Twenty Years Home

Twenty years ago this month, I landed in Franconia. This place was already familiar, as I’d spent all of my childhood winters skiing at Cannon and rare summer days splashing in the cool Ham Branch and climbing the mountains nearby.

But it wasn’t home.

I arrived in Franconia late on a mid-October night after a cross-country drive with my mom, who’d flown out to Colorado to make the long trek back East with me. Except for a few boxes of stuff I’d shipped, everything I owned – including my somewhat neurotic cat, Fiona – was crammed into my little Subaru.

I was 27, fresh off a six-month stint guiding horse treks and waiting tables and getting pretty close to blending into a small town on the west coast of Ireland, where I was known alternately as “the horsey girl” or “the Yank who plays soccer.” The five years prior to that I’d spent in Crested Butte, Colorado, working ski town jobs to live a ski town life of sliding through snow all winter and hiking and riding my mountain bike all summer.

I could have stayed in those mountains forever, but I didn’t. I thought – twice – that I was on my way to grad school. Instead, I decided to return to Ireland, the place of my ancestors and where I’d spent a summer during college – a place I’ve seen in my dreams all my life.

Now, here I was, five years out of college, adrift. I’d spent the better part of the past week saying goodbye – first to the craggy coastline and my friends in Renvyle, then to the tall mountains and my Colorado friends. I had developed some sort of hybrid accent during my six months abroad, so even my voice seemed strange. All of my worldly possessions were crammed into a small car. I was essentially homeless and jobless – and broke.

If you had asked me then where I thought I’d be in 20 years’ time, I guarantee the answer would not have been, “Franconia, New Hampshire.” This was just where I was going to crash for a while, staying with my parents, until I figured out the next thing. I thought I’d end up somewhere bigger. Portsmouth, maybe. Or Portland. Or Concord. Definitely somewhere in northern New England, much, I believe, to my mother’s relief.

When I went west to Colorado, my folks thought I’d be gone a season, maybe a year. When I told them half a decade later that I was heading to Ireland, I think they thought two things – one, that I had lost my mind (or at least my drive), and two, that I was never, ever coming home to New England. I may have considered those two things in my own mind, too.

But in that funny way that life has of nudging us in unexpected directions, it was my time in Ireland that led me back to New England. I loved Crested Butte, and for five years that quirky little town nestled into big mountains was home. But I knew I was done waiting tables and working retail and helping to take care of the very expensive, very big houses of people who spent a few weeks a year there. I’d grown tired of the job prospects (or lack of), and of the new crop of 18- to 22-year-olds who arrived in town each fall, even if I’d been one of them not that long ago.

Renvyle had also felt like home. I had friends and work buddies and my soccer teammates. I had green fields and wild hedges of gorse and fuscia and the smell of the sea almost everywhere I went. But I did not have a work visa and was therefore limited in my ability to make a living. I stuck to my original plan of staying for six months, which meant I boarded a plane just weeks after 9-11. I cried miserably at the airport gate and felt as if I’d landed in another world – not returned home – when I arrived hours later in Denver.

Sometimes, those years in Colorado and the months in Ireland seem like a different lifetime. But my time in both of those places, the experiences I had there, the people I knew have become a part of who I am, of the way I think, of how I view my world.

And yet, it seems, I am a New Englander through and through. Sure, I grew up in a different part of New England, in a different sort of town – one with several main highways passing through it, with fast food joints and a real downtown and traffic lights (and even a good old New England rotary). But the landscape of my heart includes old houses and white-painted steeples, farms and forests, mountains and lakes and the sea. I would be lost without apples and colorful leaves in fall, snow in winter, mud and pastel blooms come springtime, and the heat and humidity and sprawling green of summer.

When it was time to set down roots, I did it here, in a place that had not quite been home, but was close. Franconia is partly the sort-of-home of my childhood and fully the one I chose as an adult. It is here that I have spent a large chunk of my life – more years than in any other place – building a career, raising children, growing vegetables, finding a community.

For years, when people would ask me where I was from, I’d hem and haw and give some roundabout answer about growing up in Massachusetts, childhood winters in New Hampshire, college in upstate New York, time in Colorado and Ireland. Now, though, if someone asks, “Where’s home?” the answer is easy: Franconia, New Hampshire.

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's October 7, 2021 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record.

The Swear Jar

The first time I heard my mother swear I cried. I was probably 12 years old, too old to be crying over swear words spoken under duress and without malicious intent. But something was obviously very bad if Mom was uttering a four-letter-word.

We were driving in the family minivan, which was front-wheel drive, through Franconia Notch in a storm blending snow and sleet, with a slick sheen of black ice glossing the pavement for good measure. Dad asked how the driving was. Mom, clutching the wheel in the dark, answered with a variation of what my kids would call “the S word.”

