Week 2 reflection

 This week we did three hikes. We started our week off by hiking up to Smiths Pond in Enfield NH. It was the most gradual hike we did in terms of elevation gain. The hike was super pretty and was heavily wooded until the top. We took our time on the hike and enjoyed the pond at the top. There were a ton of salamanders in the pond which was super neat, and in my opinion, was the coolest wildlife we saw during our whole project. The hike was cool for me because it reminded me of the pond we reached on my orientation hike, which I really liked. On Tuesday we spent the day writing our trail guide for our hike. 

The second hike we did this week was on Thursday. This day we hiked Kearsarge, and instead of going up and back on the same trail, as we had done on the rest of our hikes, we went up a steeper route and then came down on a less steep route which was super nice because the steep downhills tend to hurt my knees sometimes. Just like when we hiked Cardigan, at the top we went into the fire tower and spent time talking to the ranger inside. Ron was the ranger on duty inside the fire tower and he spent a lot of time talking to us about his experiences fighting fires and how he has noticed forest fires getting much worse with climate change. Ron was super nice, and it felt really fulfilling to be able to learn about something we didn’t know much about from someone who is so passionate about what they do. 

On Friday we decided to add another hike that we weren’t planning on doing. I had always heard people talk about hiking the bulkhead and how it was a super cool hike, so it felt wrong to not do it during my time at Proctor. While Bean and Kelby might not have been as excited as I was to do the hike, since they have both done the hike before, I am super glad that they agreed to do it with me. We could see both campus and Kearsarge from the top, which was super neat to see where we had been the day before. We have such incredible access to trails and the outdoors in general at Proctor, and I am so so glad that we decided to take advantage of this. On the days this week that we weren’t hiking, we were working on our trail guide which is coming together very nicely and I cannot wait to see the finished product!

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