There are some places that feel like home even when one has never known them before. Sometimes we grow attached to a place that reminds us of another, occasionally it is the fact that it reminds us of nowhere else that we've ever been. It might be the smell of balsam borne on a cool spring breeze, or the heaviness of the summer air, or simply the sound of droning bees over flowers that our mothers and grandmothers planted. There are places we live and places we visit, places that draw out our strongest yearnings, and others that we are simply content to miss.
New Hampshire is such a place for me. I grew up in the Deep South, in woods thick with creeping vines and crawling creatures, humidity that prohibited sweat, and accents tinged with courtesy and condescension toward those not privileged enough to consider Dixie their land of birth. Yet, I fell in love with New Hampshire before I saw her, through her lore of fishermen and lumberjacks, her history of rebellion and independence, that marvelous motto of "Live Free or Die", a sentiment very simpatico to a born Southerner who now resides in South Carolina.
Then I met her, this land that held my husband's heart. I saw her lakes and her share of that rocky coastline. I visited the places that solicited the remark "yah can't get theyeh from heyeh", I recognized kindred spirits in those outside of the "checkmark", towns that hold to ideals and values long abandoned by our progressive world. I was thrilled when we moved to New Hampshire, and heartbroken when we left, saying my goodbyes to not just friends and family, but to the land itself, particularly to the mountains that saw us for so much of the summer and fall each year we were there.
Those of you who are familiar with the White Mountains of New Hampshire may remember the Old Man in the Mountain, that craggy face that was carved of glaciers, and was very much a symbol of the state and its people. Daniel Webster once said, "Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men."
I can attest to that. It was New Hampshire that defined the men of my husband's family, giving them the same craggy features as that of the famous rock formation, the wind giving them a ruddy complexion, their eyes as deep and fathomless as the lakes they built their homes around. They married women of similar nature, supportive and strong, defensive of their own to the point of cruelty, but just as selfless with their own energies and gifts. These were not men to be trifled with, nothing foolish here, nothing that would yield to less than the ideal.
The world changed. They chose not to. They worked with their hands, their eyes and their hearts. They felled trees and planted them, farmed the land in small rocky fields, shaped metal, fought for their country and kept a clear conscience throughout. They owed no man anything and sought only to leave a better world for their children and to serve a God that they knew well. He was a kindred spirit to them, this Creator of men, forever unchanging, worshipped in a variety of ways by each of them, loved nonetheless by them all.
The last of these men left us last week. May he rest in peace with his brothers and his God. May he be there to welcome us, with the strength we relied upon evident once more in the body that had finally failed him, his eyes clear and his nature gentle, making God's heaven infinitely better than it was before he arrived.
The Old Man of the Mountain fell a few years ago...we grieved for that rock, too. Perhaps it is a sign that God no longer makes such men, and the world is a lesser place for it, even in the places we love.
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