Mountains to the Sea

If ever there was a summer of sticking close to home, this was it. Luckily, we live in a beautiful place, and lots of the things we love to do are accessible right from the front door – or within a short drive. As long and, sometimes, strange as this summer has been, I’m sad to see it end. We’ve packed it as full as we could, with plenty of time in the mountains, numerous dips in the river, lots of backyard soccer, and a welcome – though short – trip to the sea.

July was a month of hiking for us. Between the second day of the month and the second to last, the kids and I stood atop eight of New Hampshire’s tallest mountains. These summits were not the most spectacular we’ve climbed to, nor were most of these hikes among the most scenic we’ve done. But they brought us eight peaks closer to our goal of reaching all of the state’s 48 4,000-footers – an effort that is, for us, a years-long slog.

What made these hikes special was the time on the trail – and on the peaks – spent with friends. Having a trail buddy to talk with during these long, steep days makes a world of difference – for both me and the kids. I count myself lucky to have two good friends who love to hike and whose kids are friends with my kids. We’ve covered a lot of miles together – some happy miles, and some whiny ones – and we have countless shared stories to tell.

Our last hike of July was to North and South Kinsman, with an overnight at Kinsman Pond, which sits along the Appalachian Trail. The Kinsmans are among our “home mountains,” those we can see from the yard or driving through town. They also offer up the best hiking views we’ve had this summer, comprising some of our other home mountains, including the one we ski on all winter.

Standing atop a mountain – whether in the wind and rain, a snowstorm, or on a sunny day – inspires wonder. To be on top of one little piece of the world and look out at a landscape that seems so wild, even though home is just down the valley road – well, it’s a feeling hard to explain. It’s a feeling I love, one that boosts me up, in part by reminding me how small I and my worries of any given day are in the grand scheme of things. I feel similarly about the sea, whose waves and tides seem mysterious, whose reach is unimaginably vast, and whose depths contain unknown wonders.

While our regular trip to Cape Cod was called off this year before we’d even begun to plan it, as August meandered toward September the idea of a summer without even one day at the beach seemed unbearable. So last week, the kids and I packed all the camping gear and the beach towels into the car and headed east toward the Maine coast. We spent a few days in a place we’d never been before – a far cry in many ways from our regular beach neighborhood, with its ice cream shops, familiar busy beaches, and our favorite hotdog stand and lobster roll place.

We jumped in the waves, searched for shells and sea glass, and marveled at entire logs of driftwood sitting faded and smooth along the beach. We soaked up sunshine and salty breezes and dodged exceptionally cheeky seagulls as they tried to snatch our lunch. One morning we walked within a coastal fog to explore mudflats at low tide and search for hermit crabs and sand dollars. It was, quite literally, a breath of fresh (and perfectly salty) air.

The evening the kids and I returned from Maine, our hair filled with sand and sea salt, my husband asked each of us which of two options we’d pick if we had to choose: 1) live in the mountains and visit the ocean, or 2) live near the ocean and visit the mountains. None of us hesitated; we are all, to our cores, mountain people.

Still, it felt good and right to visit the sea, to feel the sand between our toes and the pull of the waves. I’m hoping the summer memories of both – the mountains and the sea – will be enough to sustain us all through whatever this fall might bring. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's September 3, 2020 Close to Home column in 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. 

Picking Berries

"Can I eat them all?” my 5-year-old asked, staring at a large bowl of wild blueberries we’d plucked from low bushes along the side of a local road. When it comes to berries, this little girl is insatiable, and I

can’t blame her. After all, wild berries picked fresh from the vine or the bush are one of the great joys of summer.

Over the past few years, my family has a built a respectable list of secret and not-so-secret berry stashes: a thick patch of blueberries hidden amid the tangled brush of the southeast field, swaths of thorny blackberry bushes growing through the old apple orchard, and clusters of wild raspberries woven along the tumbledown, fern-ensconced stone wall at the far edge of the front yard.

If one berry spot is lacking, we move on hopefully to the next – the roadside pick where we found the blueberries my youngest was ready to devour last week, or the patch of raspberry bushes at the corner of our road, or the blackberry brambles at the edge of the woods in the front field. So far, our best crop this summer has been the raspberries growing through the thick hedge of rosa rugosa along the curve of our driveway.

“Berries!” called the littlest one (again) as we drove out one morning. I brushed off her claim at first, figuring she must have seen the rusty swell of rosehips within the prickly foliage. But she was persistent (as she often is), so I threw the minivan into reverse to check it out. Sure enough, the first pinky-red raspberries of the summer hung there amid the thorny rosebushes like tiny treasures. I picked the few I could reach and divvied them up between us.

That was weeks ago, and my daughter continues to visit that spot several times each day, reaching through the double thorns of  rose bushes and raspberry canes for each sweet prize, and beseeching the taller members of the family to pluck the berries that hang tantalizingly just beyond her reach.

I spent many a girlhood afternoon myself, once upon a time, scrambling through brambles to reach the berries that grew along the road near home. The scratches along bare arms and legs were a small price for the simple pleasure of wild berries eaten on the spot or saved for breakfast the next morning.

During college, I spent a summer in Ireland, studying history and literature and traveling around. While musing and wandering one day along a quiet lane just outside the village that had been home to my great-grandparents, I made the happy discovery of big, juicy blackberries growing in the roadside hedge. Their sun-warmed sweetness and the casual waves of passing strangers reminded me of home.

