Some places seem to wait patiently for us.
Long before it became The Bower, this landscape in the White Mountains of New Hampshire had many names and many caretakers. It was Pine Knob Farm. Before that, Camp Jack. Earlier still, the Gould family farm. Long before European settlement, it was part of N’dakinna – “Our Land” – the unceded homelands of the Western Abenaki people.
Stone walls thread through the forest. Old orchards still bloom. Logging roads have softened into
woodland trails. Ancient trees stand beside younger forests recovering from generations of use.
Each generation has left something behind.
Today, another chapter begins as The Bower becomes an ANFT Certified Forest Therapy Trail.
The name The Bower itself speaks to this continuing story. It comes from the nineteenth-century farmhouse that once stood near today’s trailhead. The original Bower was a home given by the local farming community to newlywed couples beginning their lives together. The fieldstone foundation remains today, each summer softened by pink roses that seem to remember those who once lived there.
It is a fitting name for a place that continues to welcome people home.
For land steward Maudie Hampden, coming to The Bower was the fulfillment of a lifelong search.
As a child, she found refuge beneath an enormous banyan tree whose maze of trunks became her sanctuary.
“I felt at peace when I was with that tree, even when all that was left was its stump,” she remembers.
Years later, after searching nearly fifteen years for a place to steward, she found herself driving beneath a tunnel of sugar maples toward what was then known as Pine Knob Farm.
“I had never fallen in love at first sight until I met Pine Knob Farm… I was coming home.”
That feeling became the foundation for everything that followed.
For 50 years, David and Tanya Tellman, both well-known conservationists in their community, cared for this land. Their stewardship helped protect its forests, maintain its trails, and create a legacy of access and conservation that Maudie now carries forward as its next steward.
Rather than simply protecting the land, Maudie wanted others to experience what she had found there – a place where the forest itself offers healing, belonging, and perspective.
Working alongside Maudie was Christine Tappan, ANFT Certified Forest Therapy Guide and Trails Consultant. Together, they explored the landscape through the lens of Forest Therapy – listening to the character of the forest, identifying places that naturally invite reflection, and shaping a trail that honors both the ecological integrity of the land and the experiences of those who visit it.
The process was never about imposing something new on the forest. It was about recognizing what was already present and creating thoughtful invitations for others to discover it.
Christine spent time with the land across multiple seasons, allowing weather, wildlife, and the rhythms of the forest to shape the experience.
“Rather than imposing a route onto the landscape, I let the land’s own patterns and existing paths guide where the trail, and its invitations, would live.”
That patient listening revealed something extraordinary – stands of true old-growth forest.
“To stand beneath trees that old, that unhurried, is to feel time itself slow down,” Christine reflects.
Today, the certified trail gently leads visitors through some of the many layers of The Bower’s natural and cultural history. From the trailhead, the trail moves through an old apple orchard and beneath a colonnade of white pines. The trail enters the forest by a wide trail that pauses first in the broad expanse of Big Sky Meadow before turning into the sheltered quiet of a trail section Christine and Maudie came to call The Nave, which passes by vernal pools, wetlands, and Heidi’s Spring.
Like the generations before them, visitors are invited not simply to pass through the landscape, but to enter into relationship with it.
This is the heart of the ANFT Trails, Spaces & Places Partnership Program.
Each certification is a collaboration between land stewards who know and love a place, Forest Therapy Guides and Trail Consultants who help reveal its gifts, and communities committed to caring for these landscapes for generations to come.
The Bower reminds us that stewardship is never simply about ownership.
It is about receiving a place with gratitude, tending it with care, and carrying forward a relationship that began long before us and will, we hope, continue long after us.
We are honored to welcome The Bower into the growing community of ANFT Certified Trails, Spaces & Places.