Fast forward a generation to children who do not shed tears at the utterance of swear words. My kids are familiar with all the most oft used four-letter words, and a few others. Partly this is because they are at that age where swear words are fascinating in their sheer naughtiness. Partly it is that my older two children are on a reading tear that progresses through several books a week, which means they have moved on to more adult content, which includes, sometimes, minor league swear words. And partly – I’m not proud to admit – it’s because their mother has a potty mouth.

I do not drop swear words into everyday conversation, but I do sometimes slip up on the language front. To stem the tide of the bad words I utter, this summer I implemented a Swear Jar.

My children think this is great fun: Mom plops a quarter in the jar every time she commits a verbal violation. (So, rarely, does Dad, as well as other visiting grown-ups who are caught by my gleeful children in adult conversation using the occasional adult vocabulary.) They think the jar will be filled in no time, and they will subsequently be rich with shiny quarters. I’m just hoping it helps me clean up my language.

Why do I cuss? It’s certainly not a product of my own upbringing, during which nary an F-bomb was dropped. If my dad uttered something so harsh as “damn,” we knew one of us was in big trouble. That evening in the car when my mom swore, I thought the world might just be ending.

I don’t remember when swear words wiggled into my regular vocabulary. Maybe it was college, or the gradual increase of swearing in movies and T.V. shows and other forms of pop culture. Probably, though, it started during the five years of my relative youth when I lived in a ski town. Or in the several years after that when I spent (and still spend) a considerable amount of time hanging out with a bunch of other ski coaches, who can toss around the swear words nearly as ably as legendarily cuss-happy sailors. I used to coach all winter with a friend who is also a fisherman, which is close to a sailor, at least when it comes to language usage.

It was in between those two eras, however, during the six months I lived in Ireland, when I first experienced cussing as an art form. The Irish have earned a reputation for their friendly hospitality, but if you spend a bit of time with the locals, you’ll find those lilting Irish voices take swearing to a level far beyond any American ski coach or sailor. They pronounce some favorites a bit differently – replacing a U with an E in one and transforming a short-I sound into a long-I in another – but the gist is the same. And they use words even I can’t bear to utter, tossing them into conversation as if they’re harmless qualifiers.

Regardless of how my potty mouth has evolved, I have made a strong attempt to restrain it since my kids arrived on the scene. Like many parents, I’ve developed verbal alternates to actual cuss words. “Son of a motherless goat!” is great when I drop something on my toe or whack my head on the not-fully-opened back door of the minivan. “For Pete’s sake,” which I may have inherited from my dad, is a good all-purpose expression of frustration. I also enjoy, “For the love of Pete,” alternately, “For the love of all that is holy.”

I am trying to be creative in articulating my annoyances, and the very presence of the Swear Jar inspires me, usually, to take a deep breath before bleeping. It is being filled much more slowly than my kids thought it would be. We’ve decided that if the Swear Jar ever does get filled up (or if I just stop needing it), we will donate that money to some local charity.

Less swearing and a bit of cash for a good cause: that sounds like a win-win, no matter how you say it.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 13, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record.

April Adventuring

While friends absconded this week to the warmth of Florida beaches and the Utah desert – and many places in between – my tribe marked April vacation with a trip to our closest National Park.

In some ways – mainly the yearning to get out of town for a few days and explore someplace new – this trip reminded me of my Colorado ski town days. When the ski area there closed in April, and as the long winter lingered in deep snow and persistently chilly weather, it seemed like half the town hit the road for someplace else – to ride bikes in Moab or camp in the desert or surf in Mexico – depending on time and budget allowances.

My springtime escapes in those days generally consisted of a Subaru loaded with tent, sleeping bag, camp stove, and hiking boots – and a friend or two for company. Over the course of a few years, I visited the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, Canyonlands – all national parks within road-tripping distance – and many other wide open spaces.

This week’s excursion was notably different than those taken in my younger, single days. Into the minivan went three kids and their accoutrements: books, games, stuffed animals, and lots of snacks. But as we set off for Acadia National Park, the impetus was the same: new adventures, a change in scenery, and exploration of unfamiliar places.

Both by the simple geographic location of home and by upbringing, my children are mountain kids. But they love the ocean and being by the shore. So do I.

There is magic and mystery in the movement of tides, and in the vastness of the ocean and its wildness. During one of many forays from our Bar Harbor hotel to the Shore Path that meanders through town, I wondered if kids who live by the sea are as enthralled by it as mine are, if they look for sea glass and shells, if they relish the sound of waves lapping the beach on calm days or crashing against the rocks on stormy ones.

My guess is they take it for granted, as my children do the mountains we see from home. Often, wonder comes from the unfamiliar essence of a thing, the novelty of the unknown.

