First Day Hike Gifts

Happy to report that as of January 1, I have so far kept my New Year's resolution for 2026:  Get Outside.  I went on a self-guided First Day Hike at Topsmead.

I woke up New Year's Day (quite late because I stayed up to welcome in the new year) to a surprise gift of about three inches of new, soft, light, fluffy snow on top of our Christmas snow.  Oh Joy.  I bundled up in layers and fleece, slapped on my red Outdoor Research gaiters, put my snowshoes in the car, and headed for Topsmead.  Understandably, only two other vehicles were in the parking lot because temps were in the teens with a stiff, single-digit wind chill.

Off I tromped into the wind and up to Miss Edith's house.  Despite pulling my wool hat down to my eyes and my fleece neck up over my nose, the wind still tried freeze my forehead and eyelashes.  Seeking to escape the wind, sleek drifts had cozied up to the stone walls and snuggled in the doorways of the house and the dovecote.  Snow, drifted and sculpted by the wind, looked like a mini-version of a snowy Arctic landscape.  Blowing snow created tiny snow dunes highlighted by the late afternoon sun, and the surface of the snow was a canvas of wind-drawn line patterns.  The drifts and the snow canvas were lovely, but today the wind's gifts came with a frigid cost.

Having had enough of the wind's gifts and deciding to seek refuge, I headed down to the Ecology Trail.  I thought I was the first to tromp the new snow on the trail until, coming around a bend and arriving at a small bridge beneath a hemlock tree, I could see that many someones had been on this part of the trail before me.  Going every which way over the snow-covered bridge was a latticework of three-toed bird tracks.  Wondering, I stopped and looked around.  First, I noticed one small, dark grey junco in the underbrush.  Then, the more I looked, the more juncos I saw, fluttering about quite happily--so adorable, so perky.  Ah hah.  They were the owners of the tracks, evidently liking this area for the seeds of its hemlock tree.  Another unexpected gift of the day.

I headed back to my car, now the only one in the lot.  The sun was headed down to the horizon.  My toes and fingers were officially cold, but they worked enough for me to undo my snowshoe bindings.  Heading home out of the driveway, I received the final gift of my First Day hike--a 97% full moon.  In two days, it will be the first supermoon of 2026.

As we move into and through 2026, let us be open to receiving unexpected gifts each day, and then be open to finding ways to share those gifts.

Margaret Hunt
​Blogmistress