Cousins Week

Every year, around the first week of July, a group of cousins who live 3,000 apart takes a hike to a low, rocky outcrop in Franconia Notch, locally known as Mt. Baldy. It’s not a long hike, nor a difficult one, but the view from the top is sweet – and it has become, over the past decade or so, a family tradition. 

📷: Michelle McCarthy

Hiking Mt. Baldy has been at the top of my California nephew’s New Hampshire to-do list since one of his first visits here. Back then, the kids were all small, and the trek seemed a long journey for little legs. Now, our crew of teenagers makes it from the trailhead sign – where they somewhat grudgingly pose for the obligatory annual Baldy photo – to the top in mere minutes. This summer, the littlest cousin, who lives just down the road, made her inaugural cousins hike up Baldy, perched comfortably on her mother’s back. That littlest is now learning to walk, and I imagine on the next cousins hike, she’ll be ready to scramble along on her own.

 

Over the years, the week of activities on the list for Cousins Week has shifted a bit, as some things are added and others removed. But a few things remain from one July to the next: the Baldy hike, a trip (or two) to Chutters to stock up on candy and fudge, riding in the back of the pickup through the woods road, and loading up kayaks and lunch to drive out to Long Pond and search for salamanders and loons. In recent years, we’ve added trips to favorite breweries, a few hot laps on mountain bikes along a wooded route, and a backyard fireworks display, since the visit generally falls around the Fourth of July (and backyard fireworks are not allowed in dry California).

 

My kids talk about the cousins visit throughout the year, and in the days before the Cali crew arrives, that talk is almost non-stop. While other summer mornings, if they are not working, they may lounge around and gradually get to breakfast and whatever comes next, the week the cousins are here, my kids are out of bed and pedaling their bikes up the driveway and around the corner to my folks’ house before I’ve poured my second cup of coffee. 

 

Cousins Week means Poppy pancakes for breakfast, card games on the porch, endless and intense rounds of badminton in the back yard. There are family dinners – where the youngest generation still sits at the kids’ table, even though they’re mostly grown-up size now. There is teasing (among both cousins and middle-aged siblings) and laughing and arguing over whether that birdie landed in or out on a court that has no boundaries. 

 

It’s the kind of togetherness that only happens when the parties don’t see each regularly, when they gather together only during this one stretch of days. 

 

None of us knows how many more summers we’ll have of this week together, as college looms and summer jobs require more time close to home and the kids phase out of, well, being kids. But however long they last, I’m guessing a cousins trek up Mt. Baldy will remain in the mix, right at the top of the list.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appeared as Meghan's July 7, 2022 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Sunrise Solace

On most days, I am a morning person. This is in part by nature and in part by habit. When my now-teenagers were babies, I started rising before the sun to have an hour of time to myself – to work or read or simply sit with a cup of coffee and the quiet of early morning. Lately, though, I’ve become a weekend morning slouch. While I’m still up-and-at-’em early through the week, I’ve taken to lazing around an extra hour or two on the weekends.

So when my youngest asked if we could go for a sunrise hike this weekend, I weighed the luxury of sleeping in with the idea of pre-dawn trail time with my daughter. The second choice was the clear winner. This daughter – like youngest children everywhere – has been dragged along on many adventures at a younger age than her older siblings were.  

When they were already toddling along gentle trails, she was carried in a kid backpack. When they were scrambling over rocks as preschoolers, she was working hard to keep up. When we hiked our first big mountains together, they were 9 years old, and she only 7. And on our inaugural backpacking treks this summer, she carried the same gear and weight in her pack as her two-years-older, several-inches-taller siblings did. (My older kids will point out that the youngest also benefits from certain perks – like getting a phone, or staying up later – at a younger age. It’s a balance.)

Sunday, though, was an adventure just for the two of us. With the pre-dawn sky at home cloudy enough to block our view of Franconia Notch, we weren’t sure how much of the sunrise we’d see. But the moon was clearly visible high in the sky, and the hot cocoa was already packed in the thermos and ready to go, so we took a chance and headed down the road toward one of our favorite little hikes with a big view.  

There were a few cars in parking lot at Baldy, and several more at the Echo Lake lot. I’d seen a slew of photos from the day before of bumper-to-bumper lines of cars streaming through the notch, presumably filled with people looking for foliage that was already past peak. But we’d spent the summer successfully avoiding the crowds, and I hoped we’d be able to find a quiet spot up on Artists Bluff so early in the morning.

Alas, there were close to a dozen people there when we arrived, including two photographers with tripods already in place and a couple of 20-somethings continually posing for Instagram shots (much to my tween daughter’s combined amusement and disgust). Still, we found a spot away from everyone else and took in the colorful scene around us. The sky was beginning to lighten in a prelude to the big event. The trees below still held lots of color. And Echo Lake was like a giant looking glass, reflecting the mountains on either side.  

After about 20 minutes of relative quiet, though, the crowd had more than doubled in size. And although drone use is prohibited in Franconia Notch State Park, three of them buzzed annoyingly just off the ledge. Our peaceful sunrise adventure was turning into a rowdy circus. We decided to move.

Back on the trail, it was quiet again, and bright enough now to hike easily toward what my family calls Mt. Baldy. “Will the sun already be up when we get there?” my daughter asked as we rounded the last corner of the trail and emerged at the base of the familiar rock scramble. We soon had our answer. 

Climbing above the gnarled trees, we looked toward the big mountains across the notch. There, from behind a cloud cloaking the tip-tops of Lafayette and Garfield, the sun was just peeking into the sky. Patches of fog dotted the landscape below us and made the valley toward home seem a sea of white. The moon, just past full, glowed in the western sky. We spent the next several minutes delighting in the golden hues of fall, discussing how glad we were to have this low rocky summit to ourselves, and taking pictures.

At one point, my daughter, on a ledge below me, exclaimed, “Mom, stand right there!” and snapped a shot of the dog and me silhouetted by the rising sun. I think that one gets the artsy award from the morning. But my favorite images from our sunrise adventure are of my daughter standing quietly on the rocks, looking out over the hills and peaks of the place we are lucky enough to call home – from a spot where we managed to get away from the crowd. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's October 8, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.