Community Strength

On a hot, sunny, beautiful day last week, the kids and I met friends in the early morning at a trailhead. Sunscreen and bug dope applied and backpacks strapped over shoulders, we headed into the woods, following a trail that meandered upwards to the summit of one of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers. It would have been the 24^th 4,000-footer – the halfway point – for three of the five kids in our posse.

A hike and perspective from another day

We didn’t make it to the top.

 

A bit more than three miles into the White Mountain National Forest, we ran into an emergency on the trail. It wasn’t our emergency, and, so, much of the story is not mine to tell. The day took a turn none of us anticipated, nor would have chosen. As with many things, however, there was a positive take away – for me, it was the coming together of both strangers and familiar faces in a tough moment, and a reminder of the strength of community.

The short story, the part that belongs at least partly to me, is that this was the kind of emergency that included a call to 9-1-1, the administration of first aid none of us had ever had to do before, and a long wait for the search and rescue crew to arrive and take over. There was not a happy ending.

The friends I was hiking with are good ones. We’ve seen each other cry through terrible days, and we’ve laughed together countless times. We’ve vented about a vast array of annoyances, shared parenting advice, and watched as our kids have grown up together. But we’d never been thrown into a situation of literal life and death before this. I’m thankful we were there together – and that if I have to have this story as part of my history, it’s one I share with them.

There were others there with us, too. A solo hiker just behind us jumped in to help. His name is Ryan, and he spent a few harrowing hours with us, with no complaints and with as much good humor as any of us could muster. Two other groups – a trio of college students and a pair of young women – also stopped. Through it all, the 9-1-1 dispatcher was calm and encouraging.

Because we were hiking close to home, we know many of the members of the Pemi Valley Search and Rescue Team who dropped whatever they were doing when the call for help came and rushed toward the trail. We also knew it would take them close to two hours to reach us, no matter how fast they hiked.

One member of PVSART, who also happens to be our children’s elementary school principal, called to talk with me twice en route to the scene, to get information and give support. Another friend and PVSART member unable to respond that day also checked in by phone. When, already exhausted and emotionally drained, I said I wasn’t sure what we should do, she told me, “You just have to do what you think is right.” Clear enough advice for pretty much any situation, and exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.

Although I was not the one who needed rescuing that day, I’ve never been so thankful for the local search and rescue crew. These folks have a strong sense of doing what is right. They do not stumble across emergency situations, as we had, and react. Instead, they dedicate hours of training and effort to the volunteer work of coming to the rescue.

After the trained professionals – and the trained volunteers – arrived, the three of us headed back down the trail. It was a slow descent. Sometimes we talked about what we’d just seen and done, often we were quiet in our own processing of thoughts, occasionally one of us would steer the conversation toward something unrelated, something more cheerful, normal.

As we hiked out, we saw more bright yellow-shirted PVSART members hiking in, some familiar, others unknown. I’ve read a hundred stories about mountain rescue operations, even written a few. But seeing them in real time, sweating through a hot day and moving as quickly as they could to reach a stranger in need of help, was a welcome comfort amid a difficult day.

And then we were down, our statement written out for the Fish and Game officer at the trailhead we’d left hours ago, free to go. We each climbed into our individual cars and drove the short distance homeward solo. But we weren’t quite ready to let each other go. So we gathered the kids and spent another couple of hours together in my friends’ yard. The kids ate ice cream, then ran around chasing chickens and swinging and being kids. The grownups sat with adult beverages and rehashed the day again, from all perspectives, trying to sort it all out.

The principal came to sit with us awhile, to make sure we were ok, the kids were ok. Our phones buzzed with others checking in. It is a small community, after all, and word travels fast. A small community, but a strong one. A good one. 

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's June 26, 2020 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

Soccer & Community

The population of Franconia swelled to about three times its normal number last Saturday as several hundred young soccer players – and their entourages of family and fans – from towns throughout northern New Hampshire and Vermont descended on the Dow fields for the Halloween Cup.

This annual tournament has become a traditional end to the soccer season for kids in grades 3 through 6. It’s one last chance to show off skills, play with friends, and hang around eating tournament food and goofing off on the playground between games. For the Lafayette communities of Franconia, Easton, and Sugar Hill, it’s also a big fundraiser for the local recreation department.

Although the focus of the day is soccer, the underlying theme is community. Pulling off an event this big truly takes a village – or, in this case, three villages. Each year, at the end of that third Saturday in October, I find myself feeling proud of and thankful for our community, which is small in number but big in heart.

It was still dark when I arrived at the soccer field with two of my kids in tow Saturday morning – and dark again when we left, more than 12 hours later. The lights of the new pavilion – built in part with past Halloween Cup funds – shone through the dimness of pre-dawn, revealing a crew of friends and neighbors already at work.

