David Woolpert lives in Henniker.

Over a century ago, a large dam was built on the Contoocook River to power a textile mill just east of the Hillsboro / Henniker town line. Like many of the other old mills in the area, it was shut down before any current town residents can remember, and the dam was later demolished. Now what remains is the most beautiful publicly accessible swimming hole in central New Hampshire.

This rarely used gem has been kept accessible by the Henniker Conservation Commission decades ago, and their sign on Western Avenue, the old U.S. Route 202, marks the driveway to a modest parking lot in a gorge far below this section of the road. The large, calm area for swimming is bookmarked by rapids that are wild or soothing, depending on the amount of recent rainfall or snow melt.

It takes a decision to enter into the crisp, cold river, even on a hot summer day. But once in this pool, which is just a pause in the mile-long rapids on this section of the river, you find it comfortable to stay in a while. You look up and down stream at the sometimes-frothy rapids, but you can stay put in the current that gently moves by you in random parts of the swimming hole.

In July, when weeks of hot sunshine bathe the river as it journeys thirty miles north from the Monadnock Region, the water is not so shockingly cold as you expect, and you can comfortably swim twenty feet up to the rapids, hold on to a few underwater rocks, and let the bubbly water flow over your back or tummy or your head if you like.

After emerging to sit on a rock, all you care to do is look at the trees, noticing a few with no leaves, or scan the shoreline for a great blue heron or the skyline for a rare bald eagle cruising your way. In time, you are ready to leave the swimming hole and return home, noticing a core of coolness surrounding you for the next few hours.

Even after the hot days of summer have past, the swimming hole awaits your arrival when you have gotten sweaty from yard work or a stiff hike. The temperature of the water is still acceptable in the late summer, but you stay in the water for a shorter time before you decide to get out and stand on the shore in the warming afternoon sun.

Eventually, the time of year comes when a chilling swim no longer attracts you. The days are shorter, it’s easy to cool down quickly from any heavy exercise, and the swimming hole just becomes a place to visit for its beauty and the peace it provides.

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Then you justify walks to the river to see how low the water level is, and you marvel at how many rocks are no longer submerged and the river just meanders through the parts that were so frothy just months before.

In your long-sleeved shirt, you stand on the rocks that form the riverbank and realize that the coming bitter-cold weather in January and February will likely cause slabs of solid ice to form over the swimming hole, and the rocks that will still be causing a gurgling sound will be rimmed with ice as the almost freezing water slides around them.

On a visit in October, you realize that the fall weather has come, and the leaves of the trees along the shore of the swimming hole are creating a multicolored symphony of designs which are partially repeated, upside down, in the quiet parts of this rapid-filled section of the Contoocook River.

Then is when you notice that you feel that a comforter is being pulled over your world, singing you quiet tunes that prelude a good night’s sleep, and promising a gentle awakening spring before the wonderful return, once again, of the summer days at this swimming hole, with its magical allure.