Mount Dessert Island was happily quiet so far in advance of the rollicking summer season. We passed few people on the Shore Path and had Acadia’s Loop Road practically to ourselves during our ventures into the park.

We spent one full morning wandering the Ocean Trail in Acadia, where the kids peered into tidal pools and joyfully scrambled up and over the myriad rock formations jutting in odd, multicolored angles from the sea. We drove along the edges of Mount Desert Island, taking in picture book-classic New England villages and seashore scenes along the way.

We made early morning and late afternoon visits to the Shore Path and the craggy places along it. While the kids bent to look for perfect shells and tiny pieces of colorful sea glass in the small patches of rocky sand, I sat on the rocks and watched eider ducks bobbing easily on the waves just beyond the shore, listened to bell buoys chiming in the harbor, and watched boats laden with lobster traps motor past the Porcupine Islands.

These are standard sights and sounds for coastal dwellers, but wonderfully different – and, therefore, enchanting – to us mountain folks.

We were all sad to leave after a few days and hope to return someday in the not-too-distant future. But there are other places we want to explore, too. If my kids are anything like me, they’ll have a perpetual case of wanderlust and a never-ending wish list of places to visit.

I hope we spend many April vacations – and other times, too – engaged in new adventures, changing scenery, and explorations of unfamiliar places.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her blog, Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the April 27, 2017 issue of the Littleton Record. 

Soccer Love

At the end of the day we were cold, sopping wet, and exhausted. The 3^rd and 4^th grade soccer team I coach had played five games over the course of 10 hours. They’d experienced soccer firsts – three penalty kick shootouts, one last second (literally) goal, and a sudden death overtime – which is a lot to throw at 8- and 9-year-old kids. They handled it all like champs, and I bet this is a day they remember for a long while.

I love soccer, have loved it for as long as I can remember. The game has been an integral part of my life from childhood onward. Soccer led me to friendships in high school and focus in college. It introduced me to places and people I wouldn’t know without it – in Europe during a brief high school tour, in Colorado when I moved there after college, and in Connemara where soccer became a comfortable connection to a place far from home.

I started coaching when my kids were in kindergarten because I wanted to introduce them to the sport. Over the last five falls, I’ve had the privilege of introducing their friends and teammates to soccer, too. Coaching is a labor of love – and of balancing various skill and interest levels, kid-sized attention spans, and parental expectations.

Sport can be transformative, and as a coach of young kids, I get to witness that transformation up close – both in my own children and in their teammates. I am fully aware that the kid who is a complete goofball in 2^nd grade may morph into one of the strongest players in 5^th grade, and that the one who is the biggest and most coordinated in 1^st grade won’t necessarily be the strongest in 6^th grade. I know that the 4^th grader who has never touched a soccer ball before, but who comes to practice all season and pays attention and works really hard is going to make steady improvements.

Through soccer I get to watch my older daughter, who loves fashion and embraces femininity, transform into this tough girl who will dribble through opponents and fight for 50-50 balls against kids much bigger than she is. It is no wonder that her soccer idol is Alex Morgan, who somehow always looks as if she’s just stepped out of the beauty parlor, even as she’s burning her soccer opponents and scoring goals.

I watch my son tackle the sport with a completely different mindset, steady in the backline, confident now in taking command of a defense. Where my daughter is all bursts of speed and changing pace, my son is methodical, thoughtful, steadfast. Never one to be left behind, their little sister, whose soccer season ended two weeks ago, practices push passes against her dresser when she is supposed to be getting ready for bed. I know I could just take the ball out of her room, but I kind of love that she wants to play soccer all the time.

I have watched their friends grow through the sport, too, seen them transition from clumsy kids with too-big shin guards to soccer players who pass the ball with confidence, make moves, support each other. Saturday I got to see one group of kids overcome nerves and bad weather to play together as a team. Three times I watched five of these children step up to the penalty kick spot and take their best shots. I got to share in their relieved exaltation when they scored, and I knew their frustrated disappointment when they missed. Fifteen times, I watched our young goal keeper of the day stand, sometimes on the verge of tears, and face PK shooters from other teams.

Soccer can be a tough sport, and coaching is not always easy. It makes for sometimes hectic family life, frenzied dinners thrown together between practice and bedtime, and a week’s worth of homework crammed into non-soccer days. I spend more time thinking about the teams I coach and their young players than I probably should. And each year, somewhere about two-thirds of the way through the season, I wonder why I do this to myself. I think, sometimes, how much simpler it would be to just drop the kids off at the start of practice and pick them up at the end.

But I don’t think I could do that. I love the game too much. I love seeing the kids, my own included, develop a love of soccer and an understanding of how to play it. I love when a 1^st grader tells me she’s done her soccer homework, and when a 3^rd grader proudly shows off his new goalie gloves, and the smile from the kid who always says thanks at the end of practice.

