Actually, it was midday, and a nice one, too, this afternoon in fact. The sun was high, the leaves are just past peak in color, and the temperature was cool enough to require a thin sweater but warm enough that you felt comfortable outside all day long. We had been in errand mode this morning, running all over the place, and we were almost on the last leg of our journey when we decided to try to find the local "sugar shack", the common New Hampshire term for maple syrup maker/vendor. We usually buy ours from a guy whose place is along my route home from work, but we'd heard of a place very close to home, and wanted to try it. We knew it was somewhere close by as we wandered down a typical New Hampshire slim, twisting and turning rural road, and after a few around-the-bends we finally came upon a sign announcing the place. The sign was fairly new and in good condition, and seemed professional -- in other words, wasn't written with a heavy black marker on cardboard.
So we pulled in next to a large, late-19th century New Hampshire farmhouse with the barn attached out back, and the dilapidated sugar shack on the other side of the driveway. There was no obvious entrance, however. My wife went up to one of 3 doors facing us on the side of the house, one of which had an old sign asking delivery people to use the other door -- though there were 2 other doors. She knocked, with no response. She then tried the door that had the sign on it, again with no response. We both sauntered down the driveway a bit towards the barn and the sugar shack, and while we saw maple syrup products in the window, the shack was empty of people and the floor was strewn with chopped wood and mechanical equipment parts. I looked into the barn from the open door closest to the house but saw no one, only stacks of hay -- which brought back lots of memories from my youth, when I used to work as a farmhand -- but I could also see there were no animals, though the hay was fresh. I wandered towards the other open barn door and saw that this part of the barn was completely strewn with electrical tools and mechanical parts. I cracked a joke to my wife about how they needed some space management skills and began to turn my attention back towards the sugar shack when I heard a male voice fairly close by, just a word or two which I didn't catch but which told me someone was nearby. I looked in the barn again and couldn't find anyone, and looked around out back but again, no one.
Puzzled, we both walked up towards the house again and we both took a door and knocked, but to no avail. However, as we each both stood in front of a door, we both heard a door open wide, with a very typical sound of a noisy weather-exposed hinge. We both looked at one another because to each of us, it sounded as if the other had opened their door. Neither of us had. We looked around again -- maybe the wind had blown one of the barn doors? -- but they were on sliders and seemingly hadn't moved. I walked around to the front of the house to read the sign again to see if it mentioned any instructions I had missed earlier like "Knock hard" or "Ring the bell on the barn", or something along those lines, but it just plain announced the sugar shack, with the business name. It was a well-made sign and seemed in good condition.
At this point I thought out loud that maybe they'd just taken off to grab some lunch, but my wife interrupted me to say that she wanted to go. This was kind of unusual; my wife is not the "touchy-feely" type who indulges in fantasy. She told me as we were driving away that she had the distinct impression that we were being watched, and she had a mounting sense of alarm, a feeling that someone didn't want us there. I admitted, strangely enough, that I also felt we were being watched, but to me it felt more like whoever it was feared us, and I chalked it up to maybe a child or elderly person being home, someone who doesn't deal with the business and was afraid to deal with strangers.
So there you have it. Might be nothing but a pile of circumstances and coincidences.
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