spiffy, thanks for the suggestions -- I'll try Concord Camera first since it's closest, then head down to Boston one of these days... the people at Ritz have always been helpful, but I still feel like I'm being "mainstreamed" whenever I go into those stores.
any advice on learning about / looking for tripods & which ones might work well for hiking purposes? I don't mind spending money, just that I seem to learn by trial and error no matter how much research I do, so I have to treat the one I get as somewhat disposable. My thought would be to get something "a la carte" e.g. separate head / body, so that the chances are better that at least one of them would work well. I was also figuring on something smaller rather than larger; my interest is in botanical photography & not so much in landscape photos where it would be necessary to get the camera up off the ground. (I have a cheapie "micro-tripod" which has proved useful sometimes but it's no longer adequate.)
The monopod approach (my hiking stick already supports this) would help in many situations, if I had a swivel head I could attach between monopod & my camera, and if I could find some sort of gizmo which snaps onto the monopod shaft to help make it into an asymmetrical tripod...
I'm asking here rather than the digital camera forums because I think the quality of posting here is better (& I'm more likely to find hikers who are into photography than photographers who are into hiking).