July 4, 2008 – In this season of steady thunderstorms, a group of friends snatched a weather window last week to climb Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, N.H.

Storms moved through overnight, and were forecast again for that evening, but the day at least was to be free of boomers.

The day was not, however, free of fog which clung tightly to the mountain and lent a soft and magic cast to the hike.

Several trailheads around the mountain offer access to a network of trails. Some, like the White Dot and White Cross trails, lead from the main State Park and are always busy. Others take off from more secluded spots around the mountain, and often afford the illusion, at least, of solitude.

This day's hike started at the Old Toll Road parking area on Route 124, about 5 miles west of Jaffrey. It followed the Old Halfway House, Cart Path, Mossy Brook, Great Pasture and Smith Summit trails to the top, and the White Arrow trail down.

Monadnock's 3,166-foot-high summit was in fog and clouds, which had not deterred a couple from exchanging wedding vows.

Bring water and food, rain gear and a warm layer, and at this time of year insect repellant.

July 4, 2008 – The Tully River in Royalston, Mass., remains one of the cleanest and most beautiful waterways in New England and a paddle upstream from Tully Lake is one of the finest day trips around.

Go in mid-to-late afternoon, put in at the cartop boat launch on Doane Hill Road near the Tully Lake Campground, paddle upstream past beaver lodges to Long Pond (actually a wide part of the river), and drift slowly back as evening falls.

Chances are excellent that wildlife will reward this strategy, especially for quiet paddlers, on the Tully and many other rivers and streams.

The Ware River also is clean, with one beautiful stretch of several miles passing through the protected Ware River Watershed between Barre Falls Dam and Route 122.

Put in at the launch site just west of a bridge over Route 122 at the Barre-Oakham line, and paddle upstream.

Downstream at that spot is off limits, and blocked by floating booms, to protect paddlers and Greater Boston's water supply.

The Stillwater River in Sterling, Mass., is a beautiful, but very short, paddle from an easy launch at Routes 140 and 62. Paddle upstream and downstream from the Route 62 bridge, and enjoy the abundant bird life.

Sad to report, the Blackstone and Nashua rivers continue to flow foul to the sea, or in the case of the Nashua, to the Merrimack. After years of effort and millions for pollution control, the water quality has far to go, although the Nashua no longer flows red or blue or green and the Blackstone has transformed from opaque to more or less transparent.

For this sad state of affairs blame the legacy of the Industrial Revolution, when people saw rivers as convenient places to dispose of wastewater, and a continuing lack of awareness of the connection between action and consequence. The water in both rivers remains unpleasant in appearance and odor, and urban centers at the headwaters of both continue to send massive quantities of trash that collects in eddies and against downed trees that act at strainers.

Several tributaries of each river are worth paddling, however, among them the Squannacook River in Townsend and the West River in Uxbridge.

Farther afield in New England, the Saco River between Conway, N.H., and Fryeburg, Maine, is one of the one-day great paddle trips; the West Branch of the Penobscot northwest of Millinocket, Maine, is a good rafting trip; and the St. John River and the Allagash Wilderness Waterway are real adventures requiring many days each.

April 14, 2008 – Critters are more evident in the landscape each day as spring's hold grows stronger.

A paddle up the East Branch of the Ware River found hooded mergansers, great blue herons, red-winged blackbirds, mallards, black ducks and a bluebird.

Common mergansers milled about in Paradise Pond in Leominster State Forest. A great-blue heron stalked dinner in Crow Hill Ponds, just up the road.

A tom turkey strutted proudly along Route 31 just south of Route 2 in Fitchburg.

Ring-necked ducks paddled in Sawyer Pond in Sterling.

Black ducks, wood ducks and Canada geese foraged in a wetland off Old Colony Road and Gates Road in the western part of Princeton.

A loon was bobbing about in the middle of one of the Fitchburg reservoirs off Rindge Road in Ashby. It was too far off for naked eye identification, but its yodel was unmistakable.

Some wildlife is pausing on its journey to breeding grounds farther north; other animals are moving in to this region for summer; and still others live here year-round but are more evident now as males try to attract females with bright colors and bold behavior.

April 6, 2008 – "I don't know why more people aren't excited by what happens in spring," Bob Warren said this week. "I mean, everybody gets worked up over the hawk migration in fall, but this time of year is even better. Everything's moving back, in full mating colors, and it happens right in front of you."

Warren is an electrician by trade, and a full-time sportsman otherwise. He also is a Trustee of Princeton Land Trust, and the other day visited some properties around that town to check on a few boundary questions that had arisen in his mind. He was curious as well about whether a coyote den had been active over the winter, how the water was doing in a large beaver pond, and how a trail that had been cut the previous summer looked in early spring.

A walk with him is always interesting.

He spotted the tracks of woodcock, a three-toed bird that spends its life on the ground. He found drill holes in stone walls that marked corners of property. He pointed out massive stone work that carried an old farm road across a stream. He talked about property ownership and boundaries and hunting, worried that more areas were being lost to one of his favorite sports.

He led the way up what he said was one of the best stretches of trout brook in Princeton to a large beaver pond. The beavers appeared to have eaten up the local food supply and moved on, and the unrepaired dam had started to let go.

The mention of trout put me in mind of a conversation with Warren some years ago, just after the publication of a book that he had edited: "Fishing Atlantic Salmon, The Flies and the Patterns," a revised and updated version of the 1970 classic, "Atlantic Salmon Flies and Fishing" by Joseph D. Bates Jr.

Warren talked at his home in the western part of town.

"Right now, I'm salmon fishing," he said, seated in his chair, smoking a cigarette, sipping a scotch, watching to see that Red Abby stayed put on the braided rug at his feet.

His English setter - a few months shy of two years - did, intermittently.

"I spend all winter tying flies, with my imagination working all the time."

He and his wife, Linda, live in a rural area of Princeton - itself a rural community - where they raised their son, Daniel. How rural is the Warren neighborhood? "The other day, she pointed three deer in the yard," he had said, indicating Red Abby.

The dog looked up and thumped her tail. "Stay!" Warren told her.

She looked from him to me, leaped up and spun in a circle, wagging furiously, all pokey nose and eager feet.

"Down!" Warren said, and down Abby went, reluctantly, every fiber poised to rise again.

Before she could do so, I asked about "Fishing Atlantic Salmon," written by Bates and his daughter, Pamela Bates Richards, and edited by Warren.

If time bears out the early acclaim, the book will stand as the definitive book on salmon fishing.

"It's a book for salmon fishermen, and would-be salmon fishermen, and fly-tyers and fly collectors, and sporting book collectors," Warren said. He became involved in the project when Bates passed away in the fall of 1988.

"Pam got in touch with me to look at the collection she inherited from her dad, one of the best fishing libraries in the U.S. and a fly collection that was possibly the most extensive salmon fly collection in the world," Warren said.

Events proceeded on several fronts. To establish a value for the fly collection, a few were placed with Richard Oliver of Maine, who showed them at a High Rollers Auction in Marlboro in 1990. The top fly fetched almost $500.

At the same time, Richards showed Warren the revised manuscript her father had been working on when he died.

"Pam gave me the manuscript and said, 'Read it and tell me what you think.'

"I read it enthusiastically. I thought it was quite good, thought we can't leave this hiding someplace," Warren said.

The result - some eight years later - was a magnificent fishing book, with 396 pages of text, plates, photos, paintings and drawings representing a lifetime of knowledge about salmon fishing.

"The original book had eight color plates and, at the time, that was considered super. We hoped to have 24 color plates in the revised book but, as you see, it's a full-color book with more than 160 color plates."

The plates show the patterns for dressing more than 500 salmon flies, including 200 salmon fly patterns dressed by their originators.

Stackpole Books has published the book in several editions - a trade edition at $75; a limited edition of 250 copies at $450; a deluxe edition of 50 copies at $1,350; and a reserved deluxe edition of 26 copies, lettered from A to Z, at $1,500.

Warren became hooked on fishing, so to speak, early in life. Born in Arlington, he moved to Shrewsbury as a tot and by 10 was tying his own flies and using them to catch trout in streams in that town, Northboro and Holden.

"In those days, there was wonderful fishing compared with now," he said. "Thank heaven nature is such that, if the habitat is there, the wildlife will be there.

"My dad and I fished the Quabbin Reservoir, Maine, New Hampshire, but we never fished Atlantic salmon.

"I hooked my first salmon in 1971 on the secret salmon rivers of Maine. Jack Swedberg got me started. He didn't tell me the disease was terminal. From there, it just went downhill," Warren said.

His thoughts drifted away again. You could see it happen as he sat at his table. He was three feet away, and 400 miles north, knee-deep in a river, presenting a fly tied in his basement workshop for the ultimate approval of craftsmanship from the only judge that counts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: That conversation occurred in March of 1997. Red Abby passed away last year. Warren no longer smokes, but still enjoys fishing and scotch.

April 6, 2008 – "April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain," wrote T.S. Eliot in "The Wasteland."

