EVER CHANGING SHADES

 Little more then two years have passed since saying goodbye to dear friends, leaving  part of my life behind and with that a home and an occupation in hopes of finding something better for my family. In that time I moved myself 4 times and my family 3 times, learned a new occupation and have become aquanited with a host of new friends, neighbors and coworkers from a new occupation that occasionaly takes me around the globe.

 I find myself traveling north at the end of a long day towards home on one of the few highways in Rural Northern New England. Interstate 89 links interstate 93 and Concord New Hampshire with Burlington Vermont and Montréal Canada. Highways in Northern New England can be lonely and desolate between their small urban centers; that is if quiet solitude is not to your liking. There are only 4 interstate highways in the three Northern New England states, all of them running north south; there is no easy way to travel east west.  There is also I-95 stretching from Florida to Maine linking every major Eastern Seaboard City from Jacksonville FL through Portland and Augusta Maine and points north through the Canadian Maritimes. I-93 links Boston and Saint Johnsbury high up in the grand nothingness of the regions known in Vermont and New Hampshire as the Great North Woods and Northeast Kingdom; where the population of moose exceeds that of people. And lastly the most desolate,  I-91 which traverses the Connecticut River valley from Southwestern Connecticut up through Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom towards the Canadian border.

 There is a lot of nothing that exists between the small urban areas of Northern New England. That is if you only count people per square mile, housing developments, strip malls and industrial parks as something. With Vermont’s population at 800,000, New Hampshire’s at 1,300,000 and Maine at 1,500,000 it is both funny and alarming that 100 years ago the entire population of the United States did not exceed much more then 1,500,000 people.

 Exit 9 on I-89, 20 miles north or 15 minutes from the capitol district of Concord New Hampshire. It is also 45 miles or 40 minutes from the thriving economic, industrial and high tech districts of Manchester and Nashua New Hampshire that my occupation often draws me towards. Less then thirty to forty minutes from the big box stores, surprisingly thriving quaint shops along Northern New England’s Main Streets with the regions best known layers, award winning medical institutions, prestigious New England Colleges and fine art and crafts galleries. Here I am just 15 minutes from all the hustle and bustle that makes New Hampshire one of the healthiest economies of these 50 United States. I head now towards a dirt road. Turning right under the interstate. A mere three tenths of a mile from the artery that leads to urban civilization there is a left turn down a sloping and winding road; over a covered bridge and a raging mountain river I pass into a different time where people know their name. Passing the covered bridge I place the transmission in 3rd gear and proceed on the remainder of my journey home at little more then fifteen miles an hour. As I ascend 1,000 feet over the last three miles towards home upon a dirt road, up one of New Hampshire’s lowest mountains barely breaking 2,000 feet, my day begins to unwind. By contrast, the last 20 miles of highway driving from Concord took me but 15 minutes. This last stretch of my day’s journey, only 3 miles to home will take almost ten minutes. 

 With my current occupation and its need for accessibility and timely efficiency some ask, "Why do you live down a dirt road? Doesn’t that slow you down?". To which my answer is a resounding, “yes it does”. In fact it is my job which requires me to be tied to a cell phone and lap top in order to respond in a timely manner to help those who cause their own problems because they are too busy to stop and think about what their next steps should have been is exactly why I live down a dirt road. Selfishly I sought a deep valley where my cell phone and satellite wifi mobile internet access is intentionally, utterly useless.

 Here I slow down from the rushed lifestyle required of my job and the industry I work in and begin once again to appreciate things worth appreciating. Things that most folks normally pass by at 70 miles an hour without a thought to or clue of its existance. Down this dirt road, where all the rustic country homes are hidden in the woods with their driveways seperated by hundreds of feet, where the smallest lot is 5-10 acres some approaching several hundred; Here, for tens of square miles there is little to no human activity. Some days traveling at 15 miles an hour for 3 miles you see more wildlife then people. From fox to flying squirrel, to upland game birds to deer, moose, bear and wolf, you never know what you might see around the next bend or over the next hill. Here, you can not pass another person without them saying hello and or stopping for a minute to talk. Here your neighbors see your driveway and three car garage covered in four to five feet of snow and ice due to the property having been empty through the winter and they come over with their ford tractor sporting a front end loader and a 5 foot wide snow blower on the back to dig you out. When you offer to pay them for their time and equipment, he smiles and asks, “if ever I am in need, please remember”. I paused for a moment and asked, might you need help boiling your maple syrup this spring? He smiled with a nod and said, "Now we are talking". Then, when you realize the same condition on your roof and start digging it out yourself, some other neighbor sees you and they call in help from their friend’s, relatives and neighbors to clear it for you. I swear I almost felt like I was at a barn rising. Here where your neighbor is a maple syrup farmer happy to show you his craft, or a doctor happy to provide a second opinion, or a vet happy to do the same, or a contractor, or an artisan, a precher, a professor or a wiccan presitess;  here, where the towns plow truck driver clears your driveway on his morning run instead of burying it; here you are accepted as a new Englander if you can place differences in religion politics and lifestyle aside in the interest of a better community, here is what I have been working towards for two long years.