Saturday, our team lost in the finals of the annual Halloween Cup on our home field. We were cold and wet and bone-tired. But I think the kids felt a sense of accomplishment at making it so far. As I watched these young soccer players disperse into the pouring rain of a darkening night, huddling under umbrellas held by their faithful fans and climbing into warm cars, I felt proud of their growth over the season and their perseverance through a long day. And I felt lucky to be their coach.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 28, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Mountain Views

I have seen the moon rise over Mount Lafayette many times, watching as its glow first reveals the mountain’s silhouette, then ascends beyond the ridge to illuminate the whole night sky. But Friday was the first time I stood at an elevation of 4,200 feet, nearly to the top of Lafayette, to watch the moon climb from behind that sprawling mountain. From that perspective, on the deck of the Greenleaf Hut with my children, it seemed almost as if we could reach out and touch the full Harvest Moon.

If I close my eyes and imagine a mountain, it is always Lafayette I see: broad and craggy and tall against the ever-changing sky, its wide expanse seeming to reach out and envelop the world in a stony embrace. This mountain is a focal point for town, the view from my living room window, and the namesake of the elementary school from which a friend and I sprang our kids early Friday to embark on one more summer adventure in the mountains.

Up we trekked from the paved parking lot, along the Old Bridal Path, the kids chattering happily along until we reached the ledge where we could look out over the ridge – Lafayette to Lincoln to Little Haystack – we would hike the next day. Munching trail mix, we studied the mountains, so familiar from below, but slightly foreign from this vantage. Then it was up and over “the Agonies” and onward to the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Greenleaf Hut.

“This has been my dream for so long, and now I’m here,” my son told me when we had reached the hut and tossed our packs onto bunks. He said this with the look of happy wonder and slight awe that makes my heart full of happy when I see it in my children’s faces. He said this when our adventure had really just begun.

To be in the mountains is a gift. I have felt this way since I was old enough to know that not everybody experiences this gift – really since I went to college in upstate New York, in a town tucked among hills and lakes, with nary a tall peak in sight. As if to make up for that deficit, I moved to Colorado right after graduation, to a town nestled firmly in the embrace of the Rockies, where alpenglow lit the peaks each early evening of the winter, summer days were so blindingly beautiful they seemed unreal, and the aspen leaves turned the landscape golden in fall.

After five years in Colorado I came circuitously home to the mountains of my childhood. When I was a kid, I took these mountains for granted. Now, even after 15 years of this daily view, its wild beauty often stops me, literally, in my tracks – Lafayette’s craggy mass and Cannon’s familiar contours, the distinctive shapes of North Kinsman and Garfield, the majestic height of the Presidentials.

Some days it is not enough simply to look upon the mountains. Some days I long to be on the summits, to see the world from the peaks rather than the valley. Everything looks different from there; perspective shifts in a way that stays with me even after I return to a lower elevation.

This summer I hiked more than I have in years, and I introduced my children to that altered perspective that comes with climbing toward the clouds. We spent many hours together on trails leading up and over tall mountains. There is power in standing on a summit, in knowing you can arrive there of your own free will and effort. And there is humility, too, in looking out on the world from so high and realizing it is larger than we can comprehend.

Spending the season’s final weekend hiking the rugged landscape we see from home and school and town, and all winter from our skis atop Cannon Mountain, was the perfect cap to our summer of hiking. It was a glorious day to be on Franconia Ridge, with blue skies and views forever and beyond.

What an amazing experience to walk along the sprawling mountains and ridgeline so familiar when viewed from below, yet completely novel from this height. How high and lovely Lonesome Lake looks, and how tiny Mt. Baldy. How small even Cannon seems, and how vast the Pemi Wilderness – all trees and endless peaks, rising and falling in static waves toward the lofty Presidentials. Walker Ravine seems exceedingly precipitous when you’re perched above it. Shining Rock is just as dazzling up close as when viewed from several miles away – and a few thousand feet lower.

My daughter sing-songingly declared the adventure “absolutely, positively awesome” as she trekked along the ridge. Every few minutes one of our young, intrepid adventurers would blurt out, “This is so cool!”

It was also long and hard. There was some whining and a few brief tears. There were sore knees and shoulders. And there was joy and excitement and so much wonder and confidence building (the kids’) and overwhelming gratitude (mine) to live in this place and share this experience with my children. Even as I huffed and puffed with the effort, even as the hiking aches set in, my heart sang to be on the mountains on this day and with my children. Mountains, I think, are good for the soul.

What will my children remember from this mountain adventure? I don’t know. But days after we’d left the mountain tops, after we’d made the long descent and emptied our packs and put away our hiking gear, we were all still glowing from the hike. I hope my children will always remember the mixture of elation and accomplished exhaustion that comes with climbing mountains. I hope we’ll climb many more together, adjusting our perspective in a way only possible from the heights of tall peaks. I hope they’ll remember that time they had a front row seat to watch the Harvest Moon rise over Lafayette and see the mountains illuminated. 