Eliot's words don't apply to this ski season which, in a repeat of last year, just won't quit.

Visits the past few weeks to Wachusett Mountain in Princeton, Mass., Loon Mountain in Lincoln, N.H., and Mount Sunapee in Newbury, N.H., found tremendous snow cover and dwindling numbers of skiers. It's a familiar pattern: Great snow in March and people who begin to drift away for other pursuits, such as golf and gardening.

Most ski areas in southern New England and many to the north will be closed after this weekend, but some northern areas continue to operate, with a few pushing back their closing date to late April. Waterville plans to run until April 13, Stratton, Okemo and Sunapee until April 20, Loon until April 21, Sugarbush until April 27, and Sugarloaf/USA is eyeing May. Mount Snow says it will run as long as skiers keep coming. Suggestion: Check the Web sites and call ahead before you set out on a long drive.

Jan. 28, 2008 – A 10-day thaw at the beginning of January did not obliterate snowpack in the woods of New England, although it did diminish it from more than 2 feet of uncompacted snow to slightly less than a foot of denser cover.

It was enough to sustain an extended snowshoe tour along the southern end of the Wapack Trail on Sunday, with light ocean effect snow adding another 3 inches of fluff to the mix during the walk.

That section of trail could also be called the northern end of the Midstate Trail - the two paths overlap from Route 119 in Ashburnham, over Mt. Watatic and Nutting Hill, to the New Hampshire border.

One of the great pleasures of snowshoeing is the ability to go anywhere - once the snow has built up in the woods, and after travelers have developed a certain competence at winter hiking.

Snowfall is someone else's worry, but the competence is a matter of practice and thought, reading and experience, constantly assessing performance and adjusting things that didn't work out so well on one outing so they work better on the next.

Fitness is a basic ingredient of a safe and pleasurable outing, and rests upon a foundation of just doing it regularly.

Clothing is another: Dress in layers, from synthetic long johns that wick away moisture, to heat-trapping middle layers of fleece, to windproof parka and - at least in the pack - windpants. Hat and mittens are essential as well, and for above-treeline hikes, balaclava and face mask.

Hardware is a third component: snowshoes and poles. Lots to choose from, some might say a confusion of choices, and a good way to start is by renting from an outdoor store. Most will apply the rental fee to the price of purchase. Personal recommendation: Atlas snowshoes and LEKI poles. Both have served well over many years and many miles of rugged use, without any sense of pushing them anywhere near the limit of prudence.

Atlas makes several lines of snowshoes designed for men and women, for different levels of use. Poles may not not be necessary for level going, but are quite handy for balance and rhythm even on flat trails, and become essential for steeper terrain.

On this outing, the poles were in hand the whole time, even though on the more level stretches of trail they were simply carried and not used. Walking with snowshoes is not all that difficult, although one can at times lose balance when the edges catch under a lip of crust, or snag on a hidden obstruction, at which times the poles are quite useful.

As mentioned, steady light snow fell the whole time, adding gently to the cover, and dampening sound the way fresh snow does. Few other hikers were about, despite it being Sunday and usually one of the busiest days on that particular part of the Midstate/Wapack Trail, the few miles from Route 119 over Mt. Watatic.

One interesting sight: The marks of a bear's claw head high on a beech tree, weathered slightly, fixing their age at sometime in late fall.

At the Massachusetts-New Hampshire line, the party paused a few minutes for tea and oranges, then finished the loop back to the car.

Trailhead: North side of Route 119 in Ashburnham, 1.4 miles west of the intersecton with Route 101. Distance hiked: 3 miles; total time: 1.5 hours.

Jan. 28, 2008 – Crotched Mountain in Francestown, N.H., blends new technology and New England simplicity.

A recent midweek visit found good snow and few other skiers.

Beau Schless and Ned Bolle, Ski Patrollers, were enjoying the conditions on trails off the summit lift, which ends some small distance from the true summit, which stands at 2,066 feet above sea level. Both wore helmets, and Schless's said "Saving Lives for 5 Years" on the back. "Oh yes," he said, "it's true. Most recently just the other day, when I was ice boating and my head whacked the ice." Schless, of Sudbury, Mass., has been a Ski Patroller 33 years, the last three at Crotched.

Much has changed at Crotched in the 25-or-so years since the last visit. Indeed, it was hard to peel away those years and see the old trail system underneath, since all trails had been widened and regraded by the new owners. Crotched sports 19 trails and a glade, served by four chairs and a magic carpet.

Peak Resorts of Missouri bought Crotched in 2002 after it had been closed 13 years, invested millions in high-tech fan guns, groomers and a new base lodge, installed new fixed-grip lifts, and reopened for the winter of 2003-2004.

The original Crotched opened in 1964 on the east end of the mountain. Onset opened six years later, to the west, became Bobcat, then merged with Crotched in 1980, operating as Crotched East and Crotched West. The area closed in 1989, and remained closed until Peak Resorts owner Tim Boyd stepped in.

It was Boyd's first foray into New England, and became the model for his no-frills approach with a focus on snowmaking and grooming, with basic amenities.

The results are impressive. True, the fixed-grip lifts are slower than the high-speed detachables that exist at most areas, although after a morning's skiing, the longer ride uphill is a welcome rest for tired legs. And while the lodge at Crotched is not fancy, it is new and efficient, with logical placement of services, and good food at reasonable prices.

GM Chris Bradford said plans include extending lift service to the true summit to serve two new trails and allow extension of two others.

A Star Trek theme prevails in trail names. Terrain is mellow, with black diamonds only labeled as such in the context of relative difficulty. Lift tickets: weekends and holiday, adults $48, teens $39; midweek, adults $39, teens $29; midweek nights - $22; midnight madness, fridays and saturdays 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. - $29.

Peak Resorts owns eight other resorts, including Mount Snow and Attitash, purchased last year from American Skiing Co.

Dec. 10, 2007 – Winter is turning the long-range forecasts on their head with sustained cold temperatures and a series of storms that dumped more than 3 feet of snow across northern Vermont, and several feet elsewhere in northern New England.

A visit to Okemo Mountain Resort in Ludlow, Vt., this weekend found edge-to-edge cover on the open trails, which were covered with a mix of manmade from several weeks of terrific snowmaking temps and natural from an 18-inch snowstorm late last week.

Okemo has good skiing on 81 of 117 trails, slopes and glades, nine of 19 lifts, and 410 of its 624 acres.

Tim Mueller, who owns the area with his wife, Diane, told LeopardReport that the resort's overall ski operation has pretty much reached maturity, and will be in the future what it is now in terms of scope, with ongoing tinkering to improve snowmaking and grooming, lifts and trails, and to reduce the resort's carbon footprint and environmental impact, but with little more in the way of outright expansion of skiing. Going forward, he said, Okemo will work on its four-season offerings, including a conference center at Jackson Gore, and a second golf course to take the pressure off the existing one.

That's in the future, and for other seasons.

The area, built in 1955 by locals, is in its 25th season under the ownership of the Muellers, who have expanded Okemo into a four-season resort with two base areas, trails covered 97 percent by snowmaking, housing that includes the new Jackson Gore Inn and Adams House, and 17 places to eat on the mountain, from pizza to the new gourmet ePIC restaurant at Solitude Village.

Okemo scored big when Ross Powers accepted an offer to be the mountain's snowboard ambassador. Powers, a world-class snowboarder, won a bronze medal in the 1998 Olympics at Nagano and a gold medal in the 2002 Olympics at Salt Lake City. Powers rides with Okemo's guests, runs snowboard camps through the season, and is working on the Ross Powers Foundation, a non-profit he established to help American athletes.

Dec. 10, 2007 – Climbing wound up (or down) in September, when Tripyramid and the peaks of the southern Presidentials fell in a flurry of peak-bagging. Four of the six summits so bagged were White Mountain Four Thousand Footers, leaving 26 to go out of 48.

The season was truncated by a land-preservation project that became all-consuming as September waned and fall settled in.

On both outings, Alan Harris, a physician from West Boylston, and his faithful dog, Bungee, set a pace that moved the expeditions relentlessly up and down the mountains. Harris also offered sparse, witty commentary on progress, provisions, gear, scenery, weather, route, time and so forth as each day went on.

Weather on Tripyramid on Sept. 10 was – as so often this past summer – cloudy and damp. The chosen route went up North Slide, over the North (4,180 feet), Middle (4,140 feet) and South (4,100 feet) Peaks, and down South Slide.

A brain burp early on almost sent the party around the route in reverse which, according to the AMC White Mountain Guide, would have meant almost certain death.

Harris & Co. realized after a few hundred yards up the wrong end of the Mt. Tripyramid Trail that they should have gone another mile or so up Livermore Trail, a flat forest logging road, before beginning their traverse. (Bungee actually didn’t care which way the route was traveled, but was willing to follow doggedly where her master led.) Anyway, all returned to the logging road and continued on to the north end of the loop.

