Rugged beauty and solitude without a long hike

September 20, 2009|Jane Roy Brown, Globe Correspondent

WASHINGTON, N.H. - Nothing says New Hampshire like chunks of granite sticking out of a mountain-ringed lake. Tilting at shorn-off angles that suggest their crystalline composition, these stones, as much as the sheet of gray-blue water surrounding them, anchor the stillness that pervades Pillsbury State Park. Add the smoky light of early fall, a mist softening the water’s glaze at both ends of the day, the rhythmic dip of a paddle, and the shoreline lighted in crimson and gold, and you have an accessible slice of paradise. After school starts, the summer throngs thin to a trickle, leaving a quiet broken chiefly by the splash of a fish or the rustling of a chipmunk in fallen leaves.

A little less than an hour northwest of Keene, in the southwestern corner of the state, Pillsbury feels far more remote. Of its vast area - 8,135 acres, the size of a respectable Western ranch - the surfaces of seven ponds account for 2,600 acres. The rest is covered in forest and threaded by six main hiking and mountain-biking trails, including a stretch of the 51-mile Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway, which links Mount Monadnock with Mount Sunapee to the north.

With 41 rustic campsites, most tucked along the edges of the two largest ponds, Pillsbury engulfs campers in a sense of solitude usually reserved for backpackers willing to trek deep into roadless hinterlands. (The park contains a few campsites accessible only by canoe or kayak, and others where campers need to carry in their gear after parking, but even the most distant hike-in campsite lies only three-quarters of a mile from parking.) With no showers, electricity, or flush toilets, even car campers can sample the quiet joys of a weekend uninterrupted by the slamming doors and glaring lights of a shower building. And the ubiquitous granite, known for its power to mangle even the stoutest steel propeller blades, prevents powerboats or personal watercraft from entering these ponds, so the whine and rumble of motors - and their paddler-soaking wakes - are delightfully absent.

One thing backpackers might envy here is the chance to bring along kayaks or a canoe to Pillsbury’s tranquil waters. (Campers can also rent them right in the park.) The ponds may be shallow and placid, but their granite islands and irregular shorelines, studded with boulders as big as most tents, lend themselves to paddling explorations.