A Walk in the Parks

The stream in Hallowell.

Hiking in Maine — at least, in coastal Maine — would qualify as a gentle stroll in Utah. Elevation is measured in tens of feet here, not thousands. The biggest danger comes in the form of deer ticks, which can transfer Lyme Disease to unprepared hikers.

This is not a recently built bridge. Just a guess.
Hikes in Utah have a payoff. You work like an animal and crawl over boulders to earn your reward. You come up on a ledge and survey a vista. A river thousands of feet below. A town, out in the distance. A mountain valley, filled with flowers. Quite often, it's quite sublime.

Coastal Maine doesn't have much for elevation. I can get to sea level from our house in about a mile. A downhill, mostly flat mile. What we do have, in spades, is water. And a dog who likes to chase squirrels.

Over TW's recent break, we took an hourlong trip to Hallowell, Maine. It's a quaint little town (with a quaint little brewpub, of course) on the banks of a big river. TW and I took Daisy into the woods above the town and walked a local trail through Vaughan Woods.
About a mile from our house.

No trail better illustrates the difference between Utah hiking and coastal hiking than the Vaughan trails. The Hallowell trail was no less than 4 feet wide, if not more. Gone were the single-track, is-this-really-a-trail trails of Utah. Instead, the trail was clearly cut and covered in wood chips. Nice wood chips. They could have gone the extra mile and put down cedar chips, but at least they didn't pave the thing.

Daisy seemed to enjoy it. She also loves the wooded trails near our house. Portland has a great patchwork trail system with an access point about a quarter mile from our house. Daisy is learning to frolic in the water like a proper lab.

The thing about hiking is, the dog doesn't care about the scenery. That's for me. She needs to get outside and chase squirrels. She is, of course, terrible at it. She hops like a rabbit over dead trees and logs. The squirrels can see her 100 yards away, bounding toward them. The skitter up a tree, leaving Daisy bouncing around the bottom of the tree, looking for her little dog-like friends.

So, as long as the dog needs exercise, we'll be out in the park, chasing squirrels. It doesn't really matter if there's a scenic vista to take in (though we do have those a couple hours away, in the White Mountains). So long as she's happy chasing squirrels, I'll make do listening to This American Life and Planet Money. Support your local NPR station. And wear something to keep those ticks away.
I can hear my dad now: Lupines!

Comments

  1. JillJune 5, 2011 at 7:37 PM

    Lupines! 47-5-4.

    ReplyDelete
  2. skinnyJune 6, 2011 at 3:22 PM

    If it makes you feel any better there is no hiking above about 7,000 feet. Mirror Lake highway still has 8.5 feet of snow on it.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Aw, Maaaaaaan

Image
Journalists aren't normal. You could say it takes a certain kind of person to be a journalist, but you'd be wrong. There's lots of different kinds of people who are journalists. It's just that they sometimes have more extreme personalities than you see in, say, the movie Office Space. That brings us to Dan Dickson, one of the few larger-than-life characters I have ever known. If you were to write a book about Dan, or perhaps a movie, his character would inevitably watered down by editors because nobody would ever find a character like him believable. Though I'm sure I'm mostly writing for an audience of a hundred or so Salt Lake Tribune employees who already know "The Danimal," it's important to pause here to talk about one of his most important personal characteristics, his voice. Dan's voice is a strange blend of cowboy Western accent and surfer-dude guy accent. Take The Dude from The Big Lebowski, make his voice a little more nasal, and add...
Read more

The Most Unlikely Couple ~ Part VI ~ Roman numerals: Yuck

Image
For those that missed them, here are Parts One , Two , Three , Four , and Five . Last one. Then, because I believe in the power of dreams, I'm going to take my shot at being a NASCAR driver and blog about it. Let me know if you need cigarettes or chewing tobacco. I lied to you. Right there in the final paragraph of Part V. I made it sound like, on a drive back from Los Angeles, I waited until Cedar City, Utah, to call Amy. Not true. First, I called her outside of Las Vegas. That call was just to satisfy the voice in my head saying, "Call Amy" over and over again. It was 9 a.m. Central Daylight Time. She was at work and I knew it. Voicemail. No need to leave a message. Done and done. She didn't have my Utah cell phone number. She would have no idea who had called. Take that, voice inside my head. Then, as previously mentioned, the voice got incessant. "Call Amy. Call Amy. Call Amy," it said. Fine, I decided in St. George, Utah. I'll wait until Cedar C...
Read more

The Most Unlikely Couple ~ Pt. V ~ Phantom!

Image
For those that missed them, here are Parts One , Two , Three and Four . Only two left (with an epilogue). Then, as suggested by a reader, I'm going to take up a Sister Wife , to promote more rom-com blog posts. So stay tuned for that. The canine weight loss plan. Available at www.petfinder.com Some people go into a tailspin after a breakup. To an extent, I fit that profile for a couple of months, but it turned into a wonderful positive. I lost all appetite. Which was actually great. I capitalized on the lack of appetite and joined a gym. I lost 40 pounds in three months. It helps that I had a spaz for a chocolate lab, named Duke. He is fondly remembered by our new puppy, Daisy. But you know that already. Something snapped in me when Amy and I broke up. I started eating right. I attended an awesome church in Duluth, The Vineyard . I started writing. I do that when I need an outlet. Perhaps you've noticed. Most important, I matured. Instead of wanting acceptance from wo...
Read more