North Slide was, as billed, steep and nasty because wet from overnight rain and persistent damp clouds. On the steepest sections, knees joined feet and hands in securing passage upward.

Once up, the route across the three peaks was wonderfully shrouded in cloud, the spruce forest short and thick, and the ridgetop covered in dense moss and lichen.

Going down South Slide was straightforward, the top being loose scree, the lower part broken ledge. South Peak does not count as a Four Thousand Footer, as it does not rise enough from the ridge connecting with Middle.

Distance: 11 miles. Time: 7 hours.

The party stopped for pizza and beer at The Common Man in a renovated mill complex in Plymouth, N.H. It was among the tastiest pizzas in memory.

Harris, Bungee and companion drove to Crawford Notch, where they left a car and talked an AMC employee into providing a ride up the Mt. Clinton Road to the Edmands Path trailhead.

The route went up Edmands to the Crawford Path just north of Eisenhower, followed Crawford to Lakes of the Clouds Huts, and then looped back over Monroe (5,372 feet), Franklin (5,001 feet), Eisenhower (4,760 feet) and Pierce (4,312 feet).

Temperature was in the mid-20s, with a brisk northwest wind cooling things off on the ridge.

From time to time, the sound of the Mount Washington Cog Railway whistle drifted south across miles of open mountainside, along with a whiff of coal smoke.

Vegetation had taken on the golden browns and reds of fall; the ponds were frozen; Lakes of the Clouds Hut was closed tight for the year.

Various episodes of forgetfulness over the course of the summer – resulting in mild discomfort and disproportionate anxiety – had reminded the members of the party what essential gear should go on every outing. Both had warm clothes, spare clothes, water and food, first aid kit, flashlight, hat and gloves, comfortable shoes, map, guide, hiking poles – in short, the essentials for safe travel above tree line on a bitter day in New England.

Monroe was spectacular, steep, cold and bitterly windy on the summit. A grassy ledge on the east side, sheltered from the wind, provided a comfortable lunch spot with a great view.

The afternoon was a long amble south along Crawford, back over Franklin – which doesn’t count as one of the Four Thousand Footers because it doesn’t rise enough from the ridge upon which it sits, up the intimidating north side of Eisenhower, down again to the saddle leading to Pierce, and up that peak for a moment before coming back down the same way to Crawford Path and back to the car.

Distance: 11.4 miles. Time: 7 hours.

Sept. 9, 2007 - Dr. Mark A. Pokras, a veterinarian and head of the Wildlife Clinic at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, has been studying loon mortality for many years.

He has found that lead is the leading cause of mortality in adult loons in New England, and that fishing gear is the source of this lead in freshwater lakes and ponds where loons breed.

Of about 1,200 dead loons of all ages studied over the last 20 years, 26 percent died from lead poisoning, Dr. Pokras found.

Then he parsed the data further, and found the results even more disturbing: Among dead adults, 35 percent to 36 percent died from lead; among adults breeding on freshwater lakes during summer months, 48 percent to 49 percent died of lead.

"Basically the loons appear to be ingesting large enough quantities of lead - in some cases just one split shot - that they die. The affected birds get disoriented, are unable to catch their normal, fast-swimming prey, stop preening and begin to beach themselves. They appear to have difficulty breathing, seem to have watery greenish diarrhea and almost certainly have a very painful 'colic' of the GI tract of the sort that's been described in many other species, including people," Dr. Pokras said.

"It seems like a slow, painful way to die," he said.

“Wildlife biologists don’t focus on the deaths of individual animals, they’re concerned primarily about the stability of populations. Loons are like bald eagles in that they mature relatively late, they have a long lifespan, and they fledge few young per year. A typical loon nest, if they’re lucky, will fledge one chick; two is exceptional.

“Loon biologists have told me that maintenance level for a stable population is between 0.6 and 0.7 chicks fledged per nest per year on average. If loons bring off that many chicks, their population is stable,” Dr. Pokras said.

“In a species like that, the loss of breeding adults is the most damaging thing that can happen for a population. And lead poisoning is selecting out breeding adults,” he said.

At the request of a constituent, state Sen. Robert A. Antonioni, D-Leominster, has introduced a bill to ban lead fishing gear in Massachusetts.

The bill (S.466) states: “Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, no person shall use weights, sinkers, artificial lures, jigs, lead-core line, keel trolling weights, weighted flies or any other fishing gear for the purposes of fishing in any inland water, which has any content of lead within.”

Emily Norton, a high school science teacher, asked Sen. Antonioni to file the bill after one of her students completed an Eagle Scout project on the effect of lead fishing gear on loons in several ponds in Massachusetts.

A hearing on the legislation is scheduled for Sept. 17 before the Committee on Environment, Natural Resources and Agriculture at 1 p.m. at the Wire Village School in Spencer.

In 1991 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service instituted a nationwide ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting, with dramatic results. A study the service commissioned found the ban prevented the lead poisoning deaths of 1.4 million ducks along the Mississippi Flyway in 1997.

Dr. Pokras said, "We have documented several loons that died from lead poisoning after ingesting shot and two birds that died from ingesting bullets - one a .22-calibre, the other a .30-something calibre - but shot pales in comparison to the dangers of fishing gear ingestion for loons.

"Still, at the Clinic, we see lots of animals dying from lead shot ingestion including many waterfowl and wild turkeys - not to mention those critters dying from lead poisoning where we're not able to identify the source of the lead," he said.

Lead ends up in the loons because they ingest it, Dr. Pokras said, while picking up gizzard stones from lake bottoms to aid in digestion, or while eating fish with lead fishing gear attached or ingested.

"We do not currently understand the criteria that loons may use to select stones to be swallowed but have considered such factors as size, color, density, mass, reflectivity, texture and taste. Loons may ingest lead objects accidentally or purposefully while collecting gizzard stones or from eating fish with either attached or ingested lead objects. Alternatively, loons may deliberately select lead objects from lake bottoms," Dr. Pokras said.

"Nobody’s saying lead is safe,” Dr. Pokras said. “It’s one of the clearest environmental problems we face. If lead gets into the bodies of people or animals it always causes pathology, ranging from death to more subtle damage to the brain, kidneys, reproduction and other systems.

“If we can’t solve the lead problem, I almost feel all the other environmental problems associated with toxics are intractable, almost impossible. We’ve known about lead for hundreds of years. It’s one of those things where there’s almost no scientific controversy," he said.

“But it’s important to understand we’re not trying to hit anybody over the head and say, ‘You’re bad because you mine lead, market lead, or use lead.' The use of lead has a long tradition and there are economic constraints on easy solutions – to make this work, we have to find alternatives that are safe, practical, and that still allow people to do the important things that they want to do, like fishing and hunting,” Dr. Pokras said.

A variety of good, non-toxic materials exist to replace lead in fishing gear at modest cost, he said, but better education and marketing are needed to encourage anglers to use these alternatives.

“This bill is good in that it would prevent thousands of pounds of lead from being introduced into waterways and wetlands in Massachusetts, and prevent the mortality of a charismatic species that people care about – common loons – and also protect human health. Protecting human health is an important part of this legislation,” he said.

“There’s abundant literature to show that lead is harmful to people of every age, but most especially children. And as we pass on our outdoor heritage to our families, we want to make sure that we protect everyone’s health.

“We already have helped pass similar but weaker legislation in New Hampshire, Maine, Vermont, New York and Canada, and we’re currently working on educational and legislative initiatives in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington and Montana.

“We know from the experiences we’ve had in New England that one of the hurdles is getting over the initial suspicion the sporting community brings to this. They’re independent people, and they don’t want one more piece of regulation on their back. Often times they’re looking at things through narrow lenses and don’t see the whole picture of how lead affects the health of a wide variety of species. They’re suspicious we’re trying to take their guns away or trying to stop them from taking fish – which we’re not doing. We need the sportsmen to understand that, and join in adopting constructive solutions,” Dr. Pokras said.

“At the same time, there needs to be a recognition among some environmentalists that hunters and anglers are conservationists, too.

“We all want the same thing: clean air, clean water and healthy people and animals. Getting everyone to work together will be sort of interesting. But if we can’t work together, everything we value is going to end up getting paved over,” Dr. Pokras said.

Dr. Pokras is on sabbatical from Tufts so he can work on a book that pulls together many existing, but separate lines of research on lead poisoning.

Sept. 3, 2007 – A week ago on the Kinsman Ridge, clear skies prevailed and the views went on forever; two weeks ago on a climb of East Osceola, the summits of the Whites were wrapped snugly in low-lying cloud.

Both outings were in the nature of completing unfinished business, and somewhere in the process it became clear that few easy trails are to be found in New Hampshire’s White Mountains.

This actually has come to mind at times in the past, ambling up some wide, well-graded path in the Rocky Mountains, and comparing it to the rocky, rooted trails of New Hampshire. Western mountains have their own challenge, in scale and height, but the footing is far more mellow than is found in New England.

