The snow goes as quickly as it came, melting fast under an atypical warm spell, mid-60’s and sunny five days running. In the dark one balmy, star-studded evening I hike with my friend Tim up the rooted, rocky trail that scales Mount Hunger, to a sub-peak known as White Rock, where we stand and watch the sky and the twinkling lights of the villages below.
I try my best not to be transfixed by the unfolding chaos – the rampaging virus, the chaotic election – but wow. It is truly something to behold, and even in the swirling midst of it I have the sense of living through an era that will define eras to come. Though I guess that’s always true. I guess it’s just more obvious now.
On the radio I hear an interview with an author who wrote a book about living with an implantable cardiac defibrillator, and she reads a passage from when the defibrillator malfunctions, shocking her to the ground and she can smell burning and she realizes the burning smell is her. The insides of her. And she lives (I mean, obviously, here she is, talking about the book she wrote), and I think it’s remarkable what we can endure. 2000 volts gone haywire in our chest. The smell of our own burning innards. What a thing.
This morning the clouds moved it. Still warm, but you can feel the change that’s coming. There’s snow in the forecast, as there should be. I won’t mind when it arrives. I won’t mind at all.
Ben Hewitt 
Hi Ben…..Let’s hope for better days ahead cuz lately they ain’t too great!
On Friday I head to Warren, New Hampshire for a working weekend at my friend’s cabin there. Swing a hammer for the first time in awhile. Hoping to be able to get to a ridge top at night and see those lights in the village below.
Thank you for this post!
I have often wondered if people who loved through memorable historic events/eras knew so while they were living through it. I think you are right. We are getting the chance to find out. As bizarre as it has been, I like thinking of each of us as a walking history book. I have found this to be true over and over again whenever I talk to older folks and listen to their stories. I am getting closer to being one of those folks every day and I don’t think that is a bad thing anymore. Always good to see a post from you in my inbox. Hope you and the family are doing well!
Thank you, Ben, for your perspective and for keeping watch from the top of White Rock. Several times lately I’ve thought of the late-60s, a time of assassinations—JFK, RFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Jr.—and marvel that we even made it through it all. I doubt we will ever know the whole truth about the politics of it either. As with then, I just try to keep my eye set on the stars ahead, fixed and certain and shining down on ALL of us together on this blue jewel of a world.
Thanks for pointing us to this interview….. My daughters are especially looking forward to the freshening up of our world with a sparkling snowfall.
I miss foliage season in northern New England, one of the few things that I miss about not living there. Well, I also miss the clam and mushroom soup at Colatina Exit restaurant in Bradford, VT, and the lobsters at Captain Newick’s restaurant in Dover, NH.
I see that VT has closed its borders.
Pretty hard to enforce since lots of Vermonters do their routine shopping in NH in order to avoid the VT sales tax. Wal-Mart didn’t randomly locate their stores in Littleton, Woodsville, West Lebanon, Claremont, and Hinsdale, NH.
Pretty hard on the economy if the closure keeps people from visiting their second homes and vacationers from visiting the ski areas. Lots of people in the hospitality industry won’t have jobs or money to pay for their necessary expenses. Tough choices all the way around.
We are living in interesting times.