A Trip to the Mountains

Sept 25-27 2016

By Juliet C

Yellow Group D2 B3

Location paragraph

The Cardigan AMC lodge is located right by Mount Cardigan, which is relatively near Mount Firescrew, as well as the Orange Hills and Newfound lake. It is at 774 Shem Valley road, and is between Alexandria and Orange New Hampshire. Its coordinates are at 43.6498 degrees north, and 71.8779 degrees west. The lodge is situated north of a man made pond, as well as by some trails that lead up mountains mentioned earlier. This is the relative and absolute location of the Cardigan AMC lodge.

Place paragraph

A couple of weeks ago, the seventh grade at Hopkinton High School took a trip to the Cardigan AMC lodge, which is situated near Mount Cardigan. There were many special things about the lodge, as well as the mountains near it. One of these things is that many different types of plants, trees, and fungi live in the area. I not only learned about, but also saw, many of these different species. Some types of trees my hiking group spotted were birches, oaks, pines, ashes, beeches, spruces, and hemlocks. We also found Christmas Ferns, Wood Sorrels, Indian Cucumbers, Goose Maple leaves, Spiny Wood Ferns, Trilliums, and Shining Clubmoss. We also saw many other types of plants. However, we didn't take the time to stop and sketch them. We also saw different types of fungi and algae such as Lichen, Bearded tooth, Witch's hair, Horseshoe, and Artist's Conch. The summit of Cardigan was bare rock. Because of the lack of trees, you could look around for miles and see other summits near by. At the summit of Firescrew, (another mountain right next to Cardigan) although there was lots of bare rock, there were also areas of alpine bog. In these bogs, there were large puddles of water as well as some scarce vegetation. However, there was more of both of these things at the summit of Firescrew than Cardigan. On the way up and down, we, of course, took the trails. However, these trails were mostly a maze of overgrown roots and loose rocks with foot holes, due to the large quantity of trees beside the trail. All of these things mentioned are physical features of the Cardigan area.

There are also many cultural features of the Cardigan area. There is, of course, the AMC lodge where we all stayed, as well as the staff that work in and around it. There are also campsites, and, in the woods behind one of the campsites my hiking group visited, there was a steep and long hill that had a car and a huge wheel-shaped contraption at the top of it. You could guess that this was meant to act as a chairlift long ago. (You could tell that the car was particularly old because not only was it an old-fashioned model, it also had an impressive amount of rust on it.) Anyways, all of these things were put in and made by humans. Now, these are all very obvious man-made things. However, there are also some cultural features of the area that are not quite so apparent. Some of these things are, believe it or not, the very trials you may walk on, as well as trail markers and bridges. These are all things that were placed in the wilderness by us, in order to allow for people to hike up the mountains. Some other cultural things in the area are the fire wardens shack, and carns.

Now, you can see that there are many physical and cultural features of the Cardigan area. However, there are also many things that could be considered both. One of these unique things is a pond near Cardigan Lodge. The pond was dug out by humans, which would make it a cultural feature. However, in a way, nature has made the pond its own. There are now many creatures living in the pond, as well as much vegetation in the shallow waters, and also around it. This could make the pond a physical feature. However, you have to take into account that is was not there because of natural causes. This is why I think that the pond could be considered either of the two features. Another thing that could be considered either are the apple trees scattered around Cardigan. From the cultural aspect, the trees were brought to Cardigan by humans. However, they have grown in and adapted to the area, so therefor they might be considered a cultural feature. These are the physical and cultural features of the Cardigan area.

We went to Cardigan for three days- Sept 25, 26, and 27- Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday- year of 2016

Cardigan Postcard by Juliet C is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.