Check off Another One

Hike Ku for Foss Farm Hike

Needle Skirted Pines
Ice tutus flood plain trees
Playing at dress up

Back to the book, hike 17, check. Done. I had worked a shorter day, wanting to be home to see Jon and enjoy Valentines Day with Steve, since we were planning a two day flying trip to NYC to see the in-laws and Julia (alas not to be - Steve was felled last night by a nefarious stomach bug) and would be having little time alone. Since the weather is still cooperating and winter may be rearing it's snowy head again, we headed out to Foss Farm, out in the Carlisle area. It's not too far away from the Great Brook Farm hike of last weekend. I vaguely remember being there when I worked in Bedford with a member of the community gardens. Very different scene yesterday. It was frozen in some places, muddy in others and we moved between pine groves and agricultual fields cutting across the landscape with a large empty 19th century barn and farmhouse near the trails end. I am always amazed that we are in shouting distance of hundreds of thousands of people, and most of the time on these hikes we see almost no one. Yesterday was no exception. The description of the hike (which the 60/60 author made in warm weather) routed the walk away from the Concord River floodplain, described as buggy and wet. This time of year, it was icy and not buggy, so after walking the 3 1/2 miles or so to the end of the described hike, we turned it into a loop and came back along the river trail. How cool was that? The interior route, although pretty, was very much like the hike of the day before and even the one of the weekend before in terms of terrain and scenery. But this river trail was like being on another planet. I did not expect the other worldliness of the icy scene we became a part of. Every thing was frozen, iced over, trees were dressed in ice floes where the river froze around them at a higher water level, and as the water dropped over the winter, the skirts remained. One would have been interesting, but a couple miles of them was absolutely stunning. Great winter hike. And then we came home and watched the Olympics and I did not over indulge in chocolate.