 To my delight, tending a fire upon the hearth of my new home has become something of an evening and weekend ritual. There is something magical about a hearth, without which most homes I feel are not “home”. The wife and kids are suddenly drawn to it and each other like magnets. TVs and ipods are left setting idle, computers actually go into hibernation and phones get ignored. Watching everyone get lost and isolated in their own affairs bears little resemblance to a home with a used hearth. Gathering about the fire everyone talks about anything and everything. Discussing the day, tomorrow or the coming weekend. Sometimes laughing, sometimes crying,(I have a little teenage girl, one never knows where that rollercoaster is going). Sometimes just sitting silent in warm comfort lazily watching the dancing flames; almost always as the kids doze off to sleep.

 While I do miss parts of my previous home, its friends and dreams and the life I had said goodbye to, there is something about rural New England that feels so much more like home, and the dreams of today so much more in reach then ever before. I don’t know why that is? Perhaps because I may appreciate things a tad more simply because of the hard work required of me and my family to get where we are? Is it the atmosphere and culture of small town New England? Or the fact that New Hampshirits do not pay sales and or income tax, permitting its inhabitants a freer more comfortable lifestyle?  I do know discovering this new place to live and a new occupation along with parts of the world never visited by myself has been an unforgettable experience.

 In the state that bore the likes of Robert Frost, Daniel Webster, Krista McCullough, Sam Walter Foss, Franklin Pierce, Eleanor Porter, Adam Sandler, Areosmith, and Mandy Moore among others such as John Stark who gave this state its motto. Live Free or Die may mean little to other parts of the country. But here in New Hampshire where town meetings are held religiously and what the people vote for actually does become law, here that motto is held sacred. In this state with little taxation, a state that has the largest legislative body of all states in the country, yet only pays each legislature $200.00 per year (yes that’s right two hundred dollars) because you are considered a public servant not a career politician, freedom’s are enjoyed here that likely remain closest to the lifestyle the founding fathers envisioned for their countries future. In a state where you can order red meet, talk on a cell phone, not wear your seatbelt, or buy and shoot fireworks if you like, I find people have the freedom to own up to the responsibility as and of free people. And I find them making sensible choices in their lives and for their neighbors lives in the betterment of their town government and community. I recall, upon moving here that I had immediately been impressed with the sense of community, balance, fairness and equitability that I have seldom seen elsewhere.

 With all my family has sacrifieced over the past two years life has been out of balance with far to many thing up in the air. Both I and my wife started new jobs in a new state, saying goodby to a life we thought would be ongoing well through our retirment. Tying up loose ends with an old house we adored, finally selling it. Discovering a new life amongst the mountains of Northern New England, reaffirming bonds with family on both sides of our marriage whom have been diagnosed with potentialy fatal illnes and trying to identify how we might care for ailing parents. While their health improves they do continue on in years. My kid brother marries and buys his own house and then ironicly starts complaining about things he used to chastise me for complaining about. (bite my toung, I told you sos rarely get you anywhere) Two more funerals then the last remaining grandparent decieds to remarry at 91 years of age. Go Figure? And two children who are now teenagers and grow more mature and individualistic with each passing day.

 Now we find ourselves in a place with some of the highest peaks east of the Rockies, with more mountains rivers, lakes and ponds then I can explore in a lifetime; where runs of salmon and bass from the Atlantic call me to the waters edge and remind me of my youth exploring the coast of Long Island. People speak French, not Spanish as a second language, where every sunrise and the rolling clouds that hover about the mountain peak or roll through the valley produce a very different picture each and every day. I find myself sitting in front of a hearth lit a fire with the kids asleep, the wife reading  and me thinking about planning a hike up a mountain peak or mapping a river in preparation for a canoe trip or getting in some fly fishing or building a piece of furniture or a railroad with my kids. Each night here I am in front of the fire, where I place the proverbial pen to paper and discover a place that calls me back every day.

Finally I find a slice of heaven in New Hampshire and my home, three miles down a dirt road....