This summer, too, we have managed to find wild berries in our travels. During a visit with friends in Maine, we picked our way through some of that state’s famous wild blueberry bushes, located conveniently off the back porch. What the littlest one did not eat by the handful, we saved for breakfast the next morning. On our annual trek to Cape Cod, we discovered a small patch of blackberries just down the road from where we were staying. My children exclaimed at the find and spent 10 happy minutes plucking a colander full of plump berries, enough to last the week.

Closer to home, my children and husband and I keep watch on the berries each summer, looking first for the blossoms, then the bumpy green of unripe berries, and finally the succulence of the tiny, tasty treasures we’ve waited for. Then we set to picking.

While the kids prefer to grab blackberries and raspberries on the fly, before moving on to one of summer’s other distractions, my favorite to pick are the blueberries, tiny and low to the ground – and thornless. It is something like meditative therapy to crouch down in a quiet field and mindlessly plop small berries into a pail until it is full.

Each summer we bake our cache of wild berries into crumbles and muffins, blend them into smoothies, condense them into jam, pour them over pancakes, and package the leftovers neatly into the freezer for later. By far the best way to eat a wild berry, though, is fresh off the bush or the vine, juicy with sunshine, brimming with the sweetness of summer and good memories of past berry picking adventures.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears in the August 8, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

Puppy Love

Banshee

My brother and his girlfriend got a new puppy this weekend. She is 8 pounds of pure, fluffy, black-and-white, wet-nosed joy named Banshee.

Banshee is an Icelandic sheepdog, the first specific-breed dog my brother has ever had. We were a mutt family growing up, and when Billy was living in Colorado, he got a puppy whose mother was some kind of Norwegian elkhound mix and whose father was unknown. He named that puppy Teocali, after one of the most beautiful mountains near the town where we both lived for several years. Teo went everywhere with Bill, including to New Hampshire when he moved back East.

Teo was the smartest dog I’ve ever known and the most loyal. He was cute in a disheveled sort of way. He would play fetch with any willing participant, including my small children, who could only throw a tennis ball a couple of feet. And he would fetch endlessly, finding a ball or stick wherever it landed – the tall grass of a vast field or the tangled undergrowth of a forest – until Billy told him, “Take a break.”

Anyone who knows my brother also knew Teo, because Teo continued to go everywhere with Billy. He spent a lot of time camped out in the pickup truck – in front of the Village Store, on the job site, outside the bar. From his perch in the truck, Teo would acknowledge you only if you were in his inner circle. If not, or if he simply didn’t feel social at that moment, he’d cast a bored sideways glance and keep staring out the window, looking for Billy. Or he’d hop calmly into the back seat and lie down.

He was playful, but not overly exuberant. He didn’t jump around or lick people or clamor for attention. Teo just did what Teo wanted to do, which was basically hang out with Billy. Or play fetch. Or stare at cats. That was one of his favorite pastimes from puppyhood, just staring at cats. Not trying to chase them or play with them, just staring. Billy thinks it was some kind of herding instinct.

Teocali

Teo was so nonchalantly charming, so unconventionally handsome, that a virtual stranger asked Bill if she could breed him with her female Chow. Billy got pick of the litter, and now my parents have Teo’s son, Gunnison, named for the town where Billy lived when Teo was a puppy.

When Teo died two summers ago, it was crushing. For a decade he’d been my brother’s co-pilot, his friend, and a constant companion through many changes. Some people, when they lose a pet, want to get another one as soon as possible, seeking to fill that hole in a life and a heart. For others, there is no filling the hole, and the reminders are everywhere – the water bowl you can’t quite bring yourself to put away, the leash hung behind an old coat and discovered months later, a stray tuft of fur blown into some rarely cleaned corner, the loneliness of a run or a hike without canine companionship, the empty spot in the truck.

My father in law keeps in his office the ashes from his beloved golden retriever, Alex, decades after Alex ceased to run around chasing his tail. So much was Alex loved, that my husband and I now have a wonderful golden, and both his siblings have goldens. For their family, there is no other breed. For my father-in-law, there is no other dog, and since Alex, he has never brought home another pup.

We all knew there was no way another dog could ever fill the hole Teo left. Billy and Laura buried Teo in their back yard. They planted a tree and created a garden there. Those actions were about both grief and remembrance.

Then two weeks ago, Billy started talking about a breed of dog he’d seen in a National Geographic article. Icelandic sheepdogs seemed a lot like Teo – the same wise look and calm expression, the same unexuberant joy, the same disheveled mane of thick fur standing out around the neck. They even have similar personality traits – smart, loyal, patient, mellow.

Saturday Banshee came home. An Icelandic sheepdog from Limerick, Maine. A happy little bundle who played with my smitten children, sniffed at the snow, and curiously chased after the three cats of the household.

She’ll grow to about the same size Teo was and will probably sleep on his old bed and drink from his old water bowl. She’ll learn that cats have sharp claws, and to stay away from the electric fence around the pig enclosure. On hot days, perhaps she’ll rest in the shade of Teo’s tree. And I bet she’s going to be great at fetch.

Banshee will never be like Teo was. She’ll be like herself. She’s already stealing hearts and causing spontaneous outbreaks of grinning. That’s what puppies do. They create joy. And if we’re lucky, they remind us of the dogs we’ve loved before, and those empty spaces in our hearts start to fill in just a little bit.