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the September 23, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Ski Season Shuffle

We are three and a half months into ski season, with who knows how long to go. Despite the weird and wacky weather, which has brought us more rain this winter than snow, the skiing has been plentiful, and ski season has been busy. Busier than usual this year, because my children have entered into the world of ski racing, and I have jumped back into a weekend coaching gig.

Throw in a smattering of ski writing deadlines, which sometimes involve traveling to other ski areas, and it all means ski season is an all-consuming entity. The mudroom is a muddle of skis and boot bags and helmets. The gear collection spills into the living room, where ski boots are lined up to dry by the radiator, which is piled high with hats, mittens, and neck gaiters.

Notes about night skiing and spring skiing and adaptive skiing are scattered around my makeshift office at the dining room table. House projects we started months ago, including an ambitious plan to shift bedrooms, have been abandoned in the fullness of ski season. Non-skiing plans are delayed to that vague point of “after ski season,” and there are some friends we just don’t see as much this time of year.

This ski-centricity is a phenomenon probably impossible to explain to someone not involved in skiing. But my skiing friends and cohorts will understand: skiing is not merely a hobby, or a way to pass the normally cold and snowy months of winter, or even a passion. It is an inherent, un-extractable part of simply being.

Skiing is why we wake up before the sun during the darkest days of winter. It is why we don innumerable layers on the coldest days of the year and are willing to face the elements, whether sub-zero chill, gale force winds, sleet, rain, snow, or sunshine. It is why we forgo other things to buy equipment and passes and why we stay up late tuning skis. It is something we think about, sometimes dream about, during even the dog days of summer.

Skiing is why I moved west after college, seeking higher mountains, deeper snow, a skiing life in a skiing town. And it is why, when I came back East five years later, I landed in the mountains, why I am here still.

My dad used to tell me when I lived out west, probably in an attempt to lure me home again, that skiing is skiing. Doesn’t matter where you do it, it’s the same. I’d scoff at such a crazy concept as I headed out to ski Colorado powder on a mountain whose base was 5,000 feet higher in elevation than my home hill’s summit.

The snow in Crested Butte is a good bit different than the snow on Cannon Mountain. And it’s different, probably, than European snow and Tahoe snow and Midwestern snow. But it turns out that skiing IS skiing. Yes, skiing powder is different than skiing hard pack (and goodness knows there have been days this season when I have lamented the ice and longed for a deep dose of Rocky Mountain powder). Groomers are different than bump runs or glades. Flats are different than steeps.

But there’s something in the feeling of it all that is intrinsically the same. Skiing is freedom and grace. It is strength and precision and the thrill of self-made speed. It is unbridled joy at each perfect turn – and the imperfect ones, too.

Some ski seasons are longer than others. This one, here in the East, has been particularly challenging in many ways, and there are moments when I feel ready for the busy shuffle of ski season to shift definitively to spring, ready to pack away all the gear and move on to the next season, ready to sleep in and not hurry everyone out of the house for first chair.

But then I click into my skis and arc my way down a mountain and everything else fades away. There is only skiing then, and it is worth a little shuffling.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the March 11, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Powder Day Progression

Monday’s mini snow storm serendipitously coincided with a day off from both school and my family’s various ski programs. We woke to a few inches of perfect fluff covering the trees and car and driveway, with snow still sifting steadily to the ground.

A few inches constitutes a powder day in my kids’ minds, so after breakfast we made our way along snow-greased roads to the mountain. I spent the next few hours chasing my kids around the familiar ski trails of my own childhood, and I couldn’t help pondering the progression of my skiing life – from New Hampshire to the mellow hills of college days in upstate New York, then the deep snow and steep skiing of Colorado, and finally home again to continue the cycle with the next generation.

In Colorado, I worked in a ski shop a few steps from the base of the main chairlift. My bosses were skiers, and they scheduled shifts so that all employees had a ski break every day. It was during my five years in Crested Butte that I learned the “No friends on a powder day” rule. You could make plans, but if someone didn’t show, there was no waiting around; it’s every skier for herself when the getting is good.

A powder day there, whether interrupted by work or not, generally included laps on the Headwall or North Face, searching out new lines and fresh tracks each run, and recounting the day’s best turns over a couple of beers with friends. I remember skiing one perfect, snowy day without stopping to eat, run after joyful run of deep snow and sweet turns, skiing until my legs were jelly. At day’s end I was exhausted, but happy, fulfilled.

