Walking Through the Dark

As we approached the darkest – or at least the longest – evening of the year last month, the kids and I took to venturing out for post-dinner walks. Partly this is because with so much dark and so little daylight, it can be a challenge to fit exercise into the daylight hours. And partly it’s because there are only so many Netflix shows we can watch and games of cribbage we can play during these long nights. Sometimes we need another diversion. Or a fresh air fix. Winter evening walks are a way to have both.

Like lots of people around here, we live on a dirt road where the traffic is sparse, especially during dark winter nights. The only streetlight is at the far end of the road, and we tend to wander in other directions during our evening forays. I often strap a headlamp around my hat as we venture into the darkness, but my preference is to allow our eyes to adjust, to see our way bit by bit, sometimes with a twinkling of starlight or moonglow to guide us. 

Last year, these walks generally included only me and the dog. This winter, though, the kids have been wound up and ready to ramble with me after we’ve eaten dinner and done the dishes. Having their company is not always relaxing – they can be loud, and sometimes they run ahead to hide, then spook the rest of us by jumping out from behind some shadowy tree – but as the mother of teenagers, I figure I should take all the screen-free together time I can get these days. Plus, I’d rather have them running around outside than bouncing off the walls inside.

 

I remember watching people stroll along Lake Garda one summer, during college, when I spent a few weeks backpacking around Europe. Older couples walked arm-in-arm, kids scampered about, and nobody seemed to be going anywhere in particular. They weren’t in a hurry, or pumping their arms to burn extra calories from eating all that delectable gelato – just meandering along a lake in a resort town of mountain views and sidewalk cafes. 

 

Probably most of these evening strollers were tourists, like I was. And maybe this was not their normal, non-holiday routine. But I found the idea of an after-dinner walk charming – and memorable enough that the mental image has stuck with me for more than a couple of decades and countless life changes since those two nights spent at a hostel by the lake. 

 

My winter evening rambles through the neighborhood with my kids are vastly different from those Riva del Garda strolls through the bright evening light of an Italian summer when I was 21. Somehow, though, the one evokes a recollection of the other. 

 

Then, I was sipping wine with friends and basking in warmth of the season and our youth, suntanned and carefree and thrilled to be spending a couple of days in this foreign land. Now, I walk with offspring who have surpassed me in height, our feet crunching across a frozen, white landscape. Our breath curls as wispy clouds into the darkness. The snow-laced branches of balsam firs and hemlock trees stand as silent, magical sentinels along the quiet road.

 

Sometimes we step off the road and into the woods, where our tracks crisscross those of snowshoe hare, deer, foxes, and other forest dwellers. The dog revels in the scents floating in the night air and throws herself happily down to roll in the snow. The mountains of home rise along the horizon, their familiar craggy shapes barely discernible through the dark, the bright lights of snowcats prowling along ski trails. 

 

We come home rosy-cheeked and stomping snow from our boots onto the floor, where it will melt into small, cold puddles. These winter nights are long, yes. But our walks bring us, bit by bit, through the darkness.  

Original content published by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul. This essay appears as Meghan's January 6, 2022 Close to Home column in the Littleton Record. 

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. 

Mountain Living

It took going to college in the rolling hills of central New York state for me to realize I am, at heart, a mountain girl. Although I’d spent countless hours of my childhood hiking up mountains in the summer and skiing down them through the winter, I’d always taken those mountains for granted. So when I landed in a mountainless landscape, it didn’t take long to realize there was something critical missing from my life.

There are lessons to be learned in the mountains. Patience. Perseverance. A deep love of beautiful things – and the rugged power that is often hidden by that beauty. And the lesson of taking the good – good snow, good weather, good times with loved ones or alone – when you can get it.

I spend lots of time in winter on the mountains, namely on one: Cannon Mountain. It is the one with which I am most familiar. The one where I have spent the most time. It is not the only mountain I have loved, but it is the one that most feels like home.

Last weekend I took a few solo ski runs, after fulfilling my coaching duties for the day and before I had to return to the tasks that awaited me at home. At one point I paused, between chairlift ride and skiing descent, to watch four ravens play on the wind. They floated up, drifting this way, then that, just gliding above the trees and the humans sliding below them on the snow.

The wind was from the south, which rarely means good things for the skiing at Cannon. But the ravens didn’t seem to care. They take whatever wind they find, I guess.

