October 4th to October 6th 2017
The relative location of Mt. Cardigan, which is a where a place is in terms of the things around it, is west of Newfound Lake, 3,156 feet above sea level in the towns of Alexandria and Orange. It is also in the Cardigan Mountain State Forest, southeast of Hanover. Mt. Cardigan is in New England, the northeast part of the country. Mt. Cardigan is below the White Mountain National Forest, and above Grafton. In terms of absolute location, which is a place's exact position, Mt. Cardigan is located at 43 degrees 38 minutes 58.46 seconds north 71 degrees 54 minutes 47 seconds west.
There were many examples of physical geography at Cardigan, such as Welton Falls in the Cardigan Mountain State Forest. The waterway that feeds the falls is a moderately fast flowing stream, dotted with rocks and boulders, the ones near the water covered in slippery wet moss or algae. The rocks are close enough together that they form a good enough bridge, if a precarious one. The bottom of the stream is sandy, with rounded stones collected in bunches off the side of the current. Water swirls around bends in the path, tumbling down the slope. Welton Falls itself is a high waterfall that pours through a gorge carved by the rushing water. Some water empties into a steep pit with walls of mossy rock, the rest trickles into a waist-deep pool of clear chilly water with a rock in the center large enough to hold eight people. Many types of plants are along the trails. Beech and Hemlock trees are found in the hardwood zone of the forest. There are many kinds of pines, firs, spruces, ashes, like Hemlocks, Spongy mosses, including pincushion and sphagnum moss, grow crouched to the ground, moist and squishy. Strangely colored berries occasionally are spotted growing along the trail. An odd plant bearing white berries with a spot of black in the center atop pink stems, remains unidentified. Hobblebush is abundant, the leaves in a multitude of colors: red, green, purple, yellow. Mushrooms and fungi sprout from the earth and bark of trees. White oyster-shaped mushrooms coated an entire tree. Animals were seldom spotted, and the ones that were were small, like chipmunks, squirrels, and birds. However, there were even smaller tiny creatures living beneath rocks in a stream, hardly the length of a pinky nail. They were the larvae of caddis flies and stoneflies. The caddis fly larvae were minuscule, an inch in length and white. They were called macro-invertebrates, because they were small but visible to the eye.
There are many examples of cultural geography as well, like the AMC lodge, fire tower, warden's cabin, and the bridges. The lodge is four stories tall. The first story has a room to pack up gear, and area with couches and chairs to play games, and cubbies to store shoes. The second story has the dining area, a fireplace with couches, chairs, and a table, the bathroom, and the kitchen. The third floor is the girl's floor, and the fourth is the boy's. The fire tower is at the summit of Cardigan, and is where people watch for fires on the dry days. They used to stay in the warden's cabin, slightly below the tower, so they wouldn't need to hike up the mountain every time. Bridges we saw were mostly short simple ones, boards nailed to two other planks. One bridge, though, was long and especially well constructed. It crossed one of the larger waterways in the area.
We were there for three days, Wednesday Thursday, and Friday.
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