Our Story

Backpacking: Before and After

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Allison

For those who have been curious about how baby backpacking has changed how we do trips, here you go!

Before:

Thursday night e-mails:

Me:    Want to go backpacking after work on Friday?

Sean:  Sure, where to?

Me:    I don’t know. Let’s head north and figure it out on the way.

We check the weather, but it doesn’t really matter, because we’ll go rain or shine. We grab our gear, which is always packed and ready, and leave about 7pm on Friday after a quick run to the supermarket for supplies. We pull into a campground around 11pm, and take out the spare tent to grab a few hours of sleep. The next morning we are up early, and head into the woods. We aren’t quite sure where we will camp, but plan to wing it and crash along the trail somewhere.  I hoist my 25 lb pack that includes a book to read and a flask of something to drink by starlight. We hike until we are tired, about 12 miles in 6 hours over a couple of 4k peaks, and then find a slightly uneven, but passable, campsite along a wooded ridge. We cook a fancy camp stove meal. As the sun sets, we night hike out to a scenic view and talk long after the stars come out.  The next morning, we sleep until the sun gets too hot on our tent, then we loop back along the trail to our car. On the way home we stop at a pub for some sweet potato fries and a frosty brew. We get home about 9pm, and roll into bed to be ready for work in the morning.

After:

May E-mails:

Me: Hey, so we have a few weekends in July on the calendar to go backpacking. What are you thinking?

Sean:  Provides list of 5 different alternatives includes mileage and elevation estimates cross referenced with cell coverage charts.

We spend a month discussing backpacking routes that meet the criteria:  not a lot of elevation, 2-3 miles per day, near something interesting like a river or other feature, plenty of room for the ginormous tent and easy bailout routes. We spend the week prior to the trip packing and organizing the gear, which has been scattered all over the house and garage because we haven’t really had time to put it back together after the last trip. We obsess over the weather reports, fingers crossed for a warm sunny forecast. We spend days counting how many diapers he uses, how many bottles he is down to, how many calories of food needs. We vacuum seal his formula and other meals. Finally, we leave on a Saturday morning around 10 am, after 3 hours of last-minute packing in which we stuff half the nursery into the baby carrier. We fill a heavy thermos with hot water for bottles. Because I will carry the Mancub and all his gear, and have little room for anything else, Sean will have to carry both my clothing and the group gear, in addition to his own stuff. The dog has the honor of packing out dirty diapers.

We drive north, and time our hike to start after the Mancub gets lunch and a diaper change in the back of the car. I hoist my 40 lb pack on my back, and slowly stagger up the trail. We hike for 3 hours (including a 40 minute break for baby bottle and playtime) and get to our campsite, which is 2.5 miles up a fairly level trail. We are tired, and Sean hurries to set up the tent so the kiddo can have a “safe space” to play without getting eaten alive by mosquitos.  We play a little in the stream near our site, cook a quick pasta dinner and fall asleep as the sun sets. Most of our conversation sounds like this: “Hey, is that a stick? What are you doing with that stick? No, no mouth! Let’s look at this leaf. Do you like this leaf? Wow, it’s so pretty. Look at the frog. What’s that silly frog doing?  No, no mouth!”

We wake the next morning at 5am when the Mancub body-slams my head and clocks Sean with a water bottle. We spend the morning organizing and repacking all the gear that has been taken apart and flung around the tent. We play a little more in the stream by our site. At 11am, we pack up and head back down the trail, taking several stops to explore the stream along the way and do snacks and bottles. The Mancub sleeps for much of the hike.  We are off the trail around 1:30pm, and stop for a quick slice of pizza. We get back home in time to throw all our gear in a pile on the floor or scatter it around the garage, and stay on schedule for dinner and bath time. As darkness falls, we collapse in bed, exhausted (and happy).

Are we crazy to do that much work for such short trips? Perhaps a little bit. But we are having too much fun exploring the world with our little guy to care…

Categories: Backpacking, Our Story, Toddlers, Trip Planning | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

A Trip to the Mountains

Posted on July 2, 2012 by Allison

This past weekend we headed out to the mountains to do a trial run campout before we head out on the mancub’s first birthday backpacking trip next weekend. One thing we are learning about being in the wild with a little wild one is that we have to slow ourselves down, and take time to play. It isn’t about the big peaks or the long paddles, but about stopping along a stream and waving around sticks. We had a great trip out. Only a few blackflies, the butterflies were out and about by the hundreds, and the thunderstorms didn’t blow through until after we made it off the trail. Bliss.

