the season. “Sometime end of October - depending on the weather. If we get snow!” It is in moments like this, and places like this, that I remember why and just how much I love the fall.
After a lazy, early night at the Benjamin Prescott Inn, I have an equally lazy start to the next morning, as the forecast calls for heavy rain all morning, from here clear to the coast. Over in the dining room (next to the living room where the innkeeper’s kids are watching Bluey), I sit down to an amazing homemade breakfast of blueberry waffles, sausages, fruit, and local maple syrup. The innkeeper keeps calling me Stephen for some reason, but I’m too content and conflict-avoidant to correct him. When the rain clears up mid-day, I head back out for more exploring and poking around - drawing another slow, clockwise circle around Mount Monadnock, this time taking different backroads, finding my way to the side of ponds, swamps, and woodlands that I missed the day before. During a grocery store stop just outside of Petersborough for drinks and a deli counter lunch, I add a pumpkin to my shopping cart - for Jordan. I round out the afternoon by driving up the winding auto road to the summit of Pack Monadnock Mountain, where I join a group of birders performing the park’s annual raptor count. Back in Jaffrey, I spend the golden hour walking along the abandoned railroad beside the Contoocook River. As night falls, the mercury is dropping. After a takeout dinner enjoyed outdoors at Kimball Farms, I return to the inn to end my trip. The pale amber moon follows me on the drive home, hanging large and low on the horizon.
