This past Friday, my brother-in-law and I headed out to the backcountry for the first time in years, and for the first time together. Our target? Sawyer Pond in Livermore, NH. We saw this as a trial run for hopefully bigger things down the road.
Best Laid Plans
The plan was to mountain bike up the Sawyer River Road, which has been closed to cars for some time because of significant washout. After about a 4-mile ride up the road, we’d ditch the bikes and hike three miles to the campsite. Or so we thought. As every hiker knows, information from AllTrails can lead to a lot of conflicting trail mileage. In this case, it worked out to our advantage, because when we got to the trailhead for Sawyer Pond, we learned we only had 1.5 miles left to hike. As such, we arrived at the campsite at 10:45 in the morning—way ahead of schedule.
Not only were we misled by AllTrails, but the internet told us to expect hordes of people vying for the campsites at the pond. This was not the case. When we arrived, there was only one other camp set up on the 6 available pads, and by the time the day was over, only one other set of overnighters arrived. Besides them, there was one other gentleman who stopped to chat with us for a while, but other than that, there was nobody. We had the place to ourselves.
Well, there were these guys too, and plenty of real animals. The squirrels were particularly noisy.
What to Do?
With such an early arrival time, I thought about climbing the mountains across the pond, but to get there via trail looked like it might be a 10-14 mile day. We tried to bushwhack over to the other side to see if I could find a shortcut, but nothing was doing. So, we went swimming. And just chilled. It took me a few hours to get into the swing of doing nothing, but eventually I found a rock to lean against and look out on the lake. To occupy me, I made notes in a 52 With A View Journal that my brother-in-law gave me. I’m not really after the list, but they are a great set of mountains that lead to beautiful views, and he knew I was into them.
It had been a long time since I went on a backpacking adventure, and on all of my previous ones, we usually arrived at camp at night, too tired to do much other than eat and go to bed. Arriving mid-morning with nine hours to kill before sunset was a wholly unique experience. It got me thinking, have I ever had this much time in the woods with nothing to do? Because I didn’t feel good at it. For a guy who spends so much time in the woods, it was surprising how jarring idleness was.
Fortunately, I did get to work on the bear bag system. Our green bag got stuck up there once…
Wishes Upon a Pond
My first wish was that I had a good book to read. Or a journal to write in. The 52 With A View notebook filled some time, but I would have really enjoyed having something to work on for my book or to make some notes about Sawyer Pond. I also wished we had a deck of cards. Instead, I collected firewood. Which there was little of. Previous campers had picked the place clean and even gone so far as to cut live trees down to make fires. There were also some hidden pockets of trash, compounding the irksome behavior. It made me wish to go further into the backcountry.
But, despite other humans, the place was still beautiful. And walking barefoot on the soft campsite, swimming in the pond, stretching my feet, I found a much-needed respite. And it opened my mind to new destinations. New explorations. New possibilities. Taking such a long pause in the woods helped me reassess where I want to go from here and gave me new energy for how I want to go about everything in writing, work, and life. I wish to get going. Giddyup.
Beautiful Sawyer Pond
In the Mountains
Usually, I’m heading up something, but whether I’m going up or not, I just like being in the mountains. I live in New Hampshire, so most of my climbing stories are about this region, with the occasional out-of-state exploration. You can read more at In the Mountains. Thanks for stopping by!