In my first winters back East the occasional storm brought a gift of knee-deep powder and soft bumps, a respite from the harder, groomed, manmade stuff. If I could sneak away from work, I would spend an hour or two skiing off the Zoomer chair, short, steep runs as familiar as my own back yard. Sometimes I’d run into friends in the lift line, and we’d ski together for a while. But the no-friends-on-a-powder-day rule stuck: there was no waiting, no adjusting to others’ work schedules. And whether it was a stolen hour or a full afternoon of skiing, I left the mountain with that same feeling of happy fulfillment.

Fast forward a few years, and I found myself with three young children, who I was determined would be skiers. Raising skiers is not for the faint of heart. It starts with years of bundling awkward toddlers and preschoolers into layers of sometimes uncomfortable clothing, coaxing small feet into rigid ski boots, schlepping skis from the car, and getting everyone’s boots into bindings, goggles and neck-warmers properly adjusted, mittens tucked into sleeve cuffs just right.

Pockets filled with chocolate and the promise of cocoa breaks provided extra incentive if needed. But there were meltdowns, of course, sometimes from tired little skiers; sometimes from the skier mom longing for the bigger runs beyond the pony slope.

Back then, I managed to sneak out once or twice a winter to ski with friends on longer, steeper, snowier terrain. On those rare occasions, the old no-friends rule went out the window. I welcomed the kid-free companionship of friends on the chairlift, and we weren’t above taking our own cocoa breaks if the wind was too cold or the lift line too long – or we simply wanted to sit and talk.

More often, though, I spent my skiing days with the kids as they honed their skiing prowess. We spent countless hours exploring kid-sized glades and hucking little airs in the mini park. I have a video of my 3-year-old son cruising down a beginner trail in a power wedge, then veering toward the woods near the bottom. “I want to ski powder,” he said, as he shuffled through an inch of fluff atop the groomed surface of the flats.

Nature or nurture? I don’t know. Probably a little bit of both. Gradually, the kids progressed to longer, steeper trails, the tight glades at the top of the mountain, hiking over the saddle for further exploration of hidden places, a faster skiing tempo.

These days I don’t often get to ski with my kids. The older two have embarked on their first year of race training, skiing with their coaches all weekend and learning how to carve fast, smooth turns into hard snow. The younger one is in a group of more than two dozen of the littlest would-be ski racers, which I help coach on weekends. This all means lots of skiing for each of us, just not together.

So Monday was a treat, an unscheduled day to do whatever we liked, and we like to ski, especially when there’s fresh snow and no overlying agenda. I ran sweep on each run, watching the kids negotiate soft powder interspersed with rigid hard pack, then making my own turns behind them.

The pace is slower than it was during my Colorado powder days, but considerably faster than that not-so-distant time spent on the pony slope. My skiing company Monday was a ski mom’s dream come true, and the thrill of skis through snow just as happy and fulfilling as ever.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 22, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Farewell to Fi

When I brought Fiona home from a pet store in Grand Junction, Colorado, she easily fit into one of my hands. She was the first pet who was all my own, a tiny, impossibly soft tortoise shell kitten who soon proved to embrace a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde persona – all contented, fluffy purring one minute and hissing, biting fur ball the next.  

She was the wildest baby anything I’d ever seen, a little hellion of a calico, and she stayed that way from kittenhood through old age. She scratched the couch and chewed on photographs and believed – as cats seem to – that the world revolved around her. She was also an incredible jumper, an expert climber, a fierce mouser, and loving toward those – human or otherwise – she considered worthy of her affections.

A few days after bringing Fi home, I returned from work to find her atop the refrigerator. How that tiny cat managed to climb up there I’ve never been able to figure, but there she sat, mewing and shivering in the high corner of the kitchen. I lived alone then, and for sport, Fiona would crouch behind doorways and attack at unexpected moments, hurling her little fuzz ball self through the air and attaching to my leg, claws and all.

As soon as Fiona was big enough to go out, she embarked on a long career of hunting. The first time she brought me a dead bird, I put a bell on her collar. She used to climb to the top of a five-foot high post in the backyard and sit next to an old bird feeder there. The feeder hadn’t held birdseed for many years, but from her perch, Fi could survey her domain. She mostly left the birds alone, but she hunted small rodents, even bringing home two bats late one night, leaving one next to my bed and the other in the bathroom, where my roommate had the misfortune of finding it on a predawn trip down the hall. We closed the cat door at night after that.

Once Fi and I finally settled into an old house in a New Hampshire field, her mousing skills were valuable in catching the critters who came in from the cold and wanted to cohabitate with us. Even in her later years, as she grew skinny with diminishing health and deaf with old age, Fi maintained a hunters’ heart. She drove herself nuts sitting in the large picture window of the living room and watching the chickadees flit from lilac bush to feeder and back. Her tail would twitch, just at the very tip, perhaps with anticipation, perhaps with memories of younger, wilder days.

