Janus, the Roman god of doorways and transitions, of looking both back and ahead, wonders what — beyond increments of added light — his month will offer this year. I hope that, for you and for me, it will be foot-rich and trail-limned.

A trail ahead

In late December, I visited the near future. A quick drive from town brought me to the small parking place at Crystal Spring Farm, and from its height of land, I set out along Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s East Trail, bound for the mix of wood- and farmlands below. The frozen ground made for easy footing, and soon I was on the fringe of the drop-off that gives Great Gully Brook its name. The trail makes a U-turn and crosses a small bridge at the head of the gully, and on the far side, I paused in the finest hemlock forest I know in or out of town.

Whatever the day — sun, mist, snow, fog, rain — the hemlocks filter it to a fineness I find only there. This will sound too person-centered, I know, but these woods are one of the places where I feel right-sized. Which is to say, small, dwarfed by the hundred-foot hemlocks that, even from the rim of the gully, still soar overhead.

There, much of the turmoil that engulfs the town and peopled world simply fades, and after some quiet minutes, the voice of the brook below burbles in ongoing conversation with the grove, with its banks. For a moment, sometimes, even with me.

I point to this as a future trail because, for as long as I am able, I’ll come here, and even during a hurried walk, I’ll pause. Take up brief residence. Feel charged and changed.

A view of mountains in New Hampshire during the author’s snowshoeing trek in his 20s. Sandy Stott photo

A trail from the past

At age 22, I was more than a little lost in the nondescript woods of post-college wondering. Given an absence of plans and a vague inclination to write, I’d persuaded my parents to let me winter in an old, wood-heated saltbox near road’s end in midstate New Hampshire. Each day as winter deepened, I figured out another way not to write. Most days, that meant time wandering on snowshoes, and most of that wandering took me beneath and along the modest, unvisited Oregon ridgeline.

The snowshoes, discovered in the nearby barn, were strung with a diamond pattern of gut and, with their foot-long tails, measured out to around 4 feet. Decaying leather harnesses aside, they were in great shape, and I rapidly learned that they bore me above that winter’s deep snowpack splendidly. I could, I soon understood, go almost anywhere in this season of deep access. Yes, the going was slow (“slowshoes,” I took to calling them) and the bindings broke often (I began carrying fishing line and nylon cord for midday repairs), but in winter, the whole forest seemed a possible trail.

One day, I was nosing along the base of the cliff-line that defines the upper ridge. I was reading the cliff for ascent lines that might be scrambled and noting spots where snow had sloughed to the base in piles taller than me. A 10-foot-tall triangle of snow some feet from the cliff’s bottom caught my eye, and as I neared, I could see that it rested on two slabs of rock that, once upon a deep time, had slid to the cliff’s base. Oddly, in the midst of what might in other seasons be deemed a 3-foot-tall doorway, I saw a hole in the snow. I shoed over, leaned in to look, and a scent rising from the hole wrinkled my nose: musky air, though not unpleasant, and the closer I leaned, the thicker the smell. I looked in. Faint light had made its way through the snow, and I thought I saw fur. Which made me sit back.

I knew bears favored this ridge, especially the mature beech forest at its base. Their claw marks were easy to spot on the smooth, elephantine trunks they’d shinnied up to get to the beech nuts. And — waddle here waddle there — we’d run into each other (or come near) before the snows had arrived. But this few-foot gap was way inside whatever circles of self a bear and I might draw to control overlap. We were winter-kin, I thought as I sat back on the tails of my snowshoes and sniffed the sour-scented air. I felt no inclination — I’m sure this isn’t surprise — to reach into the hole and touch the sleeping bear (though I wish now that I had recall of the wiry feel of wild fur). But I did feel sleepy in return, and I leaned back against a beech rising next to the slabs.

When I awoke some minutes later, for a whiff of time, I felt I lived here.

That, to me, is part of the promise of a trail; it is the transformation, the feeling of arrival and short residence I walk for … and wish for you.

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission, chairperson of The Mere Brook Steering Committee and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.