That south wind was part of the reason I’d decided to stick around for a few more runs Sunday. Winds howling through Franconia Notch from the south in December typically bring warm, wet weather. The skiing was fabulous Sunday, had been great for the first few weeks of the season, and I wanted a few more laps on the all-natural stuff before whatever that south wind carried watered it all down.

In the mountains, the lines between seasons are not so definitive as they are in lower realms. I have been buffeted by icy summer winds at the top of Mount Jefferson, when the sun shone calmly at the trailhead. I’ve been knocked around by tremendous gusts and pelted by freezing rain in August on Mount Adams. I’ve hiked through October snow to reach Lonesome Lake.

I’ve watched an impossibly long sunset linger across distant peaks from just below the summit of Mount Washington (only hours – and many miles – after being caught in that Mount Adams cloud). I’ve seen a magical show of sun halos and pillars and glittering diamond dust in the December sky above Cannon. And I’ve skied mid-April powder on the mountain while crocus shoots push through the dirt in my yard not far away.

Last weekend the snow and ice were so thick and white on the stunted evergreens near the summit of Cannon that the kids I coach decided the forest looked like an army of yetis. To me it seemed like some fantastical wonderland. That is how I often feel in and on the mountains – as if it’s too astoundingly beautiful to be real. Mountains can be breathtakingly beautiful from afar, but nothing compares to standing on a high summit as the world goes on below.

I’ve had some challenging moments in the mountains, and some that have scared me, too. But it’s the magical ones that bring me back again and again, whether it’s toiling for hours to reach a summit by foot or riding a chairlift for the easy thrill of gliding back down. 

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 December 13, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

So Fast Summer

August sneaks up on me every year. In June, summer stretches before me like an endless daydream of carefree days, family adventures, sunshine and warmth. Then, suddenly, it’s August, and it feels like summer is coming to a screeching halt before it’s really even begun.

This summer has seemed to pass particularly quickly. It feels a bit like one of those days where you get to the end of it, flustered and exhausted, and wonder what the heck you did all day. But once you’ve had time to sit and reflect, you realize there was a lot packed into the day – or, in this case, the season.

During the first month of summer we had a revolving cast of visiting cousins in town, which made for days – and nights – that were fun, to be sure, but also sometimes hectic and amorphous. We loved the quality cousin time, but never really got into our own summer swing of things.

For the first time since the kids were toddlers, we also didn’t take our annual week-long pilgrimage to the ocean. We’ve had lots of shorter adventures that have all been a blast, but without that week of beach time marked on the calendar, summer has seemed a little off, I guess.

And don’t even get me started on the garden. Oof. Busy June weekends, on top of some pretty miserable early summer weather, thwarted all my good intentions of getting the vegetable gardens planted early. The perennial bed is a disgraceful tangle of weeds with the occasional sturdy bloom poking through.

Still, my flower boxes are overflowing with color. And the small plots I managed to sow – late as it was – with veggie seeds are producing well, keeping us in beans and carrots, cukes and zucchini, beets and more kale than I know what to do with. It all makes me think it’s simply time to cut back on the size of both gardens for a while.

Despite missing our Cape week – and the fact that it took us to the end of July to get to our first big hike of the summer – the adventures we have had have been fabulous. We’ve gone glamping and mountain biking, camping and kayaking, climbed a few tall mountains and splashed in our favorite spots along cool rivers. I’m still holding out for a few days at the ocean – and a few more hikes, bike rides, and trips to the pool and the river.

I guess that’s the upside of August hitting so hard – realizing summer isn’t really forever, and that it’s wise to fit as much of its goodness in before the days shorten too much more, before the kids are swallowed up back into the school year, before we move on – ready or not – to the next season. 

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 August 9, 2019 issue of the Littleton Record.

Skiing Through Black Friday

The idea of joining throngs of hyped up shoppers the day after Thanksgiving has never appealed to me. I’m not much of a shopper to start – I can barely stand grocery shopping – and I don’t do well in crowds. For all my adult life, I have lived in places where it is easier to get into the mountains than it is to find a mall; this is one of the many things for which I am thankful – on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and all the other days.

Far from the madding crowds: scoping out a new season.

While the hoards of Black Friday shoppers rise early to stand in line, my family, if all goes well, will be making our way to the mountain for opening day of ski season. When there is snow on Thanksgiving weekend, I ski. That has been true since my immediate post-college years when I lived in Crested Butte, Colorado.

