Back on the trail to Mount Belknap with Windows to the Wild

Click on the image to view the episode.

On a hot spring day in early May, I met up again with the crew from New Hampshire Public Television’s Windows to the Wild: host Willem Lange and producers Steve Giordani and Phil Vaughn. The resulting show, titled “Hiking with the Maniacal Traveler” was broadcast on NHPTV in May and now is available for online viewing here.

We had decided to do an episode focused on a hike to Guilford’s Mount Belknap, where a plane crashed in June of 1972 after vanishing shortly after take-off from Laconia Airport, in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. My 2015 post, One hike, many discoveries: A plane crash, fire tower and stone-age couches,” describes this hike, which I did with my son several years ago.

Initially, we planned the hike for mid-April, which I thought might be too ambitious, given the huge snow dumps we’d had three weeks earlier. The crash site is located on a steep rocky incline, where I knew deep pockets of snow and patches of ice would linger.   So it was good news when producers Steve Giordani told me they had to reschedule for May.

What I didn’t know then was that long-time host Willem Lange lost his wife Ida in mid-April. I never met Ida, but she sounds like she was an amazing person  — another maniacal traveler — as explained in a recent Boston Globe story, “Ida Lange, at 78; from a fraught childhood she became a community leader and her husband’s muse,”and by Willem himself, “We were inextricably engaged, truly for better or for worse.”

I learned of Ida’s death when we met up on Carriage Mountain Road in Gilford on the morning of the hike. Willem expressed to me that he felt like he hadn’t fully processed his loss, and was going about his usual routines of taking Kiki for walks, and preparing for the upcoming show, which had already been scheduled for airing on May 23.

We set off on our hike on Carriage Mountain Road. The winter gate remained closed, and we had to walk a mile up the road to the trailhead.  The extra mile was our first travail; others followed.  I won’t reveal more except to say that the day reinforced all the key fundamentals of hiking: know your limits; use your map wisely; and carry more food and water than you think you will need. Also, spring days before the forest has burst into its canopy are sometimes the hottest of the season, even if the temperature is seasonable.

But travails make for good stories. And as my 19th century friend Henry Thoreau tells us, “I have climbed several higher mountains without guide or path, and have found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest highway.”

Our short hike to Mount Belknap took more time and patience than expected, but at the fire tower, I remembered, as Thoreau tells us, that  “On tops of mountains, as everywhere to hopeful souls, it is always morning.”

A trail’s end selfie with Phil Vaughn (in back) and Steve Giordani, all of us still smiling at the end of our long day of hiking and filming on Mount Belknap. Steve and Phil are the producers for Windows to the Wild.

Sources and resources

“We were inextricably engaged, truly for better or for worse,” by Willem Lange. April 18, 2018, The Valley News. (West Lebanon, Vermont).

“Ida Lange, at 78; from a fraught childhood she became a community leader and her husband’s muse,” by Bryan Marquard. The Boston Globe, May 28, 2018.

In January 2017, I visited Orris Falls in South Berwick with Windows to the Wild, available here.  My blog post, Travels on the White Rose Road to Orris Falls, and featuring 19th century guest Sarah Orne Jewett (and others) inspired this episode.