The journey begins...

When a traveler in north central Massachusetts takes the wrong fork at the junction of the Aylesbury pike just beyond Dean's Corners he comes upon a lonely and curious country. The ground gets higher, and the brier-bordered stone walls press closer and closer against the ruts of the dusty, curving road. The trees of the frequent forest belts seem too large, and the wild weeds, brambles, and grasses attain a luxuriance not often found in settled regions. At the same time the planted fields appear singularly few and barren; while the sparsely scattered houses wear a surprisingly uniform aspect of age, squalor, and dilapidation. Without knowing why, one hesitates to ask directions from the gnarled, solitary figures spied now and then on crumbling doorsteps or on the sloping, rock-hewn meadows. Those figures are so silent and furtive that one feels somehow confronted by forbidden things, with which it would be better to have nothing to do.

Thus did H.P. Lovecraft describe New Hampshire. Well, sort of. He was actually describing western Massachusetts near Springfield, but many Massachusetts natives would swear this description suspiciously matches the experience of crossing the New Hampshire border on Route 93, including crossing over the Miskatonic - I mean Merrimack River. In fact, the New Hampshire inference may not be incidental; for this 1929 story -- The Dunwich Horror -- Lovecraft combined his experiences in several towns across New England to create the setting for his fictional town "Dunwich" in western Massachusetts, including Salem, New Hampshire whose Mystery Hill (which Lovecraft is known to have visited) apparently provided the inspiration for the hills surrounding Dunwich with other-worldly stone monoliths.

Truth is, I'm not a native New Englander, and I learned a lot of my New England geography from reading H.P. Lovecraft as a kid. Still, home is where the heart is -- but also the liver, kidneys, spleen, thyroid gland and etc. I keep all of that stuff in New Hampshire nowadays, one of the most beautiful states in the Union. My ancestors, through their sacrifice and selfless toil, brought our family to New England and planted our roots deep in the unforgiving craggy, granite-pocked New England soil about seven years ago, where the generations since have prospered. This blog is going to be my chronicle of all things New Hampshire, describing the daily life and realities of living in this most beautiful state. Over time, these posts will accumulate compost-like into a sort of New Hampshire Wiki, at which point I'll sell out and cash in, but until then, you'll have my honest observations.