White Mountain peace

New York City is fun. Right up until I want woods around me. Yes there's Central Park, but I don't feel as secure there as on a trail in the White Mountains with bears in the neighborhood. The soul needs peace once in a while, and there is little better than finding a miniature waterfall in a tiny stream deep in the woods, and "watching a leaf glide all the way down out of view." It constantly surprises me when I talk with someone even in North Conway who "isn't a hiker", as though the moving of one foot after the other is the only joy to the activity. Each time a trail is climbed is a new experience. And a new bit of life.

Mystery of the White Mountains

I was lucky. Years ago, a job opened up for me in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Now I couldn’t live anyplace else. Each morning I look up to see if Mt. Washington will be joining us today – it often can’t, being in the clouds some 60% of the time. But I know it’s there as is the rest of the Presidential Range, and their being there lends a feeling of security to the whole area we call Mt. Washington Valley.

Security and yet mystery as well. Each person who visits the White Mountains comes away with their own story. They say the spirits of the ones who don’t come back inhabit a back bedroom in the Yankee Building on top of Mt. Washington. There’s a bible on a table there and sometimes it is found open, as though they had been reading passages.