Kinsman Ridge was busy a week ago Tuesday with families enjoying the last outing of summer, and groups of freshmen from Franklin Pierce, Yale and Brown bonding in the wilds.

That day the chosen route started at Lafayette Place Campground on Route 3 in Franconia Notch, followed the Lonesome Lake Trail 1.2 miles to Lonesome Lake, then Fishin’ Jimmy 2 miles to Kinsman Ridge, then the Ridge Trail 1.6 miles to North Kinsman (4,293 feet) and South Kinsman (4,358 feet).

Kinsman Ridge offers a great view of Mt. Lafayette, Mt. Liberty and the whole Franconia Ridge across the Notch.

With a side trip to Kinsman Pond, it was a 10-mile day.

The chosen route up East Oscela began at the Greeley Ponds Trailhead on the Kancamaugus Highway east of Lincoln, followed the Greeley Pond Trial for 1.3 miles, then the Osceola Trail 1.5 miles to the 4,156-foot-high summit. Round-trip 5.6 miles, but it felt longer.

As with many trails in the region, the beginning followed an old logging road, the end went steeply up the mountainside.

Several loose gullies and one steep slab added excitement to this route.

Few others were on the trail that day, a Thursday. A couple – fit and fast – cruised past on the trail to Greeley Ponds. One family – mom, dad and two kids – had paused a mile up the level portion of the trail to rest; another – dad, daughter and daughter’s friend – had paused on the steep north face of Osceola to catch their breath.

The summit was in cloud – another photo to add to the collection of clouds from the inside – but satisfying to reach, anyway.

On the way down, Myles McNamara, a teacher, and Carrie French, a law student, both from Boston, were chugging strongly uphill, fueled by peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they had made atop their car in the parking lot. Both were smiling.

On both climbs, the pack contained water, food, warm clothes, rain gear, headlamp, first aid kit, and hat and gloves.

Aug. 13, 2007 - Allen Fletcher of Worcester, Mass., launched from Pemberton Point in Hull on Saturday and paddled across a mile of open water to Georges Island in Boston Harbor.

Georges is part of the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area, managed by Massachusetts as a state park, and site of Fort Warren, built in the 19th century to defend Boston Harbor from attack by sea.

The history of the fort is intertwined with the history of American military engineering, and the emergence of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as a top-notch engineering school.

Before that happened, it seems, America had to rely on the services of European engineers to build coastal fortifications intended to defend the young republic against – who else – Europeans.

Fort Warren never got to defend Boston against invasion, but did hold Confederate prisoners during the Civil War.

Anyway, Fletcher was in a Current Designs Kestrel 140, and a companion was in a Wilderness Systems Cape Horn 17. Both are sea kayaks, offering speed and stability in ocean waters, and both were up to the challenge of the currents and cross-chop and constant wakes cast up by passing boats in Boston Harbor.

The Kestrel was rented Friday and the Cape Horn purchased some years ago from New England Backpacker in Worcester, Mass.

A well-publicized misadventure by a party of Worcester-area attorneys who set out in 2003 to paddle from Monomoy to Nantucket prompted the store to limit its rentals of sea kayaks to those it knows are schooled in their use. The lawyers made the 10-hour crossing, but were lucky to have survived. Restricting rentals to the demonstrably competent is a growing practice in the region, with some outfitters on Cape Cod avoiding such rentals altogether and others limiting use of their sea kayaks to bays and ponds.

It's a sign of the risks attendant to travel involving wave and tide, which should not be undertaken lightly or without proper equipment and skills.

Back to Saturday. Both kayakers wore life jackets and sunscreen, had maps and water, and brought bilge pump and inflatable paddle float to help right a flipped boat. Having done this in the past, both hoped to avoid a repeat, particularly in the lively waters off Boston. But should need arise, they were ready.

Plans included lunch on Georges – hot dogs purchased from Capt. Fly’s, a concessionaire who relies on monopoly rather than efficiency to attract customers to his operations on the island.

With time to kill before lunch – and unaware of the wait ahead as hot dogs were cooked ever so slowly on a gas grill – Fletcher and friend paddled around nearby Gallops Island.

Orange signs warned against trespassing – and it turned out that the island is contaminated with asbestos. That did not deter a cluster of several dozen American oystercatchers on the eastern tip of Gallops – busy vocalizing to each other and to gulls who were trying to land nearby.

Back on Georges, a tour of the fort was interesting, and the wait for lunch afforded a chance for people-watching as well, as boats continually discharged and picked up passengers at the island’s dock.

"Sea Kayaking Along the New England Coast" by Tamsin Venn, published by AMC Books, lists some pretty nice trips, including the Boston Harbor Islands. The book has basic info on kayaking, including safety tips.

It also offers some inaccurate information, such as the distance from Georges to Gallops Island. The book says Gallops is "a few hundred yards away" from Georges; it's really a third of a mile, or 587 yards. In another place, the book tries to explain map scale as "inches on sea to inches on land," which of course isn't so; it's inches (or whatever unit of measure) on map to inches in the real world. That is, on a 1:25,000 metric scale map, 1 centimeter on the map is 25,000 centimeters in the real world. (A more useful way to see it is, on a 1:25,000 metric scale map, it's roughly 6.5 centimeters or 2.5 inches on the map to a mile in the real world.)

All guide books should be treated with healthy skepticism, particularly where one's life may depend on the information. Having said this, it's important to recognize that Venn's "Sea Kayaking" is a wonderful book for pointing out some great spots to paddle around.

Most visitors to the Boston Harbor Islands ride the regular ferry to Georges Island - $10 round-trip - then take free boats to various of the 17 islands that form the park. They spend the day wandering the shores, touring the various buildings, forts and lighthouses, picnicking on fare they brought with them, or on hot dogs or hamburgers grilled so painstakingly at the concession stand on Georges.

Just after noon on a sunny August Sunday some years past, Walnut Express churned out of Hull Gut into Nantasket Roads, one of two main shipping lanes connecting Boston Harbor and Massachusetts Bay.

By coincidence, my son and I had just entered Nantasket Roads, traveling back from Georges Island to Pemberton Point at the end of Hull.

Problem? We were in 17-foot sea kayaks; the Walnut Express is an oil products tanker, 179.8 meters long, 32.2 meters wide, capable of carrying 45,000 metric tons of cargo, and not about to stop for us.

That's even if anyone on board could spot such tiny crafts bobbing in the waves and wake churning the harbor's surface.

It’s something for paddlers to keep in mind.

Marty McCabe, then 47, of Cataumet, a Boston Harbor pilot, said kayaks, sailboats and other small pleasure craft are always a challenge for large vessels.

"The issue with kayaks is that very often they're not seen until very late in the situation. They need to be aware of where the shipping lanes are and stay clear," McCabe said.

"In Weymouth-Hull, the channel is very, very narrow for a 100- foot-beam ship that draws 30 feet. A ship like that can't leave the channel because of the water depth in the surrounding areas," he said.

McCabe and the other nine pilots in Boston Harbor, Weymouth, Fore River, Braintree and Quincy are in charge of about 200 moves a month. They board inbound ships 3 or 4 miles outside the harbor and bring them to dock. They take outbound ships from dock out past all the islands and beyond Boston Light.

Fortunately for small boat captains, these pilots are good. To become one, a person must hold an unlimited masters license, which takes 10 to 15 years to attain, then ride for a year under the supervision of a senior pilot, then serve for another year with limitations on the size ship he or she can handle before becoming a full branch pilot.

McCabe said most pilots - like himself - now are graduates of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. After that, he went to sea for 18 years, nine of which were as captain on a tanker.

Aug. 13, 2007 - Mt. Osceola’s forested trails hint now and then at the sweeping view north, south and east, but don’t yield the prize until hikers break out of the trees on the mountain’s very summit.

The top is lovely, warm, weathered granite, with several levels of flat ledge able to accommodate many people and still offer each party its own space.

Old tower foundations cluster in two spots, the only dissonant elements in what otherwise is a natural peak unmarked by human hand.

After a few hundred yards of flat going from the trailhead parking lot off Tripoli Road northwest of Waterville Valley, the trail climbs steadily uphill. It follows the side of a valley, then switchbacks up a ridge, then switchbacks up Osceola’s south face until it reaches the top, 3.2 miles from its start, and 4,340 feet above sea level.

It’s an easy day hike for people from Central New England – less than 2 ½ hours drive, with a guidebook trail time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.

A fairly lazy launch saw two hikers on the road from Ashby, Mass., at 8:30 a.m. this past Sunday. A few minutes stop at the Black Forest Bakery in Amherst, N.H., provided the travelers with coffee and scones, fresh and excellent.

They were on the trail by 11 a.m. and on the summit at 1:40 p.m., with time for several stops on the way, one of them to chat with a U.S. Forest Service Ranger on his way down.

