Winter has come to northern New Hampshire

Today reminded me of why I am happy I live in southern NH. Not that I don't love northern NH, because I do. I just don't want to live here. It is cold: 20 degrees with a 15 mph wind. Snow covers the ground from Groveton to Pittsburg. It is barren; most of all, it is COLD.

Yesterday I drove up through Franconia Notch, where the air was thick with snow, but nothing had really accumulated on the road, and once through the Notch, as is so often the case, the snow stopped, and it was just cloudy. A highlight of the trip was seeing a large flock of wild turkeys in a large field just outside of Whitefield. A big highlight was discovering that the restaurant in the motel is open (it had been closed last year), so I didn't have to venture out in the cold to get dinner.

A lowlight was the fact that the hot tub is broken and the women's locker room had little heat. The large pool, however, was a big highlight.

Today was......interesting!! The wild kingdom highlight was a gorgeous pheasant standing beside the road, green feathers on head and neck sort of irridescent as he turned his head. If the road had not been slick in spots where cars had packed the snow, I would have tried to stop and take a picture.

Somewhere on the road between Colebrook and the Poore Farm (my first destination) I passed the 45th parallel, which is noted by an historic marker. I couldn't stop to read what the marker said, but visited Google when I got back, and discovered that I was halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. If you ask me, I was much closer to the North Pole than to the Equator!! A milestone of sorts, and one I'm not sure I've crossed before. Check it out on Wikipedia.

The Poore Farm is a wreck of a house, built in the 1830s, and lived in from about 1850 to 1980 by the same family. A family of savers of stuff, of everything, of letters, newspapers, tools, clothes, of STUFF from every generation of the family. All of it was there in this house when it was taken over by a group who wants to preserve it. This was a vision of my house gone very, very wrong. (See my previous entry on harpsichords and orange blossoms). I will not soon forget the way this place looked today, even after tons of junk has been carted away.

There are other reasons I won't forget it......the temperature inside the house was the same as outside, and though I had dressed "warmly" in layers, my fingers turned white and froze inside my gloves, and my toes were well on the way to frostbite by the end of an hour and a half of touring the wreckage of this place. Though I was assured that the foundation of the house is stable, the floors sag badly and many of the ancient plaster walls looked like only the stained floral wallpaper was holding them together....sort of.

The barn is in better condition, and holds an interesting assortment of displays which reveal the huge array of artifacts saved by this family. There was everything from the old farming implements to early maple sugar taps, a recreated Civil War campsite (one family member fought for the Union Army and lived to come home with a pack full of.....stuff), a display of patent medicine bottles, labels, advertising flyers, a display of circus posters.....and on and on. By the time we were finished in the barn, the 3 of us were so cold our lips could hardly move......We huddled in the only heated area, a small hut where they collect admission fees until we had thawed out enough to go out and start our cars.

The best part was still to come, and that was going with one of the board members back to Colebrook to Le Rendevous bakery where we bought hot split pea soup and homemade bread and proceeded to her house to eat lunch. One of the worst moments came when I tried to get in her car to ride from Colebrook to her home, and her dog, a large Bouvier (sp) lunged, snarling at me from the back seat. I have never closed a car door quite as quickly as I did at that moment. She calmed the dog, but I have to say that I was a bit scared of trying to get in the car again. All's well that ends well, and the dog and I became "acquaintances," if not friends.

This woman turned out to be a kindred spirit. She has been working for 8 years transcribing the collection of letters and diaries found in the Poore Farm. She has also identified and catalogued all the clothing, which of course begins with garments from the earliest days and ends with the garments of the last woman to live in the house in the 1960s. The letters and diaries are what held my interest, and I would frankly like to give up everything else I'm doing and sit and read the Civil War letters written to and from John Calvin Poore, who saw a lot of action in the war and wrote fascinating letters home.

After an enjoyable (and warm) 2 hours, I was on my way to Pittsburg, where I had another great meeting at the tiny high school there - typical graduating classes have 10 to 20 students. The librarian and the social studies teacher are eager to involve their students in some oral history gathering, and so we talked about that project, and I think they have a good plan in place. There's not much to the town of Pittsburg, but it has some interesting history, and people who are eager to try to engage students in the life and history of their community.

Back in the car, I descend past the 45th parallel, and at least am headed toward the Equator again. It was a horizon-broadening day for me, for sure. I passed the "Douanes" sign for people coming down from Canada; I managed to avoid being shot by the hunters who are everywhere; I saw the telltale signs of an economy headed toward the Equator - snowmobiles for sale in many front yards - ; I have yet to see a moose, though I tried to be vigilant, especially wherever there were "Moosecrossing" signs. I suppose that the Moose don't always know that there are certain places where they are supposed to cross the road........