Franconia Notch and the White Mountains

The White Mountains and the surrounding town of Lincoln are that rare wonderland of nature far enough from any major city to offer a real feel of escape and yet close enough for us New England city folk to call our own.

For many of us raised here family trips to Loon Mountain, the Lost River or the Polar Caves are a rite of passage. For me they continued for many years and now my wife and I have made them a fall tradition.

After a year of missing out on our traditions, the places we love and my wife being cheated out of her birthday we decided to take a drive up to Franconia Notch in the spring. There is a healing force to the great outdoors that not even the sorrow of a pandemic can endure.

The drive north to New Hampshire is an adventure on its own. Watching the buildings and factories gradually give way to timber and, ultimately, mountains creates a threshold into the world of nature. Undoubtedly, it is a transformation best appreciated in the fall, the season of transformation, but spring and summer bring charms of their own. The drive up to Portsmouth, York, Kennebunkport and Jaffrey, New Hampshire for camp each summer proved as much. Nature is at her full bloom if not full radiance.

Welcoming travelers into the state line are the giant alfalfa farm silo and The Common Man Roadside rest stop. We make it a point to stop at the Common Man upon each journey north. Established in 1971 with its diner, coffee and candy shop and general store, it is the gateway to the country.

Usually, we conclude our day trips to Lincoln with a visit to the Christmas Loft, a small holiday boutique n North Woodstock that is just as much a warm-up for the magic of Christmas to come as the colorful leaves of the Kancamagus are for the season of pumpkins, cornucopias ad turkey.

This year we visited the little shop first. It is a quaint little store tucked away amongst the trees. But what a charming heart-warming sensation it conjures once the doors are crossed. The inventory ranges from the licensed (Jim Shore carvings of popular characters) to higher end vintage style ornaments. Once inside the merchandise is organized into sections. Nativity statues or varying sizes occupy one unit, another is dedicated to light displays while one section is usually devoted to Halloween though this year it sat vacant. The heart of the shop are the village displays; holiday dioramas consisting of model sized buildings, shops, houses and miniature figurines. There is a Halloween village with witches and spooky shops, a Dickens village with Victorian carolers and one recreating a mid-century diner.

The Christmas Loft is always a pleasant stop but, and perhaps this was especially felt this year when summer is tentatively hinting at the best hope yet for a return to joyousness, it felt harder than usual to get into the Christmas spirit in May.

This sensation, however, was soon dissipated once we reached North Conway and made our first visit to that locale’s branch of the Christmas Loft. This felt more of an experience than a mere shop as navigating to the individual booths takes visitors through a walk-through city at yuletide. Animatronic reminiscent of Jordan Marsh’s  bygone Enchanted Village (many of which have since found a new home at Jordan’s Furniture) surround visitors. To the left is an animated scene of children skating and slipping on a frozen pond, on a corner stands a figure behind a kettle, a recording indicating he is selling roasted chestnuts, Edwardian era indoor displays can be seen through the mock building windows (a barber shop, a grocer at work, sleepless children by the fireplace anticipating the surprises of Christmas Day, a post office and Santa at his workshop. Above Santa flies over the rooftops on his sleigh with his band of reindeer.

I may have been dourer than usual this year or maybe the season was just wrong, but I was saddened to think that maybe the magic had wore off on me, but the North Conway store brought it back.

This year we forewent most of our annual staples, some by choice some by necessity. The gondola lift to the top of Loon Mountain and the drive through the Kancamagus are best experienced with the colors of autumn. Clark’s Trading Post with its trained black bears was closed for the season and the Lost River was too out of our way for our agenda this year.

This year, in celebration of my wife’s birthday we paid a visit to Hobo Hills, a mini golf course we always pass through on our drive through Lincoln but never before fit into our itinerary.

It is a family friendly course with eighteen holes, old railway cars for the curious, talking vagabond dummies and signage teaching Hobo Code. Our game lasted just over an hour and brought us around the course, through artificial coves, through a bridge over a pond where mallards swam and back to the parking lot by sunset.

The highlight of the first day was a visit to Franconia Notch State Park, climaxing at the Basin, or the Old Man’s Foot as it lies beneath what was the overlook of the Old Man of the Mountain before it crumbled to the earth in May of 2003.

The hike to the Basin itself is worth the trip. Hemlocks and northern hardwood spruces that line the path are remnants of the once truly wild forest that had fallen almost to its entirety to the homesteader’s axe by the start of the 20th century. At 30 feet wide and 15 feet deep, the Basin, once reached, is a marvel that sung to the heart of Henry David Thoreau who wrote of its alluring beauty in his A Week on the Merrimack and the Concord Rivers, a work predating Walden which details his journey upstream the two rivers with his brother John in the fall of 1839.

This rocky bowl of swirling water began life in the Ice Age and after thousands of years of water swirling against the stones, Mother Nature carved a smooth rocky pool. The continuous sound of whirling icy water as it cascades gently from the rocks is a reminder of the soothing power of the forest.

A short drive up brings visitors to one of the many former observation sites of the Old Man of the Mountain. The love and longing for this fallen ancient outcrop of rocks forming what looked like a giant stone face hanging from Cannon Mountain may be hard for outsiders to comprehend, but to many New Englanders it became an emblem of the natural mysteries that surrounded the region they call home. Pilgrimages to its site have continued after its demise. There is little evidence that the native inhabitants of Cannon Mountain paid much heed but since the 19^th century it has sparked the imagination of such local figures as Daniel Webster, Nathaniel Hawthorne and countless surveyors, families and travelers. It became the emblem of New Hampshire in 1945, cementing it as part of our shared history.

Lincoln offers a lively nightlife. McDonald’s, Dunkin’s and Subway have staked a claim on the main road but family-owned diners such as Black Mtn. Burger and Half Baked and Fully Brewed have stood the test of time.

The following morning saw us taking an hour drive up to North Conway. This is a bustling enough little city with all the amenities expected. There is a Home Depot, a Petco and a TJ Maxx among other staples. After our visit to this branch of the Christmas oft we went for ice cream at the neighboring Tricks and Treats which offered outdoor seating with a beautiful view of the mountains.

We concluded our journey with a visit to Diana’s Baths. These small waterfalls were first utilized by farmer George Lucy in 1863 as the site for a sawmill. By1890 his sawmill was drawing many onlookers, inspiring his idea to build a boarding house to welcome visitors. By the 1920s the Lucy family replaced the old sawmill was concrete dams. By the end of the 1940s, with the invention of portable dams, the mill was no longer used and the following decade the Lucy family sold the property. Eventually it fell into government hands and is now part of White Mountain National Forest.

There is always melancholia leaving a place of retreat. And yet, the emotions become bittersweet once the Boston skyline appears over I-93. We escape home seeking peace, adventure and discovery. We escape to find or regain ourselves and yet, the older I get, the more I understand John Steinbeck’s delight at seeing the Holland Tunnel once more after his cross-country journey from New York to California in Travels with Charley: In Search of America. We never no what we will find when we travel, that is appeal, but we always know that home will take us back. New Englanders enjoy the best of both worlds. No mater where in the region we have made our home, The White Mountains are never too far off.