Sweating here in my ravine

A chamber of cool in Southern NH

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.