The subject of gear arose, as it often does among serious hikers. Some discussion centered on an Osprey Atmos 65 pack, a lightweight, large capacity, internal frame pack one hiker was trying. Osprey started in Colorado and like many companies has moved manufacturing operations overseas, in this case Vietnam. The pack was reported to be quite the most comfortable the hiker had ever worn, particularly the waist belt, which is key to comfort and weight-bearing.

Tea was brewed on the top with a nifty little Jetboil stove, which travels inside itself and boils water in less than two minutes. Other hikers were curious about the whole process, especially the stove, and watched with interest and many questions.

Refreshed, the Central Mass pair ambled down the mountain, returning to their car by 4:40 p.m. One recalled a restaurant she had enjoyed in Plymouth, and after some detective work it was found – The Common Man, on Route 3 at the north end of town, near Exit 26 off I-93.

Its dining room occupied several levels in an open mill building, with golf on one large-screen TV and a combination of baseball and NASCAR on a smaller set. The beer was cold, the meal delicious, the setting interesting. What could be better?

Well, a small stand next door served homemade ice cream.

The ride home from the restaurant took two hours.

Aug. 6, 2007 – Alpine meadows surround Mt. Moosilauke’s 4,802-foot-tall summit, giving this western-most high peak of the White Mountains a gentle and inviting aspect – at least on warm, sunny days.

Climbers report that weather on Moosilauke can be fierce, especially in winter.

It was not so on Saturday, when four friends from Massachusetts, and a dog, set out from Dartmouth Outing Club’s Ravine Lodge, up the Gorge Brook Trail and back down Carriage Road and Snapper.

Temps in the 80s, low humidity, and shade most of the way made for very pleasant conditions.

Alan Harris of West Boylston, Tony and Alice Gardner of Worcester, and myself, of Princeton set out on the trail around 9 a.m.

The 7.5-mile round trip took five hours – 2 ¼ hours up for the slowest member of the party, 45 minutes of basking on the summit, an hour and a half down and 30 minutes of poking around at the bottom to inspect a swimming hole and the magnificent Ravine Lodge.

The trail climbs steadily up a consistent grade, through northern forest until the very upper slopes of the mountain, then breaks out into the open on lush alpine tundra within a few minutes of the top.

The Gardners have been training for an adventure in the Cascades of Washington, and their fitness showed in a furious pace uphill.

Harris kept up with little trouble.

The fourth member of the party trudged more slowly.

Bungee, an Australian cattle dog who accompanies Harris on most of his outings, slowed her master down with occasional stops to explore the woods and brook beside which the first half of the trail meandered. A sign at the trailhead advises that passage is for human feet only; an exception is posted just below: "Canine Companions Are Welcome, Please Be Considerate."

Bungee is trail-savvy and on this outing was polite toward the few other hikers encountered. On a previous trip to Mt. Adams in the Presidential Range of New Hampshire, she found two bears in woods alongside the trail. This time she didn't. Which was OK.

Two members of the party carried hiking poles – one used them up and down as his experience is that they allow for greater speed, the other used them only on the roughest part of the descent, as the footing was generally solid and dry, and the grade gentle. Besides, he thought, not using poles avoids the embarrassing (if remote) possiblity of tripping over them. (Don't laugh, it's happened.)

About a mile from the trailhead, the path leaves Gorge Brook, and begins a steeper ascent through the Ross McKenney Memorial Forest, named in honor of the Dartmouth Outing Club’s first Woodcraft Advisor.

In places the trail follows series of steep stone steps; elsewhere its bed follows gentler grades over soft forest soil. Views are infrequent until the trail climbs above treeline and passes through beautiful, open, sedge-covered alpine meadows to the top.

Tradition wraps this peak, focus of the Dartmouth Outing Club since shortly after the club’s founding in 1909. Reading the history of the DOC is time well spent.

The club was the first of its kind, and set the standard for college outing clubs. Skiing was a major activity from the start. The first downhill race on Moosilauke was run on Carriage Road in 1927, and in 1933 the National Ski Association sanctioned the first U.S. National Downhill Race on that trail.

Mike Holmes, a senior at Dartmouth and DOC member, is working as Moosilauke Alpine Steward this summer. He greets people at the top, engages them in conversation, notes where they hale from, and asks them to stay on the trails and off the tundra. He said perhaps 160 hikers make it to the summit on a fine summer Saturday.

“It’s hard to realize it’s almost over,” Holmes said, contemplating the end of college.

“In one sense, it’s just beginning,” suggested one of the climbers – whose own college years have receded into the dim past.

Holmes did not appear persuaded.

Moosilauke – pronounced variously to rhyme with “lock” or “locky” – lies a few miles west of Woodstock, N.H. It’s an easy 2.5-hour drive from Central New England, up I-93.

July 22, 2007 – Saturday was quite busy on Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, N.H.

The day was fine – no longer the hot muggy weather of the past few weeks, and no thunderstorms forecast, as has become common this season.

Even on a busy day some trails are usually quiet – the Dublin, for one, because its trailhead is remote; the Pumpelly for another, because it’s the longest trail on the mountain, 4.4 miles from start to summit.

But on this day, the choice of a popular route – starting from the Halfway House trailhead on Route 124 northwest of Jaffrey – accepted the likelihood of sharing the trail with many hikers.

What passes for an early start nowadays – 8:45 a.m. pulling into the lot – found only one other vehicle already parked. It was that of David Mallard, a graduate student at Antioch University of New England studying forest plots on eight transects in four separate areas of the mountain, one plot every 100 feet of elevation from summit to base.

We talked about the outdoors for awhile – he had worked as a guide in New York and New England, and hoped to keep working in the wilds. And, inevitably, we discussed gear – he favored Garmont boots, sturdy Italian-made footwear. Mine are made by Merrell.

Farther up the Old Halfway House Trail, where the woodsy path joins the Old Toll Road, a crew was at work installing or rebuilding water bars, the essential structure for keeping a trail from washing away.

The crew consisted of Monadnock State Park Ranger Amanda Garland of Concord, N.H.; Rachel Knapp of Weare, N.H., who volunteered through the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests; Jim Johnson of Keene, N.H., with the Monadnock Mountain Club; and a contingent from the Cardigan Highlanders that included Crew chief Craig Sanborn of Enfield, N.H., Ray Lesmerises of Bow, N.H., and Scott MacFaden of Newbury, N.H.

From the site of the Halfway House – various forms of which were built and burned down between 1858 and 1954, when the last one burned – the White Arrow Trail leads upward on a pathway that shows more than a century of care and maintenance.

No other hikers were spotted on the rest of the ascent, until the trail broke out onto the open, upper slopes of the mountain, and the summit was seen to be clustered with a dozen or so other people. They had likely hiked up from the State Park, on the White Dot or White Cross Trails, the two most popular on the mountain.

On the descent, Ben Getchell and Kevin Toohey of Princeton, Mass., were encountered as they climbed upward.

A few weeks earlier, on a climb via the Dublin Trail, a party of young people was racing afternoon showers.

Viorica Jennings of Wilton, N.H., Laurel Iselin of Marlborough, N.H., John and David Iselin of Nelson, N.H., and Linnea Snyder of Harrisville, N.H. had set out to go up the Dublin and down the Pumpelly, but were reconsidering in light of rain that had started to fall.

Monadnock is not an easy climb. Wachusett is easy, Watatic is easy, Monadnock isn't. Its trails are steep, rocky and, on the upper parts, unrelenting. After a day on the mountain, hikers know they have accomplished something.

Except for the Pumpelly Trail – which leads from Dublin Lake up the long spine of the mountain – most of the trails share a similar profile: a little more than one mile of approach through woods, then another mile or so split between a steep slog up one of many forested ridges, and a pleasant stroll over the open, blueberry-strewn ledges of the upper mountain to the summit, 3,165 feet above sea level.

(Ignore the elevation carved in the summit; it states the peak is 3,166 feet, but later calculations showed that to be off by a foot.)

The trails rise between 1,656 and 1,955 vertical feet, with the Halfway House/Old Toll Trail from Route 124 rising the least and the Harling Trail/Cascade Link the most.

July 22, 2007 - Friends proposed a hike up the Raymond Trail on Pack Monadnock in Miller State Park in Peterborough, N.H. a few weeks ago.

The trail – new to me – is a delightful, quiet, woodsy path that starts at a parking area on East Mountain Road, about 1,300 feet above sea level. It ends with a few minutes’ passage over open ledges to the 2,290-foot-high summit of this southern New Hampshire peak.

A forecast for highs in the 90s and afternoon thunderstorms prompted plans for an early start, which for one reason and another turned into a mid-morning rendezvous at the trailhead. Our pace put us on the summit around noon, and back at the car by 1:30 or so – at least that’s the recollection.

Deep forest on the west and north sides of the mountain kept the heat at bay.

After starting out downhill from the car, the path maintains a fairly consistent uphill grade until it nears the summit, when the mountainside becomes noticeably steeper. Take heart, it’s a sign that the end is near.