Categories: Infants, Our Story | 2 Comments

Happy Mothers Day

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Allison

Me and Mom, looking for birds

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Kids Losing the Right to Roam?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Allison

dailymail.co.uk

I’ve seen this article , published by the UK newspaper The Daily Mail, popping up all over the place on the internet lately, and it always makes me pause. The article describes a report published by Natural England and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds that looks at the distance from home that subsequent generations of children were allowed to wander on their own. As you can see in the illustration, which shows the range of children in four generations of the same family, kids today are lucky to be able to wander a few hundred yards from their own front doors, compared to the range of several miles that their great-grandparents were allowed.

This hits home. Every time I think about my own son and where I’ll allow him to go, I wonder if I can manage to be as permissive as I want to be. As a child, I lived in a rural setting surrounded by fields and woods. I often wandered by myself in our own yard and the hayfields bordering it. As I got older, I rode my bike a few miles to friends’ houses, or went on long nature walks into the woods near my home. Now, my family lives in a more suburban environment with a lot of traffic. I can’t say I’m comfortable with the kiddo wandering very far on his own. If we lived in a wilder place I would want him to have the kinds of adventures I did, but it still makes me nervous.

In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv documented research that showed that the dangers of children being abducted or molested have not increased in the last 50 years, but the media hype associated with them has, and this is one of the main reasons parents restrict children’s movements. I would add concern about injury and getting lost to this, even though I know that as a kid I rarely lost my way, and only sustained minor injuries during my wanderings. But what if can be a nerve-wracking thought.

Where we live is not very kid-friendly. There is a playground within walking distance, but to get there you have to cross a busy road. There are no sidewalks. A lot of other parks in our area have rules about how old children have to be to go there by themselves, and I expect I’d get a call from the police if I let my son play on his own. Our society has created so many barriers to children’s’ freedom, it seems like fighting a losing battle. I think my family is going to have to set some priorities, and decide if the convenience of our current location is enough. I think we are going to have to head to the woods if we want the kiddo to have the same kinds of independent experiences we had when we were young.

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Tiny Snowflakes

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Allison

Laughing at tiny snowflakes. Photo by Sean Donohue 2012

It seems like we’ve had nothing but rain this winter, at least until this morning, when  flurries of perfectly developed little snowflakes started falling all over the seacoast. We are on the tail end of about 3 weeks of everyone in the house being sick with something or other, so we were excited to escape our germ factory and flee for the seashore for a bit of fresh air. The horizon was blurry with snow, and we could barely make out the hulking shape of the lighthouse guarding the entrance to the river.

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Fighting the Winterblues: New England Aquarium Style

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Allison

I’ll admit it, though it will send shudders down the spines of all my teleskiing fanatic friends: winter is not my favorite time of year. I can appreciate it in small bursts. I love the crystalline beauty of a morning following a storm, and spent many hours as a kid playing in the frosty woods behind my house, following the tracks of field mice to see where they went, always hoping to see evidence of wildlife drama. I tried winter mountaineering, but that ended after one weekend outing where my eyelids froze shut. So nowadays I’ll bundle up to take the kiddo for walks, or hit the beach for some ice bocce, or get excited about our annual xc skiing weekends, but other than that, I’m dreaming of summer.

This is where the New England Aquarium comes in. Right before New Year’s we decided to brave the icy weather and head south to the aquarium to introduce the kiddo to some fish. To beat the crowds, we got there right as the doors opened at 9am, which meant that we had a good two hours until the perfect storm of Liam’s attention span and the overcrowding of a winter break weekday hit. In that time, we watched the kiddo become fascinated by the silvery fish zipping past him. He also seems to have developed a bit of a penguin obsession.

 Oh, and the best part? Now they have a shark and ray touch tank. Frankly, this part was all about me. Liam’s fingers are far too little to dangle in a touch tank, but mine sure weren’t. Rays are rather slimy, but still pretty darn cool.

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Babypacking

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Allison

I like this picture because it makes me look like I hike much faster than I actually do. Photo Sean Donohue 2011

There’s a cold wind blowing outside that signals the end of our tenting season for the year, and is making me think fondly back to our first family camping trip in September, the last time it was warm enough to wear shorts in the woods. I’ll be posting a story soon about our last attempt at camping out which resulted in a long drive home late at night, but in the meantime, we are packing up our summer gear, putting away the canoes and kayaks, and starting the traditional winter trip planning season, where we pour over maps and dream about long summer days on the water. This next year we will have the added excitement of introducing the Kiddo to the canoe. In the meantime, we have a bunch of day hikes, ski trips and rustic cabin camping to keep us busy until iceout. Bring it on!