Fi stuck with me through many years and all the changes time brings – several moves, new jobs, a couple of broken hearts, and a changing cast of feline, canine, and human characters.  

She forgave me, eventually, when I left her with my roommates and took off to Ireland for six months. She huddled amongst all my worldly belongings, which I crammed into the back of my Subaru when I returned from Ireland and decided to move back East, barely budging on the days-long journey from Crested Butte to Franconia. She loved me even after I subjected her to a few months of living with my mother’s cat, who was normally lovely, but stalked Fiona with a murderous vengeance, and my parents’ German shepherd mix who was as schizophrenic at Fiona and regularly tried to eat her.

She stuck with me when I brought home another kitten, then a man, then a golden retriever (whom Fiona regularly tormented), and, finally, three small human children, who demanded my constant attention and made lots of noise. While Feargus, the kitten who grew into an immensely plump, easygoing cat, allowed the children to pull on his tail, pick him up, and lie all over him, Fiona wanted nothing to do with the kids for a long time. She hissed at them regularly, glared in a way only a cat can do, and drew blood from each at least once.

But Fi had a gentler side, too. She took care of Feargus like he was her own kitten. Even after he grew to twice her size, Fiona would clean him and settle him down with a firm swat when he got out of hand. She loved to crawl under the covers and curl up by my side, purring away as I read the latest book on the nightstand. She immediately adopted my husband, who does not particularly care for cats, as her own human, usually preferring his lap to mine.

And in her old age, she mellowed considerably. A thyroid issue caused her to steadily shrink until she was a mere wisp of her former rotund self. But as she grew older and thinner, she seemed to also become content. She still ran around chasing toys and flies and whatever else was there to chase, and she terrorized the poor, gentle dog until her final days. But she would curl up on the couch with the kids at any chance, poking them gently with a dainty paw until they pet her. She even allowed stroking by my mother, a cat lover who was perplexed – and vexed – for years by Fiona’s apparent disdain of her. She purred all the time in her last months.

Near the end of last week, feisty Fi really slowed down, and by Saturday it was clear things were not right. So on Sunday, when she looked at me sadly from tired eyes and refused even to purr, I knew it was time, after nearly 16 years, to let her go. Anyone who has ever had to make the decision to euthanize a beloved pet knows the sinking feeling of that choice.

It was a sad decision, but not a hard one. After a good life, and with the help of a kind vet, Fiona’s passing was blessedly quick. I miss her and her crazy ways, but I know that little hellion of a calico will stay in my heart forever.

Original content posted by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul to her Blog: Writings From A Full Life.

Finding home

It’s been said that home is where your heart is. If that is true, I have many homes, for I have left bits of my heart in the mountains of Colorado, with the stark landscape and ever-present sea of the west of Ireland, and in the familiar rooms and winding staircase of the dormered cape house that was my childhood home.

When I moved back to New England after nearly a decade of living other places, I figured I’d settle down in a largish town, with plenty of people and job opportunities and things to do. I ended up finding all the people, opportunities, and fun I needed right here in Franconia. I guess I’m just a small town girl.

So, I understood the other day when a friend, recently relocated to small town New Hampshire from big city New York, remarked on how much she loved life in her new community – and how surprised she was by her contentment at small town living. That conversation involved a couple of other recent big town transplants, who talked about how little they miss the mall – where you’re likely to spend too much time and too much money buying things you don’t need anyway – or the traffic, the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses, even the anonymity of living in a bigger place.

Many people, of course, thrive in big cities and love the world of lights and noise and museums and galleries and the myriad other conveniences and luxuries so easily accessible in metropolitan areas. One of the many beauties of New England, though, is that wherever you live, a journey of a mere few hours can bring you to the mountains or the ocean, a city or a small town, hustle and bustle or peace and quiet. It’s a little bit like having it all.

I have friends who have grown up here and never left, some who moved away and came back, and others who, like me, arrived from somewhere else. While I grew up skiing at Cannon Mountain, have lived here full time for a dozen years, and married a local boy, I have no illusion of being a true local. I’m a transplant from Massachusetts, and I’m OK with that.

A friend whose family has lived in the area for generations once told me, in some fit of frustration over an influx of “flatlanders” and their bothersome ways, “There are two kinds of people: those who are from here and those who are from someplace else.” When I pointed out that I fit into the latter category, he fell into a brief, flustered silence, then replied, “There are three kinds of people: those who are from here, those who are from someplace else, and those who came from someplace else, but we like ‘em anyway.”

For hundreds of years, people have been coming from “someplace else” to the White Mountains in search of home. They’ve come for the mountains and the relative solitude they offer, to seek adventure, for the fresh air and cool rivers and quiet fields and forests, for the love of another person, sometimes for jobs, often to find a simpler way of life – to build a way of living that matters.

