These are my feet on a mysterious canal in Baxter State Park. What follows is a story told in pics and videos. All to sell you on the idea of solo camping.
🤓 A smiling nerd emoji means I have a suggestion.
🤓 Suggestion #1: Do your solo camping in Baxter State Park.
🤓 Get a key from a ranger at the cabins or a campground. They may send you down this trail. Bring the key, paddle, and life jacket.
Less than a mile in. The key fits. And…
🤓 Float
⇤ This is a video
Where are you taking me, canal? Warm raindrops dimple the water. A warbler cheeps, a crystalline sound in this pure air.
Carnivorous plants, the first I’ve ever seen in the wild. Pitcher plants, filled with a fly’s last sip of nectar.
What the heck? Pineapples?
It takes me a while to figure it out. The floating round leaves with yellow-cup flowers have alien monster roots below.
A companion on misty Lost Pond.
Under this water is the Doubletop Trail.
Video ⇥
🤓 Make your reservation at Baxter the old-fashioned way: phone call. Have their web page of campsites open before you call. They’ll help you choose and give some essential info.
The trees were so thick, I had to stick to the trail, wet boots in steep, rocky, shin-deep snow melt. AKA, why I suggest calling the park before you go! They’ll tell you about hikes that fit the season. I’m stubborn.
I found this further up the stream-covered trail.
I put it in my pack and brought it to the ranger station. The ranger said he knew who it belonged to!
🤓 Schlep your chair to a pond’s edge in late afternoon.
Wow, there is nothing at all going on! Woodland creatures can smell my b.o. a mile away…
Nothing but dragonflies breezing by and bullfrogs burping. Twilight sets in.
Honest truth, I look over my shoulder and think, why is there a horse in the pond?
It’s a moose, of course, with water pouring from a mud and weed sandwich in its mouth.
Five trips to Baxter and this was the first moose I’d seen. This is why I suggest hiking in a short ways with a chair and chilling pond-side.
🤓 Talk to yourself, act ridiculous, nobody’s watching.
🤓 My final pitch for solo camping: voices fade and awe may fill you with gratitude.
If you feel like doing something other than looking at a pond with water so clear you can see every rock on its bottom, try solar-powered writing.
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