Icy water tumbled downhill, past clumps of frozen foam and tree branches bowed with icicles. The constant roar of it drowned out all other forest sounds. The brook commanded my attention, and I obliged.
My dog, Juno, was more difficult to captivate. Instead of admiring the beauty of the water, she busied herself by wrapping her leash around a spruce sapling. If you’ve ever run your fingers over the sharp needles of a spruce, you’ll know that untangling her wasn’t fun.
After wrestling with the tree (a process that involved a few exasperated sighs and maybe even a mumbled curse), I urged Juno back onto the blue-blazed trail to Partridge Pond. We had a 3.5-mile loop to complete.
Partridge Pond and five other remote ponds are located in Amherst Mountains Community Forest, a 4,974-acre swath of state-owned wilderness that’s managed jointly with the tTown of Amherst. The town receives assistance from the Forest Society of Maine.
It may sound complicated, but these types of partnerships are common in conservation.
The Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands purchased the forest in 2009, with help and funding from the Forest Legacy Program and Land for Maine’s Future Program. But recreationists used it long before then hunting, fishing, canoeing and camping.
I’m lucky to live close to the forest, so I’ve been there a few times. I was first introduced to it by avid hiker and author Carey Kish, who grew up visiting the ponds and hiking up Bald Bluff Mountain, the major peak on the property.
When we hiked there together about a decade ago, the deer flies nearly carried us away. I prefer visiting it in the late fall and winter.
It’s important to note that the roads leading to the interior trails, which are used by snowmobilers and skiers, aren’t plowed in the winter.
When Juno and I visited in mid-December, the season’s early snow had been melted away by a rainstorm. The temperature was back below freezing and the gravel road leading to the trailhead had hardened back up, yet I found the parking area empty.
Once again, we had a beautiful trail to ourselves.
It didn’t start out beautiful, though. The first part of the trail was rather ugly, in fact. Filled with rocks, water, mud and hoarfrost, the wide, straight trail traveled gradually uphill through a mixed forest. A brisk breeze whispered through the trees. A lone chickadee chirped, then felt silent.
Yet as I hiked, the forest became more and more lovely, like I was traveling into an enchanted land.
On the forest floor, a bed of decaying leaves was replaced by a lush carpet of mosses and lichens. And in some areas, low-lying plants such as wintergreen and trailing arbutus covered the ground.
The amount of color surrounding me in mid-December was unexpected. The mosses varied from lime green to emerald to red. The lichens were frosty white, mint green and pale purple.
I went from lamenting the loss of snow to reveling in a different type of winter beauty.
Partridge Pond was just as strange and serene as I remembered. Along its banks, a slope of open granite disappeared into the water, which quickly turned into a silvery layer of ice.
A series of small boulders sat along the shore. And the pond’s outlet crashed over a granite shelf, a waterfall swallowed by the forest.
The hike wasn’t a straightforward loop. The trail ended at a campsite at Partridge Pond, which means we had to backtrack to an intersection, then turn onto the trail leading to Ducktail Pond.
Before trying it for yourself, I suggest studying the trail map, which is posted online and on a kiosk at the trailhead.
Ducktail Pond was equally spectacular, and after all the recent rain, its outlet was flowing fast. We found that we couldn’t safely cross the brook to follow the blue blazes of the trail. The rushing water threatened to sweep us over a small cascade with one misstep.
Luckily, I found a safer crossing point and we continued on our way.
In pools around the brook, I found thin layers of ice marked with fascinating patterns. Some were striped in a way that reminded me of the layers you’d find inside a tree trunk, each line representing a year.
I can’t tell you how the lines formed in the ice, but I enjoy it being a mystery.
We ended our hike with a stretch of walking along the gravel road between the Ducktail and Partridge ponds trailheads. The most spectacular series of waterfalls of the day was visible from the road.
I bushwhacked into the woods for a better angle to photograph it, then ended up slipping on an icy rock and plunging my left foot into the rushing water. It was easy to laugh at my mistake when only a short walk from my vehicle.
On a colder day, and if farther from my vehicle, I would have needed to swap into my extra pair of socks and encased my foot in a few doggy bags to protect it from my soggy shoe.
The mini adventure only took us a couple of hours. Then I was back in my office, working and thinking about how lucky I am that those spectacular trails are just a short drive away.