Daniel Doan - Explorers Guide 50 Hikes in the White Mountains: Hikes and Backpacking Trips in the High Peaks Region of New Hampshire ()

AN INVITATION TO THE READER

Developments, logging, and fires all take their toll on hiking trails, often from one year to the next. If you find that conditions along these 50 hikes have changed, please let the publisher know, so that corrections can be made in future editions. Address all correspondence to:

Editor, 50 Hikes Series
The Countryman Press
P.O. Box 748
Woodstock, VT 05091

Copyright 1973, 1977, 1983, 1990 by Daniel Doan
Copyright 1997, 2004, 2013 by Daniel Doan and Ruth Doan MacDougall
Seventh Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages.

Explorers Guide 50 Hikes in the White Mountains
ISBN 978-1-58157-155-4
ISBN 978-1-581-57730-3 (e-book)

Book design by Glenn Suokko
Text composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN

Maps by Erin Greb Cartography The Countryman Press

Interior photographs by Robert J. Kozlow unless otherwise noted

Frontispiece photograph: Pemigewasset Wilderness from Mount Lincoln by Robert J. Kozlow

Published by The Countryman Press,
P.O. Box 748, Woodstock, VT 05091
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.,
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Printed in the United States of America

The Crystal Years

Amos Jackman

50 More Hikes in New Hampshire

Dan Doans Fitness Program for Hikers and Cross-Country Skiers

Our Last Backpack

Indian Stream Republic: Settling a New England Frontier, 17851842

The Lilting House

The Cost of Living

One Minus One

Wife and Mother

Aunt Pleasantine

The Flowers of the Forest

A Lovely Time Was Had by All

A Woman Who Loved Lindbergh

Mutual Aid

The Snowy Series:

The Cheerleader

Snowy

Henrietta Snow

The Husband Bench, or Bevs Book

A Born Maniac, or Puddless Progress

Thanks to all who have helped keep these hikes updated, especially the following:

Donald K. MacDougall

Marjorie M. Doan

Penelope Doan

Thane Joyal

James P. Gibbs

Hamish Gibbs

Kirk Dougal

Steven D. Smith

Hal and Peggy Graham of Trailwrights

Jason Berard

James Munroe

The Dartmouth Outing Club

Amy Gumprecht

Mary L. Kibling

The Over the Hill Hikers of Sandwich, NH

The Appalachian Mountain Club and the U.S. Forest Service

Trying to analyze what he did when he went through the woods, he discovered that there were many little tricks to make it easier. Hed never thought about it before. You didnt watch your feet, but looked beyond and remembered the branches and rocks in the way. You timed your pace until you knew almost without glancing down what was in front of you while your eyes moved on ahead. You kept in mind the sun, when it showed through the clouds, and the sound of the brook. You used your hands to fend aside the branches and you balanced easy on your feet to suit the roughness of the ground and twisted your shoulders to slip around the trees.

Daniel Doan,
Amos Jackman

In August 2011, in the Mead Conservation Center at the foot of Mount Israel in Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Writers Project held a workshop-celebration of the hundredth birthday of the Weeks Act, which created the White Mountain National Forest. My niece, Thane Joyal, and I were invited to talk about Dan Doan, her grandfather and my father. Thanes son, Hamish Gibbs, then fifteen years old, also took part in this Appreciation of Daniel Doan.

My sister, Penelope, and I grew up hiking with Dan. Thane became the next generation to do so. Dan died before Hamish was born, but Hamish has grown up hiking with his parents. In the years since Dans death in 1993, we have all been involved in keeping Dans books updated, checking trails with his books in our hands.

At the workshop, Thane spoke about this and about growing up in a family that took writing as well as hiking for granted.

I described Dans background. His roots were in Orford, New Hampshire, where his maternal grandmother was born. His father was a Unitarian minister, and the family lived in other states, but, as Dan wrote, Orford had been a constant in my life because our house there was my summer home all through my boyhood. Aunts, uncles, and cousins near or distant lived there summers or year-round. Falling in love with a locality can be as powerful an emotion as falling in love with a person. In some form it lasts a lifetime.

It was here that Dan began exploring the woods and first climbed Mount Cube (see 50 More Hikes in New Hampshire) and Smarts Mountain (see in this book for a day hike and 50 More Hikes in New Hampshire for a backpacking hike).

Then in 1929, two years after his father died in Winchester, Massachusetts, Dan moved with his mother to Hanover and thus at age fifteen came to live permanently in New Hampshire. After he graduated from Dartmouth, he and my mother, Ernestine, set up housekeeping on a chicken farm in Orfordville. After this they bought a chicken farm in Belmont, where Penny and I were born.

Dans plan was to earn a living by farming and by writing short stories. In those days, magazines published a lot of stories and paid well for them. Dan later commented, his tone ironic, I even thought the plan was sound. The eggs sold, and some of the stories sold, but it wasnt enough to support the family. So after Penny was born we moved to Laconia, and Dan went to work at a manufacturing company, Scott & Williams.

He had given up farming, but he didnt give up writing. His first novel, The Crystal Years, was published in 1952. Its a coming-of-age tale about a boy who moves from Boston to New Hampshire. Amos Jackman