Trekking poles came in quite handy especially on the steep section of trail which crosses broken ledge that marks the boundary between the lower mountain and its upper slopes.

Bungee and Spencer, the friends’ Australian cattle dogs, joined the four of us on the 3.2-mile round-trip.

Actually, the dogs and Alan Harris, physician from West Boylston and one of their owners, made it a bit longer by setting out on a bushwhack on the return.

The rest of us – Shelley Gorham of Ashby, Diane Lebel, also of West Boylston and also a physician, to whom Harris is married, and myself – trundled back down the same way we had ascended. We reached the car first, and were waiting when Harris and friends strode up the road.

Some New Hampshire state parks – Monadnock, for one – do not allow dogs. Miller State Park does allow them, leashed. Here’s a LIST.

The trip could have been longer – much longer. Gathering clouds drove a decision – it was 3-1 if memory serves, with Guess Who urging boldness – to forgo a dash for North Pack Monadnock, another 2.3 miles to the north. North Pack is at the northern end of the Wapack Trail, which begins 21 miles or so south, at Mount Watatic in Ashburnham, Mass.

July 14, 2007 - “It’s a wonderful park,” Stephen Clark, author of “Katahdin: A guide to Baxter State Park and Katahdin," said recently. “It’s one of a kind, one of the best in the United States. In a lot of the other parks, either state or federal, the goal is to accommodate as many people as possible. Because of the gifts and deeds of trust, that’s not the goal of Baxter Park.

“There’s a definite limit to the number of people who can stay in the park any given night, and that limitation causes it to be quite different in the management and in the type of experience you get there,” Clark said.

Clark, 70, has devoted his life to the outdoors, sparked by an early visit to Katahdin. Decades of Clark's energy were focused on establishing a chain of overnight shelters along the Appalachian Trail in Maine, relocating much of the trail onto permanently protected land, and ensuring it traversed as many of Maine’s scenic wonders as possible

He was born in a small town in New Jersey, a fact he ascribes to a “grievous error by his father and mother,” quickly remedied by a move to Maine where, Clark says, he’s been a native the rest of his life.

“As a young man I lived in a rural area of Maine, where I could roam pretty freely, out of doors. I didn’t have a lot of friends who lived near me so I spent a lot of time on my own outdoors,” Clark said.

Early on he read Donn Fendler’s book, “Lost on a Mountain in Maine,” and drew inspiration from it.

“I decided as a sophomore in high school I wanted to do some climbing. I and two friends went to Baxter – my father was good enough to let me stay there for a week. I met Gov. Baxter on that trip. That intrigued me, and the whole experience was thrilling. Later I discovered there was a hell of a lot more to Baxter State Park than Katahdin. Since then, I’ve spent as much time up there as I can.”

Clark worked with his father for a few years, selling heating equipment around Maine. In 1970 he became a teacher, and worked the next 18 years as a teacher and coach of cross-country, track and basketball at Waterville High School.

“I loved having the summers off so I could do all the things I loved to do,” Clark said, which turned out to be working on the Appalachian Trail, a 2,100-something-mile footpath from Georgia to Maine.

His involvement began in the early 1950s, when the Maine Appalachian Trail Club was a small group, in its infancy, and somewhat ineffective.

“The club was made up mostly of people drawn from Myron Avery’s friends in Washington,” Clark said.

Avery, of Lubeck, Maine, and Benton MacKaye (rhymes with “buy”) of Shirley, Mass., are credited with founding the Appalachian Trail – although regional bias can be detected when hikers debate who should have the lion’s share of that credit.

In “A Walk in the Woods,” author Bill Bryson is quite savage in his caricaturization of MacKaye’s role in establishing the trail, giving most credit to Avery.

Parts of Bryson's book are delightful, but he does have a mean streak in describing others - not just MacKaye. And, of course, like most people who set out to hike from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Katahdin in Maine, he bailed out part-way along.

When I met MacKaye at his home a year before his death in 1975, he seemed quite a pleasant fellow, imbued in old age with satisfaction over the very idea of the A-T, passionate that hikers should make the trek at a slow speed to enjoy the passing scenery.

"The idea of the trail is to look, and to see, and to really see what you see," he said in a voice made wavery by age. "If ever there were a race along the trail, I would give the prize to the slowest."

He never mentioned Avery.

“The first big task the club faced was to build a complete lean-to chain,” Clark said. “The only ones built at that time were from the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) in the late 1930s. We spent a lot of time building 20-odd shelters to complete the chain.

“The club got more and more people involved in the early ’60s. It was becoming obvious then that the trail on private land would be segmented unless purchased. We got the Scenic Trails Act passed in ’68, then in ’78 started to acquire the trail.

“The main focus from ’78 to ’92 was to locate trail where it should have been in the first place.” Clark said. “When Avery and his friends, mostly from out of state, began the process of putting the trail together, which culminated in 1938, he didn’t have any trail clubs or organizations that he could rely on to construct a trail from scratch.

“He patch-worked it by following pre-existing logging roads that were abandoned. They followed valley trails, and in a lot of cases these logging roads never got near scenic portions where they should have been.

“One example: Gulf Hagas in Central Maine is a big slate canyon that has many, many waterfalls. It’s an exceptional piece of real estate for people to see, but the tote road the trail was constructed along was set back some distance. It was a utilitarian tote road for buckboard teams, a good quarter-mile in places from the slate canyon and waterfalls. We relocated along the slate canyon‘s rim so people could see it,” Clark said.

“Avery didn’t have the manpower, he simply followed old logging roads. He’d walk along old tote roads and slap a white blaze on, and that was the A-T,” Clark said.

Maine has 280 miles of the Appalachian Trail, Clark said, and about 178 miles were relocated.

“We went over six new mountains, around the edges of ponds, arranged with the National Park Service to acquire the entire shoreline of a pond to protect access and views,” he said. “It was a major, major undertaking to relocate a trail like that. That’s kept me and a helluva lot of other dedicated people busy. It was a Herculean task, so you know what my weekends and summers were for 20 years.”

“It’s the first time I know of that volunteers ever worked with the National Park Service in a project where the volunteers actually decided where the trail would be. The idea was, ‘You buy it and we’ll manage it’,” Clark said.

“We wrapped up around 1992, and have been touching up the corridor the last 10 years. Now we’re working to improve the actual right of way and the campsites along it. We’re protecting slopes by trail hardening so erosion doesn’t occur, and managing the campsites. Managing numbers is the biggest challenge now. One thing that’s different from Baxter, we have no direct control of numbers,” Clark said.

“The beauty of Baxter Park of course is it has the legal authority to limit numbers. The big difference in management is how do we maintain a wonderful resource like the A-T with increasing numbers? Especially in Maine, which has the best section of the entire trail, techniques you use to manage a wilderness trail are different from more public parts.”

Clark met his wife, Barbara, at a dance when he was at Boston University a half-century ago. They fell in love, and married a year later. They have four children – two of them hikers and campers.

Barbara Clark had no outdoor experience but, in Clark’s words, “latched onto it.” Clark has served as president of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, his wife as secretary.

July 14, 2007 – Mount Katahdin’s Knife Edge is among the most spectacular sections of trail in New England.

This alpine arete arcs between Pamola Peak and South Peak, two high points on the massive mountain in northern Maine. Never very wide anywhere along its 1.1-mile length, in places the Knife Edge narrows to a few feet, with mountainsides plunging off to the left and right, and an intense sense of exposure.

“The route is very exposed and several people have died or been injured when attempting a traverse in poor weather or high winds,” Stephen Clark writes in his guide to Baxter State Park. “It should not be attempted in poor or marginal weather. Do not attempt to leave the ridge once you have started. Several ravines have the dangerously misleading appearance of an easy short-cut descent off the ridge toward Chimney Pond. These lead to almost vertical drops which are impossible to negotiate without technical equipment and experience. There is no blazing on the trail as none is necessary. There are only three ways to go: forward, backward, or straight down!”

After arising not too early in a lean-to at Roaring Brook a few years ago, my son Alan and I hit the trail at 7:45 a.m., heading for Baxter Peak, 5,267 feet above sea level, the high point on Katahdin. Roaring Brook is about 1,450 feet above sea level, so the route ascends a little over 3,800 feet of elevation.

It took 6 1/2 hours to hike the 9.3-mile loop from Roaring Brook Campground to Chimney Pond, up the Cathedral Trail to Baxter, over the Knife Edge to Pamola Peak, and down the Helon (Hee-lon) Taylor Trail back to Roaring Brook.

The first leg of the route, 3.3 miles, follows Roaring Brook to Basin Ponds and to Chimney Pond at the mouth of South Basin. It ends, and the Cathedral Trail begins a steep, 1.6-mile ascent to Baxter, about 2,350 feet above Chimney Pond. The route derives its name from three fractured towers that, with imagination, can be seen as Gothic cathedrals.

At about 4,000 feet above sea level, we climbed into clouds, which began to condense on everything. It was not raining, exactly, but we soon were soaked.

