A Summer Morning in New Hampshire

A SUMMER MORNING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ll know that I live in the crazed and chaotic D.C. area most of the time, but steal away for a few precious months each year to my family’s old farmhouse in New Hampshire. Here I shed my usual roles and responsibilities and am able to simply be — a human being rather than a human doing, as they say.

While I’m usually alone, my nephew and his four teenagers come each summer for one of my favorite times of the year — a month of jigsaw puzzles and art projects, early-morning ice cream and late-night board games, swims in the river and croquet on the lawn. And piles: piles of dirty clothes on the floor, piles of shoes by the door, piles of dishes in the sink, and piles of books everywhere. Kind of like my place at home, come to think of it, but on a smaller scale.

Quality Time

Midway through their visit, I’ve been gifted with a rare quiet morning. All the kids are upstairs reading books, of all things.

My first order of business was to relocate three house mice that I caught in live traps overnight. I’ve read that you must put three to five miles between the critters and your house or they might somehow find their way back. This is hard to believe, but I’m not going to question it. We have an all-out invasion this year, and I’ve only begun to fight.

I drove the wide-eyed traumatized mice three miles up a narrow winding road on the far side of the Ashuelot River (can they swim across rivers?) and found what looks like a good spot to begin my resettlement project, featuring lots of brush and a seed-rich meadow on one side of the road, and the river on the other. After I had introduced the migrants to their new home and left them a hearty breakfast of birdseed, I went wading in the river and perched on a sun-warmed boulder to contemplate my blessings.

Once home, I fed the wild birds, boiled some sugar water for the hummers, and scattered sunflower seeds on the deck for the chipmunks. (And I wonder why I have mice!!)

Chipmunk Investigates Mouse Prison

Once the outside creatures were taken care of, I cut up four perfectly ripe mangos and made a jug of iced tea for the inside creatures when they emerge. Now for some quality deck time with my bird book and journal, binoculars, and Father Richard Rohr’s book, Simplicity: The Freedom of Letting Go. After a week of spotty internet coverage, I am indeed learning to let go and just breathe. I have no idea what that man donald trump is tweeting, and I don’t care.

Peace.

Deck Time

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A Picture of Endurance

“I’m not kidding. People die because of this. We have to go. Now.” Our guide wasn’t smiling.

Chastened, my friend CJ and I stopped giggling. Yes, it was ridiculous to have hiked halfway down the Grand Canyon in  August with just one bottle of water between us, but the time for laughing would come later . . . if we survived.

The night before, our guide JK had said, “We will have plenty of water.” CJ took this to mean we would have plenty of water without her contribution. Wrong.

CJ announced her lack of water when we reached Cedar Ridge , a lovely plateau on the South Kaibob Trail. Here we had been going to sit and rest and enjoy the view (for which no adjectives suffice) before hiking back up the steep, rocky trail. At first JK and I thought CJ was kidding, but quickly realized that was not the case.

That’s when JK turned deadly serious. “Put on your packs, we’ve got to get out NOW, before the heat gets any worse.” This was JK’s worst nightmare, hiking at noon on a summer day with neophytes who didn’t bring water. But there we all were.

I Could Just Fly and Meet You There

Blessedly, the grueling march out has somewhat faded from my memory. I remember being dizzy. I remember my thigh muscles burning. I remember arguing with JK several times — once when I kept trying to take off my hat because I was sweltering, and she scolded me, and once when I was trying to rest, and she wouldn’t let me. “We’ll rest in the shade up ahead, not here. I’m not stopping and I’m not leaving you here.”

The worst was when she tried to make me eat an energy bar. I remember that switchback in the trail vividly, the burning heat on my back, the acrid smell of dry rock mixed with the dank scent of manure from the pack horses we had just passed.

“You must eat this,” she said, when I told her I was so light-headed I felt like I could fly. She probably thought I was going to leap into the abyss.

“I will die if I eat,” I said. “I will throw up, I really will. I can’t.” She spoke calmly and insistently, as you would to a five-year-old, and somehow persuaded me to eat the dang thing. I did not throw up. I kept walking.

One  Step at a Time

This week’s WordPress Photo Challenge is “Show us what endurance means to you.” For me, endurance means taking one step at a time, whether you are hiking, recovering from an addiction, or journeying through grief or fear or illness. Just one step.

So here you have it. Me, nearing the end of our hike up from Cedar Point:

Endurance

 

Lost in Yellow

Today, I went for a hike around Meetinghouse Pond in southern New Hampshire.

Turns out, it wasn’t so  easy to follow the yellow-blazed trail markers through the blazing yellow trees.

I rested on a bench by the pond, and traced with my finger the letters carved into the wood.

 

I watched the wind ripple the water and thought, it’s OK to be lost.

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** You’ll notice the photo montage is something new for me. Sometimes I think my blog sounds a bit like a therapy session or a stream of consciousness, so . . . I’m responding to the WordPress Weekly Challenge, And Now For Something Completely Different. **  Be glad I got bored with doing Top Ten Reasons to be a Vegetarian — though you may still see that at some point!

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/weekly-writing-challenge-and-now-for-something-completely-different/