I’m just going to say it. Summer is no longer the peak season for hiking in New England, what with this dew point making everything wetter and stickier than a bag of southern boiled peanuts. I’m not even sure if summer ever was the golden hour for hiking in the northeast—given that these poached conditions are an exacerbation of what’s been the norm here for a long time. Still, as much as I’ve been staying in air-conditioned spaces and getting lots of work done these last few weeks (ex: watching Oppenheimer and Barbie), we can’t just punt our hiking ambitions into the next season. We’re New Englanders. We suck up and deal—within reason—when the weather is toying with our comfort level. And that’s why I want to talk about a special kind of hiking destination that offers marginal relief on these long, steaming afternoons.
Let’s talk about ravines.
Most of you probably know ravines as stony chasms found in the middle of a forest. But what sets a ravine apart from a canyon? For one, ravines are narrow spaces and they’re often the result of eroding stream banks. A ravine can begin its life as a thin, murmuring waterway, only to become a crevasse as the waterside soil erodes—often exposing glacial boulders hidden under the earth. Vegetation such as ferns take root within the chasm, and after a while, you’ve got shady and pleasantly claustrophobic space passage to explore. And since many ravines retain their cool streams, standing inside one on a viciously hot summer day can actually feel like being in a climate-controlled space. In ravines with extra bulbous rock formations and prodigious plant growth, the vibe within can almost become too chilling: like you’ve suddenly been swallowed by the earth. Just ask the legendary Swedish pop group Ace Of Base, whose hit single “Ravine” is a metaphor for being in a low place that the sunlight can barely penetrate.
In other words, poking around ravines is reinvigorating and fun, up to a certain point when you quickly realize that it’s time to pull yourself back up into the world. And recently, on the first day of a heat wave that pressure cooked Boston with mid-90s temperatures and stupefying humidity, I experienced this on a hike in the Pulpit Rock Conservation Area. Hidden in the hills of Bedford, New Hampshire, about half an hour southwest of Concord, this 338 preserve is named for a gargantuan glacial rock formation that looms in the middle of a wooded ravine. The runoff that shaped the rock produced a ledge, which reminded early visitors of a pulpit. (Remember, this is the same state with lots of hikes whose names are allusions to Satan and purgatory.) But the titanic rock wasn’t what brought me to Pulpit Rock Conservation Area—it was months of pent-up guilt for not visiting Southern New Hampshire as much as the state’s northern mountains, and a growing sense of desperation to feel cool again.
There are a couple of access points to the 3-mile trail network in and around the ravine, and I chose the quiet east side trailhead off of Pulpit Road. From the parking lot, you can see fancy houses on a nearby exposed hillside. But from the moment you pick up the yellow blazed Gage’s Mill Trail—a smooth gravel path that descends into the trees via switchbacks—you’re plunged into a forest so green and cavernous that kicking off the hike feels more like passing through a wooded wormhole to a distant ecosphere. I use that metaphor intentionally. The theory behind a wormhole is that if you can compress vast dimensions of space, you can make it possible to travel from one galaxy to another in a short period of time. (As seen in the movie Interstellar.) And my short 2.5-mile loop hike to Pulpit Rock packed one hell of scenic punch.
The first surprise revealed itself shortly after I branched off onto the red-blazed Campbell Trail, where the graded gravel transitioned to roots and rocks. The twisting path brought me to the banks of Pulpit Brook, which forms a small, boggy pond before flowing through the stony, moss covered foundations of an old sawmill. Keeping the pond on my left, I kept following the red blazes deeper into the woods until reaching another fork. Here, I hopped onto the promisingly named Ravine Trail, which took me down a steep tangle of roots past some small cascades. And then, quite suddenly, I was standing at the mouth of a green, bouldery ravine whose cool breath was a tonic for the awful heat and humidity that I had come here to escape.
From here, the hike to Pulpit Rock follows the bumpy banks of the brook, often monkeying over mossy rocks along the foamy waterway. The ravine was far more spacious than I had expected, sometimes feeling more like a gorge (ravines usually have pithier water sources than gorges.) And ironically, the contemporary experience of hiking to Pulpit Rock is somewhat gnarlier than it used to be. Back in the early 20th Century, when most people were enthralled by just staring at a really big rock, Pulpit Rock was something of a roadside attraction. Boardwalks through the ravine made it possible to peel off from the road, gawk at the mammoth erratic, and then continue onward to Winnipesaukee, Portsmouth, or wherever. But the gravy train went off the rails in 1938 when a hurricane flooded the ravine and destroyed the boardwalk. Just like that, the ravine experience went backward in time and became more primitive.
The namesake rock lies just beyond a junction, where the Ravine Trail continues to the left and the yellow blazed Gott Trail (or Granite Trail, according to signs on the trees) offers a quick, steep exit out of the ravine. But you’re going to have to hike to Pulpit Rock yourself to get a good look at the big old thing. Because roughly halfway through the ravine, I was reminded of something that I managed to forget. Ravines, being cool, moist, and flush with running water, are an ideal habitat for mosquitoes. And by this point, my hike had become a race against the whining little shits. The minute I started to slow down and fumble for my camera, I would hear that telltale buzzing sound growing louder—and I would keep on moving. In fact, many of the pictures that I managed to take were duds, due to mosquitoes getting in the shot.
The good news is that this won’t last too much longer. Mosquitoes are most active across New Hampshire from June through September, which means that we’re likely past the peak by now. But if you can’t wait a couple of weeks for your ravine fix, I have three tips that will make your Pulpit Rock hike a little more comfortable. #1: Slather yourself with a bug salve that contains citronella oil. #2. Wear a bug net on your head (these really do help.) And #3: If #1 and #2 fail, bring a pair of earbuds and cue up Beautiful Life, another Ace Of Base smash hit. The beat is irresistible and perfect for swatting at mosquitoes. Life is beautiful, and swarms of biting insects are a part of it.
PULPIT ROCK via RAVINE TRAIL
Hike distance: 2.5 miles loop
Elevation gain: 276 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map
In outdoor-related news (sort of) I alluded to the simultaneous theatrical release of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, and how people have decided to combine the two into the most unlikely double feature: BARBENHEIMER. I’ve joined the cultural moment and seen both, and while the two movies couldn’t be more different in tone, they share something special: affinity for practical sets and effects! The problem with CGI, no matter how advanced it becomes, is that you can always tell the difference between flesh-and-blood actors and stuff that’s happening around them on a green screen. For Barbie, they really built those candy colored dream houses. For Oppenheimer, they really engineered an explosion to recreate the Trinity Test. And these are just one-off examples of how immersive both films are (Oppenheimer, in particular, really plunges you into the psyche of the tortured physicist and the existential horrors of the WWII-McCarthyism era.) So on top of encouraging you to go for a hike this week, I also encourage you to experience the Barbenheimer phenomenon: even if you have to space the two movies over the course of a weekend. They’re both visionary films by auteurs, which is an increasingly rare treat amid the contemporary landscape of pasteurized franchise sequels, and audiences seem to be going wild for both of them, based on the early ticket sale numbers and how tough it was to grab a prime seat for each screening in Boston. Are the movies…finally back?