From Baxter to Pamola, we followed the 1.1-mile-long Knife Edge Trail, surely one of the most spectacular hiking paths in the Northeast.

Alan scampered and I plodded along this glacial arete – or ridge – which, at times, was a foot wide with 2,000-foot sheer drops on each side. (More often it was the width of a double door, but the drops remained.) Gusty winds and wet clouds enlivened the traverse.

Near the eastern end of the Knife Edge, the trail drops into a saddle between Chimney and Pamola peaks.

What memory recalled as a 15-to-20 foot down climb – with only a couple of tricky moves – was really 45 feet of vertical cliff face, with sustained rock climbing moves.

Four people were resting in the saddle, sheltering from the wind against the cliff face.

“Have you done this before,” one asked.

“Years ago,” I replied, “and it's a lot steeper now than it was then.”

“Where are we?” he asked.

I said I was pretty sure that we had just dropped off Chimney Peak and, with luck, were about to climb Pamola Peak, from where the Helon Taylor Trail would lead us 3.2 miles back to Roaring Brook.

Fortunately, I was right.

The drive to Baxter State Park is 375 miles and 6 hours from Central New England, if you go 73 mph and don't stop except once for gasoline and a couple of times to pay tolls. Take I-95 north to Millinocket and head west.

Important tip: If you plan to stay at one of the campgrounds in Baxter State Park, bring water or a water filter.

And make reservations. Baxter State Park limits access and prohibits dogs. The rules and regulations have maintained an extraordinary wilderness feel to a place that otherwise might have lost it to the tramp of many feet.

Guide book: “Katahdin: A guide to Baxter State Park and Katahdin” by Stephen Clark, Thorndike Press, $19.95.

Fall of 1972: Drove to Roaring Brook and hiked in 3 miles to Chimney Pond. Camped in an open-faced shelter on the far side of the pond. A black bear visited camp at supper time, and again in the middle of the night, pawing through packs leaning against the front of the shelter. Awoke to a moose in the pond – which was the drinking water supply.

February 1976: Snowshoed in from the park entrance 7 miles to Roaring Brook. Camped in a shelter, then hiked 3 miles to Chimney Pond. Swenson and Swenson bear paws, made in Japan and purchased at Charlie’s Surplus in Worcester, Mass. Fresh snow, avalanches off the mountain.

Mid-1970s, summer: Climbed one of the arêtes in the bowl above Chimney Pond with Lee Spiller. Stayed at Pray's Cottages, drove to Roaring Brook, hiked in, climbed, traversed the Knife Edge, then hiked out. Ah, youth.

The first pitch up the arête was particularly interesting: I belayed Spiller from the base of a rotten gully, tucked in behind a large boulder, with the rope tied off to another large boulder in the middle of the gully. A rock dislodged and came bouncing down from above, caroming off the sides. I flattened against the boulder; the rock missed me, but scored a direct hit on the brand-new, green kernmantle rope, which exploded at the point of impact into tufts of white nylon. The knife was in Spiller’s pack, so I tied the damaged spot into a figure eight knot, and climbed, intending to perform surgery at the top of the pitch. As I rounded a corner just below Spiller’s belay stance, I heard mutterings, and popped into view to see him untying the figure eight which, of course, couldn’t pass through his belay plate. “Oh, look at that,” he said when I explained what had happened below. We performed surgery and continued with a shortened rope.

As seems true many days at Katahdin then and now, the upper reaches of the mountain were socked in with clouds, driven by a stiff wind. We didn’t know how far we had to go. Then the angle began to ease a little, we started moving together, and all of a sudden we were on the Knife Edge.

On that trip we also hiked around North Basin, but on a different day. High on the talus slope below Howe Peaks, we came upon a carcass that the rangers speculated was a caribou, one of a small herd released in Baxter a few years earlier.

May 7, 2007 – John Hanley, 43, of Ashby bought his first mountain bike in the early 1990s so he could explore the trails of North Central Massachusetts faster than he could on foot.

“My first bike – I still have it today, but it’s been changed in every conceivable way,” Hanley said. “I broke every part. I broke the handlebars on that bike, the stem and seat post, the rear wheel, both crank arms at different times, and then eventually the frame went.

“In a way, that bike lasted me about two years, but in another way I still have it. It’s a warranty replacement bike. I use it for trail building. I have it set up so I can carry hand saws, lopping shears, a hand shovel, things like that,” he said.

As a boy growing up in Fitchburg, Hanley would ride in woods behind the Wallace Civic Center on John Fitch Highway.

“Fitchburg State has its track there now, but it all used to be trails, and we would leave in the morning and come back after dark,” he said.

“Everyone in my family had bikes, recreational bikes, before there were mountain bikes. We did a fair amount of road stuff, but even when we were kids we were riding our Stingrays in the woods and jumping. Mountain biking isn’t as new as people think it is.”

Hanley moved to Townsend, Mass., 16 years ago, and started hiking in Townsend State Forest and Pearl Hill.

“I was learning the trails, they were all pretty close to my house, but I just wasn’t covering enough ground fast enough. That’s when I started getting frustrated there wasn’t enough time in the day,” he said. “I was curious about where all these trails would go. So I bought a $400 bike, which was a big money bike back then.

“I was hooked right away the first time I rode a trail that I was curious about. That was it. I don’t think I ever hiked in that way again,” Hanley said.

Hanley is manager of Gamache Cyclery on Laurel Street in Fitchburg. The shop started in 1915, and is owned by George Gamache, son of the founder.

“As I rode more and rode with other people, I learned how far you can go, how technical you can get, how much abuse those bikes can take,” he said.

Most of his mishaps ended with him unhurt, his bike banged up and, occasionally, Hanley walking out of the woods.

“But when that crank arm went we were riding pretty technical terrain at a pretty high rate of speed, downhill, a lot of weight on the pedals, that thing just separated, and I went flying into the woods, and I don’t remember it happening that much, but I do remember losing the skin across my forearm, and on the right side of my face, next to my nose. I came in here the next day, looked terrible. George asked me what happened, and I said those crankarms let go on me,” Hanley said.

"That’s something that’s not supposed to happen. George was a little worried, and fixed them right away.

“When I got more serious, I had better bikes, you know, you’re more into the sport, it allows you to go faster, and that’s when the injuries start to get a little more serious. You get cocky, keep progressing, improving, start to feel you can’t do any wrong, until you have an injury that breaks some ribs, or your collarbone or something like that. The first trip to the hospital, that’s the one that humbles you,” he said.

Hanley rides early several days a week, alone or with friends, often on the trail by 6 a.m. for rides that don’t take time away from his family. He and his wife, Tara, have two children, Maggie and Patrick, but only John is into biking.

Hanley said a person can get started in mountain biking with a good bike and basic accessories for under $600. “If you want to do trail riding, and I’m not talking a mix of pavement and cart roads, I’m talking a mix of cart roads and single track, you’re going to get a good bike for $500. You need at least front suspension, and a nice light frame of good quality. And a helmet,” he said.

“There are lots of things that make for a better experience, like shorts and gloves,” Hanley said.

Clipless pedals and shoes are more comfortable and more secure, he said, because they mechanically connect rider to bike and keep the foot from coming off the pedal.

Cycling clothing wicks away moisture, and makes the rider comfortable, he said, although on Saturday mornings he rides with a group of older guys who wear cutoff t-shirts.

Two others items he said many riders use are Cambelbak water bags and bike computers.

A safe entry level helmet costs $32; computers $29 and up, shorts, $45 and up.

Hanley's advice: Start basic and build slow.

“The thing with all these items, there are tons of different manufacturers and tons of different price points on all this stuff. A beginner rider certainly doesn’t need a $300 pair of bike shorts,” he said.

Hanley said the New England Mountain Bike Association has an array of online forums and also publishes “Single Tracks,” which lists rides across New England.

He also recommended Leominster State Forest as a good place for people in Central New England who are starting the sport.

“It’s well marked and has the best trails, with trail maps at some of the parking areas. On a weekend day you won’t get lost, and even if you do there’s always someone else riding. It’s everything – fire roads to some really long climbs and really long descents, well maintained, bridges over most of the wet areas, difficult trails to beginner trails,” he said.

Barre Falls Dam in Barre, Mass., is another likely spot in Central New England.

In the Boston area, Blue Hills State Reservation in Milton offers a network of trails for all abilities.

"The White Mountain Ride Guide" by Marty Basch describes 40 mountain bike routes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Most ski resorts offer mountain biking in spring, summer and fall - including Mount Snow, which will host the Mount Snow USA Cycling Mountain Bike Championships July 17 to 22.

April 24, 2007 - The AMC White Mountain Guide, oldest continuously published trail guide in North America, marks its centennial this year with a new edition, the 28th in a line that dates back to 1907.

Called “the Guide” by generations of New Englanders, this 624-page book describes the region’s hiking trails, trailheads, elevations, distances, huts and more. It includes six maps, completely revised, with trail distances marked for each segment. The Guide is published by the Appalachian Mountain Club; cost: $24.95.