For me, coming home to New England after years away meant returning to a familiar place and again being surrounded by family. I didn’t fully appreciate that latter bit until I had children of my own. Those children are growing up with aunts and uncles and grandparents literally right around the corner or just down the road. Whichever way we turn out of the driveway, we’re heading toward family.

Once I flew the coop of my own childhood home, it took having children to root me to any place so firmly again. I want my children to have a good sense of home, too, even if this is not home to them forever. And so I have set aside my wanderlusting ways and put down roots, anchoring me to this place, this home, even as my heart sometimes soars with my imagination to other places.

Home, now, is at our dining room table, the same table where I sat as a little girl with my parents and brothers – and where I sit now with my children, cats and dog underfoot, the room filled with the wonderfully unpredictable (and sometimes outrageously exasperating) conversation of children. Home is the backyard vegetable garden, hands stuck into dirt, sun or rain upon my back. Home is the mountains where I grew up skiing and hiking and which my children now explore. Home is in the embrace of those children, my husband, my parents, our family.

How lucky I am to be at home here, where my heart is.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul and posted to her blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears as Meghan's CLOSE TO HOME column in the January 10, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Vacationland

For the past 17 years I have lived in places where other people vacation – a tiny town surrounded by tall peaks in Colorado, then a seashore village in the west of Ireland, and finally settled into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. For many years I did tourism-based work: waitressing, guiding horse treks, retail jobs in ski stores and gift shops. And like most anybody who lives in Vacationland, I have occasionally been frustrated by visitors who drive too slowly while looking at the view or ask questions bordering on the absurd (“At what elevation do the deer turn to elk?” is among my favorites).

It was a refreshing role reversal, then, to travel to another Vacationland last week, exchanging the quiet mountains of home for the sandy beaches, busy ice cream shops, and whimsical mini-golf courses of Cape Cod. Here, I became the rubbernecking, out-of-town driver, peering first to the landscape of the sea and salt marshes, then to the perfectly picturesque Cape houses with their neat cedar shingles and hydrangea hedges ranging in hue from pale pink to cornflower blue and deep purple.

On the Cape in summertime, it seems the tourists outnumber the locals, but it’s easy to pick out the houses where year-round residents live. There are nameplates on the doors, sprinklers set on timers to water small lawns in the wee hours, plastic-wrapped Cape Cod Times tossed onto driveways each morning, and neat fences containing backyards with patios and swing sets.

At our home in New Hampshire, surrounded by an untamed apple orchard and wild berry brambles, we are regularly visited by moose, deer, and bear – the wildlife tourists to the area often hope to see. The week before our Cape Cod vacation we had one bear, looking for some discarded cooking grease, spend a bit too much time a bit too close to the house. We’ve also had bear cubs in the sandbox and a juvenile moose in the perennial garden.

By these large animals, my children are unfazed. But the small, lightening quick eastern cottontails of Cape Cod were fascinating. We looked for – and often found – them everywhere: the mini golf course, the back yard, on the way to the beach, on evening walks through the neighborhood. Each glimpse of brown ears and fluffy white tail elicited gleeful exclamations of “Bunny!”

An even bigger treat was the seals we spotted in the waves off Monomoy Island, where we happily traveled with friends who have a boat. The seals seemed as curious about us as we were about them, their round, black heads staring at us from the shallow water before ducking into the ocean and popping up again a few waves over.

Wading through tide pools, the kids found hermit crabs, a starfish, huge snails, mermaid’s purses, rocks in all sizes and colors and rubbed smooth by the ocean, and more shells than would fit in their plastic buckets. These things may be as common to Cape Codders as bear and moose sightings are to us, but for my New Hampshire kids, the treasures of the sea are new and wonderful and will be remembered fondly until our next visit.

This was our third annual trek to Cape Cod, and it’s become a week my children look forward to all year. For them, it’s a chance to sleep in bunk beds, play in the waves, and go for a boat ride or two. For me it’s a cherished family tradition and happy change of pace. Salt water and sea breezes are good for the soul, in the same way that clear mountain air and vistas are, or paddling along a lake where loons sound their wild cry and sunlight glints off quiet water.

No matter where you find Vacationland, a change of scenery and break in routine can be refreshing, invigorating, recharging. I count myself lucky to live in a place where a breath of fresh air is available any time from the front porch, the windows frame a stellar mountain view each day, and you’re more likely to be delayed talking with a neighbor at the post office than stuck in a traffic jam.

Still, it’s nice, sometimes, to get out of town. It was a joy to spend a week at the beach. And it was a blessing to return to the mountains, a Vacationland for many, but simply home to me.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul and posted to her Blog: Writings from a full life. This essay also appears in the Aug. 9, 2013 edition of the Record-Littleton.