Throughout the day, I saw an array of people filling shifting roles: parent-food server-coach, teacher-fan-referee, sibling-grill master-former player. Among the volunteers were a multitude of soccer moms and dads, selectmen, retired teachers, the local elementary school principal, and coaches and teachers from the high school. At least one first-year college student came home for the weekend to help out, and there were others on the sidelines.

My son, after his own four years of Halloween Cup competition, became a timekeeper, score runner, and trash collector for this year’s event. He also made his first foray into refereeing, sharing officiating duties for a handful of 3^rd and 4^th grade games with the principal of his elementary school.

He marveled at how small the Halloween Cup players seemed, even though he was playing on that same 3^rd and 4^th grade field only three years ago. And he seemed as happy – or happier, even – as a Halloween Cup worker as he’d been as a player. His highlights of the day were filling the Halloween Cup trophies with candy before most people had arrived at the fields, and blowing the shrill airhorn to mark the beginning and end of several games.

For me, the best parts of the day were varied, broken down by time and responsibility.

I spent the morning with the 5^th and 6^th grade girls team I’d helped coach through the season and was proud to see them play their best soccer of the year. These girls built their own sort of community through the season – coming together from two different rec programs (Bethlehem and Lafayette) to form one team. They are an awesome bunch, and they earned a spot in the Halloween Cup finals Saturday, where they narrowly missed winning the candy-filled trophy.

That afternoon, my focus shifted to the 3^rd and 4^th grade fields, where I joined the ranks of volunteer referees to call handballs and offsides and remind these younger players to keep their feet down during throw-ins. As my focus has turned gradually toward middle school and high school soccer, it was fun to see these smaller, newer-to-the-game kids – including a few I coached last year – play their hearts out on the field.

Later, as the sun sank below the trees, we watched the Lafayette team play in the boys’ finals, on a field lit by temporary lights and emergency vehicles. Around us was a crowd of others who’d been there for hours, watching, coaching, working, cheering.

Among the spectators was a group of high school boys who had reffed games earlier in the day. Not so long ago, these boys were the ones on the Halloween Cup field. On this night, they celebrated the home team’s winning goal as if the younger players had just won a high school championship.

Somewhere along the way – whether in 3^rd grade or high school or beyond – I hope these kids recognize the sense of community that encompasses these events and this place. Because after the trophy is presented and the victory candy shared, after the lights are turned off and the fields are cleared, that community remains. We help each other, cheer each other on, pick each other up after the tough games, and celebrate the victories. Together. Because there are many times, far beyond the soccer field, when it really does take a village – or three. 

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 25, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Small town heartache

We crossed paths only a few times. The first was during a pickup soccer game out in Easton my first summer in New Hampshire. He was a kid then, a teenager nicknamed Chilly, with quick feet and a big smile. The last was this winter at the local bank during a snowstorm, and he was worried he’d miss his flight back to the West Coast where he was due to compete in a snowboarding event. I wouldn’t have known it was the same kid from the soccer field a decade earlier, this tall young guy in the bright snowboarder clothes, but the smile was the same – big and friendly and real.

By all accounts, that’s how Chelone Miller lived – big and friendly and real. Like his big brother, Bode, he liked to go fast. He liked to fly through the air flipping and twisting with a snowboard strapped to his feet. And he was good at it. Really good. He’d had his share of challenges, including a motorcycle wreck that left him in a coma for a couple of weeks, but he made hitting big airs on a mountain look easy – and really fun.

Chilly died this week, suddenly, unexpectedly. He was looking ahead to the Olympics next winter, striving for a spot on the snowboardcross team. He was looking ahead to a life well lived.

When somebody young and beautiful and full of life dies, we are anguished by the complete, heart-wrenching sadness of it. We look back, yes, at the happy times and adventures. But we also look forward at the empty years, time that should have been filled with that person’s dreams, struggles, celebrations, family, and the process of growing old one day at a time. The death of a young person seems maddeningly unfair.

When someone from a small community dies, the pain is acute. Even those who didn’t know Chelone know his sisters or his parents or his friends, and we are heartbroken for them. We feel helpless, and we are. We want to do something to make them feel better. But there is nothing to do, no words to say, that can make the sadness less real.

“I’m so sorry,” seems grossly inadequate. “What can I do?” becomes a rhetorical question. What can any of us do in the face of the sorrow that comes with the loss of a loved one? Perhaps the best we can do is say that we care, offer the kindness of compassion, and look to the example of living that Chilly provided – go big, smile often, enjoy every minute you can.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, at Writings from a full life and in the Record-Littleton.