Gene Daniell of Concord, N.H., and Steve Smith of Lincoln, N.H., are co-editors. Larry Garland is cartographer. They'll be part of panel discussions and Q&As to unveil the Guide May 9 at the Highland Center in Crawford Notch, N.H., and May 23 at AMC headquarters, 5 Joy St., Boston, Mass.

Depending on how one counts, the two editors spent six concentrated weeks to compile the guide, or much of their lives.

Both are avid hikers, members of the Four Thousand Footer Club, committed to trails and to stewardship of the land.

Daniell, 59, has been editing the guide since 1982.

“This dropped in my lap by accident,” Daniell said. “In the fall of ’73 I tried to do a hike around Cardigan Mountain, an 18-mile hike to do the whole ridge. I found the trail on the South Ridge closed by a property owner who objected to people wandering into his house without permission. So I relocated the trail – with his permission – and sent a note to the guidebook saying I relocated the trail. I got a note back from the editor who said we don’t have a person to take care of Cardigan, would I do it. When he retired he asked me to be the editor. It sort of dropped from heaven,” Daniell said.

On a drive up Mount Washington in the late ’60s, Daniell and his brother talked about how neat it would be to climb the mountain on foot, just to say they had done it.

His brother gave him the White Mountain Guide for Christmas. Daniell saw the Four Thousand Footer list and, as a natural collector, got immediately addicted. In the years since, he estimates that he has walked 20,000 miles on and off trails.

“I had no idea when I got the guide in Christmas ’69, eight years later I’d be working on it, and 12 years later I’d be in charge of it,” Daniell said.

“The first demand of all this is that it be easy to understand. I like to make it as graceful as possible consistent with the first demand that it be clear. Writing a simple expository piece is not as easy as people think. In most writing, people get used to a certain ambiguity. In our case, ambiguity is a very bad thing,” Daniell said.

Daniell received a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard, and a master’s from the University of New Hampshire. His plans to teach in college ran into the Vietnam War. He resisted the draft, went to prison for 18 months, and came out with limited job opportunities.

Daniell said that editing the White Mountain Guide was a way to use his talents to do something of value.

Social activism ran in the family. His father, Eugene Daniell, threw a tear gas bomb into the ventilator of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1930s to “chase the money lenders from the temple,” then went into politics in New Hampshire where, Daniell said, he was considered a maverick.

Daniell was born in Laconia, and raised in Franklin. He has been married twice, and has two children by each marriage, Eugene IV, Karen, William and Caitlin. He has lived the past 23 years in Concord with his wife, Debi Clark.

Love of mountains also runs in the family. He and Clark met on an AMC day hike across the Bond Range in ’82. And all four children are Four Thousand Footer Club members.

“My oldest son – now 37 – was the youngest to do the Four Thousand Footers of the White Mountains in winter,” Daniell said.

Daniell invited Smith to be co-editor when Jon Burroughs stepped aside in 2001.

Smith, 53, originally from New Jersey, ended up doing odd jobs one summer at the Mount Washington Hotel and kept coming back.

“I got into hiking in the late ’70s when I worked at the hotel. I hiked a little as a kid in the Boy Scouts, in the Catskills. In college I didn’t do anything outdoorsy. Bretton Woods is at the base of the Presidentials, staring you in the face every day, and naturally you want to climb them. I was hiking pretty regularly by 1978,” Smith said.

“Somebody advised me to pick up ‘the Guide.’ I picked up the ’76 edition, and ended up doing all the Four Thousand Footers with a friend. I finished in 1981, and kept hiking. Every time a new edition of the book came out I’d buy it,” he said.

Smith and Daniell met on a winter hike in the late ’80s, which Daniell led among the many winter outings he ran for the AMC New Hampshire Chapter.

Smith submitted comments on the guide to Daniell in ’92 and ’98, as Daniell had done years before, and when Burroughs left in 2001, Daniell invited Smith to join the project.

“It was a dream for me,” Smith said. “The guide is a treasured tradition in White Mountain hiking, and now I was to get paid for it.

“You feel connected to all these people who have been editors and committee people. We’re just caretakers. We try to treat it with love and respect. You still see some of the original passages from early editions; there’s always new stuff but some of the original material has remained. It’s something that thousands and thousands of hikers have come to rely on over the years,” Smith said.

Close reading of changes in the Guide shows a chronicle of the history of White Mountain trails, Smith said, such as the abandonment of trails after the ’38 hurricane, and during World War II when people weren’t around to work on them.

New trail systems are being built, he said, primarily in the southern part of New Hampshire, including the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge, Metacomet-Monadnock and Monadnock-Sunapee systems.

“Few trails are being built in the White Mountains,” Smith said. “It’s a very mature trail network. The White Mountain Guide covers 1,400 miles of trails, 1,200 of them in national forest, some outlying in the Squam Range and some stuff up in the north country and the Mahoosucs.

“For this last edition we did at least some revision to many of the trails; about 60 percent of them have some changes. We went a little extra this time because it’s the centennial. We added – which is mostly my fault – about 30 pages of text in very small increments,” Smith said.

Smith has operated The Mountain Wanderer, a small specialty book store in Lincoln, N.H., for nine summers. The store focuses on hiking, Smith said, and the steady stream of hikers is a source of information for the White Mountain Guide. His wife, Carol, is a school librarian and avid hiker.

Smith said trail maintaining organizations - the U.S. Forest Service - White Mountain National Forest, the AMC and other mountain clubs like the Randolph Mountain Club - are primary sources of information about the trails.

“One of the things we try to push as guidebook editors and Four Thousand Footer Committee members is stewardship, getting involved in trail maintenance especially as budgets get tighter and tighter.

“Clubs really do a lot. The AMC maintains 300-something miles of trails in the White Mountains. The Forest Service is responsible for 600. Randolph Mountain Club has 100-plus miles. Wonalancet Out Door Club has 52 miles. AMC has an adopt-a-trail program where groups commit to three trips a year and do brushing, blazing and removing fallen trees, and the biggest most important job is keeping the water bars clean,” Smith said.

As for use of the guide, Smith said, “Obviously we want people to be safe, and use common sense and plan out their trips, have contingencies for bad weather, let people know where they’re going.” He said the book includes a blurb on hikeSafe, a program of the White Mountain National Forest and New Hampshire Fish and Game, which lists six aspects of a hiker responsibility code.

“The other thing we want is for hikers to tread lightly on the land. There’s a page in there on Leave No Trace, successor to Carry In Carry Out. A lot of that’s pretty obvious, and comes back to stewardship … One of the biggest things is the fragility of the vegetation above treeline; stay on trail, stay on bare rock and don’t step on the plants,” Smith said.

Daniell wishes some things were different in the 28th Edition of the White Mountain Guide, and points to aspects he wanted done a certain way, that he considered important for readers and users of the guide.

“I’ve been doing it for 25 years,” Daniell said. “I’m retiring now. I’m doing a little bit of bitching because the job of book program director is open now, and I’m in a position to burn a few bridges.

“A guidebook is not a coffee table book,” he said. “The problem is they think of it as a literary production, not something people carry with them. It’s a constant battle between length and detail.”

Among his criticisms: the production editor was not a hiker; trail names were not bold-faced; part of “To the reader of this book” at the very beginning was cut; recycled paper, heavier and less durable, was used instead of stronger, lighter new paper; and in some places clarity was sacrificed to style.

“One of the small things: Here, we constantly say Mt. Washington and Kinsman Mt. The editor said the Chicago Manual of Style says you abbreviate Mt. before Washington, but not Mountain after Kinsman. That adds characters, and lines and pages. It doesn’t do anything at all for the reader. The publications people say it’s something readers pick up – but they don’t. We should be motivated by hiker needs, not by other things,” Daniell said.

A bigger thing, to Daniell, was cutting out the first paragraph of “To the reader of this book,” the very beginning of the guide.

“It started out trying to make the point the White Mountain Guide is something you have to use with discretion. Because things change, the Guide can only be a snapshot of how things were in a certain moment of time. Just because a trail was passable in fall 2006 doesn’t mean it will be passable in spring 2007. We’ve had lots of storms, lots of trees down, we don’t know what’s happened to some of the trails. Some are used all winter long so we have a good idea about them, others don’t see much winter traffic and for all we know there’s a large blowdown on some of these trails.

“Sometimes all it takes is for a sign or arrow to drop, and something that was obvious isn’t obvious anymore. A tree drops and people start getting off the trail,” Daniell said.

Smith is more diplomatic in his assessment of the guide.

He recalled the words of Dan Ford, a ski writer who wrote about camping for two weeks in the White Mountains in 1976. “He said of the Guide, ‘Like a Volkswagen Beetle, it improves in small increments until it becomes a perfect thing of its kind.’

“I don’t know what the next 100 years will bring, but I hope there will still be a printed version,” Smith said.