Cliff Walk and Wolf Hill

I have a few days left to tell you about my two-week trip to New England in May. I’ve been busy at home so it’s taking me a long time wrap up this trip. Today I’m happy to show you some great scenes I captured with my iPhone.

The morning dawned lovely so we thought it would be a good day to visit the Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island, where we were staying. The Cliff Walk is a National Recreation Trail designated in 1975. It is 3.5 miles (5.6 km) with the sea on one side and beautiful old mansions on the other. Once we finally found a place to park, we joined the trail with many other people who had the same idea. There are a couple places where you can get to the water, but it’s safest to stay on the trail. The private residences typically had tall barriers to keep the public out, so views of the places were best at a distance. We only walked a portion of the trail because we had a lunch date.

Next we drove up to Boston again to have lunch with my friends Romain and Madhawa. After that the day was warm, and I love the heat, so I thought the perfect activity would be a long, tough hike up a hill that overlooks Providence.

We found the trailhead of Wolf Hill Forest Preserve. I was interested in this one because one branch of the trail was named World War II Memorial Loop and I wanted to see the memorial. We started off in high spirits though it was muggy that day and Will indicated that he does not love heat as much as I do. Right away I noticed one of my favourite wild plants ever: wild orchids. These were lucious, fat, extravagant beauties and I dropped to my knees genuflecting before them as I gushed in pleasure. I do not know what kind we found, and I have not seen this type before. I was impressed by their size and showiness.

As we climbed up the hillside, stopping every so often to gasp for breath, we were both feeling the effects of early summer, which tends to drop a hot day on you when you least expect it. We both drank a lot of water.

It wasn’t long before we found the memorial, and it was more than I expected to see up there on a trail in the forest.

All too common at the time, there was an engine failure and the airplane they were flying plummeted, landing here and deposting part of the fuselage onto that big rock. The rock now holds small rocks that people have placed in honor of the servicemen. Now I understood why a memorial was in such an out of the way place that was difficult to get to. There is another memorial in town, for people who cannot make the trek.

We continued climbing the hill. My hiking app on my phone told me there would be views at some point. We thought we might be close, so we kept going. The trail was not well marked, so I used GPS on my trail app to keep us on the path. A bit tricky.

And viola! We crested near a broken down chimney. Someone had built a house up here and enjoyed the spectacular view for a while. Likely the only thing remaining was the thing that got rid of the rest of the house. We sat down on a rock and looked out over the high buildings of Providence that we could see over the tops of trees. Someone doing trail maintenance had cut down all the trees in front of us so that the view was not blocked.

We sat until we felt well rested, and drank more water. Then it was time to head back down. It was evening by this time but there was no respite from the heat and humidity, and we suffered. Will looked at his map and found a public beach we could visit. I reminded him that we had parked right next to a pond. He didn’t remember the pond and it sounded too good to be true. I kept talking about the pond, to keep his spirits up. I was sure I remembered it. I began feeling very badly that I had let my joy of heat and hiking get in the way of looking out for my friend. He never said an unkind thing, and barely complained, but the conditions were too much for anyone not in love with strenuous activity in the heat, the way I am. The trail seemed to get longer the more we walked.

The sun went behind the trees and light grew more dim. It wasn’t dim enough to dim my excitement when I found more orchids near the bottom of the hill.

Finally we reached the car and I exhaled in relief to see that my memory was correct. We had parked 60 feet from a pond and fishing area. First we drank all the warm water from the water bottles in the car, since our own bottles were long empty. Then we walked to the shore and sat on some roots and stripped boots and socks off and put our feet in the water. I splashed myself and splashed Will (which was not appreciated but I was doing it for his own good). We sat with our feet in the water a long time and finally decided that the only correct thing to end the day with was ice cream. We got our shoes back on and found Powder Mill Creamery, a darling ice cream shop that was clearly a local favourite, since there was a line stretching through the parking lot. By the time we had our ice cream it was almost completely dark outside. We made our way to picnic tables in the grass around the ice cream shop and sat with other happy and hot people and enjoyed our dessert.