It's times like these I feel the most alive. The sun was shining, the breeze was warm but not hot, and I overlooked a beautiful river that would have been right at home on the back of a postcard. I had arrived in the mountains of New Hampshire armed with a single paragraph of directions, and I had an entire day to see what I could do with them. My goal? An abandoned gold mine said to exist somewhere along this river.
As I gathered supplies from my car, an elderly man approached and commented what a beautiful area this was. The only trick would be the twenty-foot, nearly straight down embankment required to reach the water, which if the gentleman before me had climbed would have been nothing short of remarkable. My guess is that he'd been admiring the river from on high. We chatted a bit, then he went off to search for some falls he thought might exist a mile or so downriver. Just two adventurers whose paths had momentarily crossed - a good omen to start my day if ever there was one.
My own adventure had started with finding a road that crossed this river, and from that intersection following the river upstream until finding the mineshaft in the side of a cliff. The road was not given by name, but of all the roads that intersected this river I was confident enough I'd chosen the right one to make the hour and a half drive north. And although my research described the mine as being a hundred yards upriver from the bridge, knowing how these things work I was prepared to travel for several hundred yards to look for it, and in both directions.
I navigated the steep drop to the water and soon began what I'll call the wild goose chase part of my search. After rock-jumping upstream a hundred yards and finding nothing, I thought possibly the tunnel was tucked back a little ways in the woods, so I retraced my steps, climbed the far side embankment and started bushwhacking.
The great thing about wandering aimlessly through the woods is that you never know what you'll stumble across, and today I found this abandoned satellite dish that had long since lost its battle with the brush. For any of you born after 1990, you have no idea how popular this would have made me if our family had owned one of these growing up.
I didn't find anything else of interest, but because the steep embankment had turned into a full-fledged cliff I was forced to continue upriver for several hundred yards before finding a way down to the water, which meant I would now be backtracking downstream. This river is anything but boring at least, and even had I not been hunting for a mineshaft it would have been a worthwhile trip, simply for all the wonderful pools and waterfalls.
And it was along this downstream excursion that I struck my own version of gold, spotting the opening of the gold mine across the river and at the base of a cliff, as promised. Even though the location of it wasn't very accurate, the description was spot on.
My problem now was, back in the shallower water upstream, I had wandered back to my original side of the river, and the mineshaft was on the far side. It was also flanked by a waterfall on one side and a pool on the other, two barriers no normal person would attempt to navigate. Fortunately that's not a category I fall into, and after slowly scaling the top of the falls I made it to the entrance with 50% of my feet still dry.
Into the tunnel I went, moving slowly not only so that I didn't miss anything, but so I could stop every few steps and listen, making sure I wasn't waking anyone that wasn't in the mood for company. Before long the entrance curved to the left and I began losing sunlight.
Then I came to something I don't see too much of in our New Hampshire mineshafts; an intersection. Usually these turn out to be quick dead ends where one direction was abandoned in favor of another, but I actually had a decision to make here. I chose left.
As I followed my beam of light I cannot remember if I could still hear the waterfall, but I do remember how cut off I felt from the world, and how creepy it was. With my flashlight off it was the kind of darkness where you could wait for an hour and your eyes still wouldn't have anything to adjust to. If I'd been with friends this would have been a raucous old time, but alone it was a nerve-wracking, jump-at-every-sound kind of journey. There was no turning back now though, so like a kid who stayed out too late and has no choice but to walk home in the dark, I walked through my nervousness and right to the end of this tunnel.
Before backtracking to next see what the right hand turn was all about, I left a little memento in the wall. Someday someone's going to come across one of these coins I'm always leaving behind, and they're going to know I was the one to put it there and will write to tell me they found it. I hope.
Back to the intersection where I took the right this time, and this direction continued maybe twenty feet before winding left and coming to a halt. At this dead end someone had left a little memento of their own, in the
form of several empty beer cans. I cursed the hooligans that may all their future beers be flat, and made a
mental note to bring a trash bag next time I visited here.
I'd seen everything this mineshaft had to offer now, and roughly speaking the entire thing was shaped like a drunken capital T. Back down the main tunnel I retreated and was soon standing in the warm sunlight once again.
My original research telling me to travel 100 yards upriver came from a geological study done in the 1950's, but oh those tricksters from a half-century ago. Google Maps later confirmed it was 587 feet as the crow flies to reach the mineshaft, and adding the twists and turns of the river the distance was more than double what they'd promised from start to finish. A bit off, but certainly not the hardest place I've ever had to search out.
I used to be a semi-serious runner until learning I was a 40 year old man equipped with an 80 year old's joints, and one of the things I miss most about those days was coming home with a runners high. No matter how miserable a day I was having, by the time I'd finished my evening run it was impossible to be in a bad mood. In many ways exploring has filled that void for me. By combining the physical aspect of hiking with the mental aspect of exploring all these wonderful and sometimes creepy places, I come home with as many feel-good endorphins running through me as I did with my longest runs. Only difference is, instead of basking in that feeling on my back deck with a beer, I'm now basking in it on my drive home, sorting blog notes in my head while trying to out-sing whatever Toby Keith song I have blaring on the radio, often forgetting that other drivers might actually be watching my goofiness.
So, if you're ever driving along our New Hampshire highways and see a bald guy in a black Jeep, singing like a fool and looking a little bit too high on life, you just might be witnessing the origins of a future blog post.