 

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After Irene

Posted on September 19, 2011 by Allison

Washed out walkway along the Swift River

A few weeks ago, tropical storm Irene blasted its way through New England. Part of its path directly crossed some of our favorite wilderness areas around the White Mountain National Forest in New Hampshire, and a number of roads were closed for a few weeks while crews repaired washouts from the storm. People were getting concerned, since we are approaching leaf-peeping season and the state desperately needs the tourism activity to maintain livelihoods. Over the past few days these roads have re-opened, and we took a little jaunt north to see how things were looking along the Pemigewasset Wilderness. We are planning to do a little backpacking trip with the kid in this area in the next few weeks, so were anxious to see what trailheads are re-opened, and if our planned campsite has washed away.

While the roads seem to be repaired and back to normal, a few areas are lower on the repair lists, including this path along the Swift river.  We discovered that a number of key bridges have washed out on the trails we were originally planning to trek along, so we are going back to research mode and looking for another spot to head out to next week. For the backpacking trip we need a trail that will bring us a few miles in, provide  access to water and tentspace, and be an easy enough hike that we can do it with a baby in a carrier (me) and an overloaded pack (Sean). More on that later…

Categories: Backpacking, Our Story, Trip Planning | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

The Saddest Member of the Pack

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Allison

Video: Freya on a flooded trail in the White Mountains National Forest

This whole baby thing has been a rough transition for our dog. She loves nothing more than the opportunity to roll in smelly mud, but she hasn’t been able to do that as often as usual. I’ve been hiking with the baby a lot of mornings, but I haven’t been bringing the dog with me because she’s not real good on a leash, and it’s a lot for me to handle while I’m getting myself back in shape. It was especially tricky in the first few weeks when I was afraid the dog would pull me sideways and re-injure my stomach muscles. So she watches me pack up the baby and head out the door, and I hear soft whimpering as I go down the stairs. It’s awful.

Fortunately, we can take her when there are two of us, so she gets a few exciting adventures a week. I know that the moment the first cheerio hits the floor she and the baby will be best friends, but right now she isn’t real thrilled about the newest member of the pack.

This video is from happier days.

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Picnic, Interrupted

Posted on September 4, 2011 by Allison

Snacking on Deadly Nightshade

Perhaps I should have been suspicious when I saw that there was a prime spot still available at the park so late in the day.  It had everything we were looking for: an oceanfront setting, a big shade tree, and a barbecue grill. I pushed a stroller full of  picnic supplies over to the table, plopped down in my folding camp chair to nurse the Kiddo, and waited for Sean and our friends to arrive.

A few minutes after I got there, I discovered that the site had something we weren’t looking for: a resident groundhog. He (or she?) popped out of the large boulders that marked the beginning of the rocky shore, and gave me a steely glare. And then charged straight at me. I didn’t know it at the time, but some concentrated googling later that evening informed me that groundhogs are actually very aggressive creatures who will fight to the death to protect their young or their homes. There was no clear reason for this one to find me threatening, unless he just didn’t like babies, but he very quickly violated what I consider my safe wildlife proximity zone. I figured if I had to I could probably manage to jump on top of the picnic table, even while nursing, or perhaps scoopkick him back over the rock wall. I too am a fierce creature when defending my young.

Just about to charge...

Fortunately, it didn’t get that far. I managed to turn him around by vigorously waving a cloth diaper in his direction, and he scurried back to the wall, where he proceeded to munch on some deadly nightshade. It was an uneasy truce for a while, but he finally moved off down the park when the rest of my group arrived.

It sounds funny, to talk about being threatened by something that appears as harmless as a groundhog. People have all seen footage of Punxsutawney Phil being lifted out of his burrow to make friendly predictions about the weather, and assume groundhogs are cuddly little creatures. Though they can be “tamed”, it takes a lot of work to do so, and they are wild creatures with powerful claws for digging burrows and teeth sharpened by gnawing on vegetation. Not something I want to tussle with. I tried to imagine the life of this particular groundhog. He had to endure harsh weather along the seashore. His burrow likely flooded during the recent storms, and I wonder where he went during the storm, if he had to huddle in the woods at the edge of the park waiting for the waters to recede. In the winter he hibernates, but the soil on the coast must be rocky and hard to dig. A few moments after he left our site, some kids from another table started to harass him. They threw watermelon rinds at him, and dared one another to try and get closer; they laughed and screamed each time he charged them, oblivious to how deadly serious the creature was taking their “game”. I imagined day after day of this. No wonder he tried to scare me away.

Even groundhogs dream of the sea

We barbecued quietly and enjoyed a great evening of fine conversation as the sun slipped down behind the trees. After a few hours we left the groundhog in peace to reclaim his territory.

Categories: Our Story, Wildlife | Tags: , | 1 Comment

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