During those ski town days, I usually spent Thanksgiving working, then joined friends – and friends of friends – gathered in someone’s living room for a hodgepodge of holiday dishes and traditions around a makeshift collection of card tables and mismatched chairs. Most of us were far from home and family, working odd holiday hours in a town where shops, restaurants, and ski lifts were open on Turkey Day.

People showed up when they could, after or between shifts, coming together in the comfort of good food, friendly company, and talk about the fresh ski season. Back then I was thankful for being in the mountains, living in a beautiful place with other people who embraced that beauty and loved exploring the wide-open spaces around us. I was happy to have a job that included daily ski breaks, a decent place to live, and people to gather with on this holiday of giving thanks, even if they weren’t quite family.

I’m not sure I even knew about Black Friday until I moved back East. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention before. Or maybe this national day of shopping has morphed in the past couple of decades into the consumeristic beast it is now. In the modern era of constant connectivity, you don’t even have to leave the house to buy presents, and online shopping has its own special holiday in Cyber Monday.

Well before Thanksgiving, I started receiving texts and emails touting Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, sometimes from stores where I’ve never even shopped. They can send all the advertisements they want, I still won’t be buying today, and probably not Monday either. My holiday shopping tends to be on the small scale (even with three kids) and as local as I can make it.

During the Black Fridays I worked as a reporter, I spent a good portion of the day after Thanksgiving popping into those local shops in the post-parade crowd of Main Street Littleton, talking with local business owners and shoppers. The resulting story was generally a combination of fluff (what were the “hot” items this season) and substance (how important were Black Friday sales to these small shop owners).

Surrounded by hustle and bustle, and jotting soundbites into my reporter’s notebook, I longed for the steady hum of the chairlift’s bullwheel, the sensation of skis slicing through snow, the comfort of not being corralled into small spaces with so many people. (My claustrophobic exception is the tram car, where the end result of a top-to-bottom run absolutely justifies the sometimes crowded means of transport).

Lots of things have changed since those early post-college years, geographically and otherwise. My Thanksgivings have returned to a more traditional scene – a day off from schedules, gathering with family, eating too much. These days, I spend my winter weekends coaching 6- and 7-year-old aspiring ski racers. We kick off the season the day after Thanksgiving.

It turns out I am thankful now for some of the same things I was thankful for 20 years ago when I lived in the mountains of Colorado: work that allows me to ski quite a bit, a pretty nice place to live with the beauty of the mountains surrounding me, and the closeness of family. Plus, I get to spend Black Friday on skis.

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 November 25, 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.

Winter Love Affair

I pity the people who live here and don’t like winter. Those six months from November through April, when snow falls and ice builds up and winter winds whip through the yard, must be excruciating for those who loath this long season.

Mind you, while I feel pity for the winter haters, I certainly don’t sympathize with them. If you choose to make your home in New England, especially northern New England, you’d best embrace winter and all it brings. I’ll admit that in November I miss the long, warm days not long past, and come April I am often beginning to tire of snow. But from December through March I am in winter’s thrall.

My love affair with winter has been lifelong. There was little seasonal distinction, when I was a child, in the parental directive to “Go play outside!” In fact, playing outside was encouraged and modeled by our parents year-round, but extra effort was made in the winter. From just before Christmas to sometime around Easter, each Friday afternoon we’d load up the family car with kids, ski gear, and sandwiches for dinner and hit the road for a three-hour drive north. After two glorious days of skiing and playing in the snow, we did the trip in reverse Sunday afternoon. This was repeated every weekend from the time my brothers and I were babies until we all left for college and beyond, and my parents retired to the mountains and gave up the weekly commute.

Skiing has always been a central player of my winter days, but it is only one of many things I love about the season. As I write this, a few days before Christmas, the forecast is calling for rain: a four-letter word of the harshest variety for us snow lovers. But the weather prior to this meltdown, at least north of Franconia Notch, has created a winter wonderland this mid-December that rivals any I have seen, showcasing the season’s enormous beauty. We can only hope that winter’s return is swift and plentiful.

On the best of wintry days, snow falling in big, fluffy puffs or intricately dainty flakes transforms the landscape to sparkling. Views obscured by foliage in summer are opened up when the trees are bare. Those bare branches covered in a crystal-clear skim of ice or the festive white of winter are quite literally dazzling – the stuff of winter storybooks.

