Into the Woods

Yesterday morning, I turned my bike away from the seashore and headed to the Blue Hills Reservation, located just south of Boston. It's a wonderful area of green forests, winding roads, scenic overlooks, and huge boulders...

The main challenge of this ride is a long climb up two connected hills -- called Wampatuck and Chickatawbut -- beginning right at the entrance of the reservation. So as I passed through the park gate, I shifted my bike into its lowest gears, put my hands on the upper part of my handlebars for better leverage, and patiently began the ascent. That's the key to tackling long climbs ... patience. After all, I'm in no hurry. Few things are more magical and mysterious than a ride through the forest...

There are so many amazing old forests in New England. The Great North Woods of New Hampshire and Maine are overwhelming in size and remoteness. The mystical Mohawk Trail State Forest of northwestern Massachusetts is old, very old ... home to 160-f00t-tall white pines towering over 300-year-old hemlocks. And the Green Mountain National Forest is a place of gentle beauty, covering the rolling hills of central Vermont. All of these forests speak in voices uniquely their own.

The Blue Hills Forest is more modest than those big woods. But it still has a remarkable power to calm your mind and take you outside yourself for a while. It certainly made a strong impression on the Native Americans of this area. They called themselves the "People of the Great Hills". Or in Algonquin -- Massachusett.

Those "great hills" are now called the Blue Hills, and this is its forest...


After the long climb up Chickatawbut Hill, the trees give way to the summit ahead...

Here at the top, you can rest, take a drink of water, and admire the view from the overlook. As you probably noticed from the wet pavement, the weather was damp and misty yesterday morning. So the view was pretty obscured. But if you look closely, you can still make out the Boston skyline in the first photo (I brightened it up a bit). Otherwise, the hilltop simply looks as if it descends into the clouds below...

Look familiar? It's the same place I took an earlier photo that is now on my blog title bar!

After spending a few minutes at the summit, I had a choice to make. I could ride down the other side of the hill, continue on a winding road and eventually make my way around Great Blue Hill and into the quaint town of Milton. Or I could simply ride back down the way I came up. I decided on the latter. Always save something for tomorrow ... that's one of my personal bicycling mottos. Today, the summit of Chickatawbut Hill was enough. I would keep Great Blue Hill and Milton for another ride.

I took one last drink from my water bottle, turned the bike around, and began the thrilling descent toward home...