Beyond winter’s beauty, if you embrace the cold and snow of the season, the opportunities for entertainment really are endless. There are hills to sled and snow angels to feather into fluff. Snowmen and snow animals to create. Snow forts to construct, with tunnel entrances and high walls and snow benches. Skating on the pond or at the town rink. Snowshoe treks through the forest, where the tracks of myriad woodland animals – along with cross-country skiers and their dogs – crisscross the snowy ground. And when the sky is clear, the early dark of winter eve266nings allows for stargazing just after dinner.

Best of all, in winter there is skiing. For this, I drive with my family along the snow-covered-tree-lined roads of my childhood to reach trails on the same mountain where I skied as a kid. The expectation now, in my family, is the same as it was when I was a girl: on winter days we roll out of warm beds to a morning-cool house and prepare for a day of skiing. There are glades to explore and fast runs on groomed trails, chairlift conversations with friends, and the thrill of speed, wind in your face, and the pure joy of being alive.

When we come home in the afternoon, with the chill of the day lingering on rosy cheeks, sometimes we light a blaze in the fireplace and sip hot cocoa. Sometimes the kids are content to nestle into a nest of blankets and read a book or watch a movie. Often, though, they are soon back outside, building jumps for their sleds or shoveling a new feature into the snow fort. There is simply too much to do, too many adventures to find and fun to be had, to stay inside.

We are on the brighter side of the winter solstice now; the days are slowly lengthening. The abhorrers of winter have that small glimmer to cling to. The winter lovers among us, however, know the fun is just beginning.

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 December 26, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

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.

Ski School

Through the heart of winter, on Friday afternoons, scores of smiling local children get out of class early to go skiing. For many of the students, these six Fridays are the only opportunity they have in a season to hit the slopes.

Skiing kids are happy kids!

The contours of Franconia Notch and the winding ski trails of Cannon Mountain are clearly visible from the playground at Lafayette Regional School in Franconia. The “Winter Program” at Lafayette – and several similar programs at schools throughout the region – gets kids into the mountains that fill the space just beyond the back yard. Skiing Fridays offer a chilly breath of fresh air in a time when much of the talk surrounding schools focuses on standardized test scores.

Some schools might shy away from the idea of students spending precious school hours away from the classroom, focusing on something other than literacy and long division. But this is a mountain town – these are all mountain towns – and if our kids don’t notice and learn about their immediate surroundings, well, they’re missing out.

Last Friday I happily joined two of my children for Lafayette’s first Friday ski of the season. The ski day tradition dates back to my husband’s childhood and far beyond, probably to Dow Academy and the earliest days of skiing in the area. Lafayette students have a choice of skiing at Cannon, Nordic skiing at Bretton Woods, or a “winter fun” option which kicked off last week with dog sledding and will move on to ice skating, sledding, and just plain playing in the snow.

Eighty of the school’s 108 students opt for downhill skiing. Some are already able skiers when they begin the program in kindergarten or first grade. Others have never skied before. Parents volunteer as chaperones and relish the opportunity to spend Friday afternoons on snow with their children. Some of these moms and dads are learning right along with their kids.

“This is a great way for us to not only give back to the local community, with low-priced recreation opportunities, but to earn trust and loyalty over the course of people’s lives up here in the North Country,” says Cannon GM John Devivo, who notes 18 schools participate in some form of weekly ski program at Cannon.

(An anonymous donor ensures that any Lafayette student whose family needs help paying the nominal seasonal fee or renting equipment is able to participate.)

As principal Gordie Johnk points out, “how to ski” is not a topic that will appear on any standardized test. But through the Winter Program, students are exposed to new experiences and are learning new skills they may not otherwise acquire.

“The children here are growing up in the shadow of the mountains,” Johnk says. “So we might as well teach kids how to be safe and have fun.”

That philosophy extends beyond winter at Lafayette, where every other year the 5^th and 6^th grade students participate in an “outdoor education” program that includes three or four fall Friday hikes up nearby mountains and an overnight program at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Highland Center in the spring.

These outings are a special bonus to the regular school year curricula. Not every school has one of the country’s most beautiful state parks right out the back door, and at Lafayette the kids get a bit of time to explore that wonderland during school hours.

Many of their parents tag along for the adventure, spending time with kids who grow up way too fast, and sharing in their joy of being outside in the mountains. On a school day, to boot.

  

This essay appears in this week's edition of the Record-Littleton.