why I love/hate northern new england

I live in Northern New England - 15 miles from DartmouthCollege, an hour's drive from the White Mountains, 2 hours from the Canadian border, well-above the place on the interstate where traffic thins to nothing. My husband is growing restless in his job and we are wondering whether he should look for another in this area or somewhere else. So I have been thinking about what I love and don't love about where we have lived for the last 10 years. Here's my top ten list.

Ten things I love about where I live:

1.The summer is gorgeous and hardly ever hot. Even when the days are hot (for two weeks or so out of 12 months) the nights cool off for sleeping.

2.Fall is breathtaking.

3.People are not hung up on clothes, make-up and fashion. There are lots of vintage hippies around. But we still have the best thrift store in the world (thanks to all those Dartmouth folks. . . ).

4. The nearest mall is 70 miles away - and it's pretty small as malls go.

5. There are lilacs in every yard.

6. There is water everywhere: our property is bounded on two sides by a brook which rises and falls with the seasons; it crosses the road next to our house and plunges 30 ft down a waterfall. There are icy cold swimming holes at the top and the bottom of the falls. The sound of the water is the constant musical accompaniment to our lives. A mile down the road is the Connceticut River. Two miles away is the pond (really a small lake) where we spend every morning for six weeks of the summer. The younger kids take swimming lessons, the older ones hang out with friends and swim.. If it's not too cold (which it usually is until at least July 4) I swim across the lake every day.

7. I have a perfect place to take my daily walks. I head up the hill past a Revolutionary War Era graveyard onto a dirt road. On weekdays I may not see any cars the whole 50 minutes I am out. From one dirt road I turn onto another, then onto an old logging road through the woods which follows a lovely brook. The last part of the loop takes me through a 120 year old covered bridge, then home. It's shady in the summer and sunny in the winter when the trees are bare. I have seen wild turkeys, foxes, snapping turtles, beavers, great blue herons, deer and woodpeckers on my walks.

8. I live in a 210 year old house. We live a quarter mile from a covered bridge and there are several more in our county. The architecture around here is gorgeous - lots of really old churches, houses, town meeting halls, etc. Our Spanish exchange student said it was, "Just like in films!"

9. We never lock our house or cars. We leave our car keys in the ash trays and my purse is nearly always out in the (unlocked) car. We leave expensive bikes, snowbaords, etc. out leaning against the garage for weeks at a time. we do lock the house oevernight and when we go on vacation.

10. Every other person drives a Saab. While I don't really want to drive one myself, I like looking at them.








Ten things hate about where I live:

1. Spring doesn't come till May and summer starts around the end of June. Summer is over by mid-September, so it's roughly 2.5 months out of 12.

2. There is nowhere to go in the evenings if you want to go out. Borders bookstore, the grocery store and some lousy chain restaurants like Applebees, Chilis and Friendly's are the only places to hang out after 6 PM.

3. I can't get any Christian radio stations here (the one I can occasionally get in my car is not even very good. . .) and I can't even get a decent public radio station. NH Public radio is not bad, but I can't get it at home, and Vermont Public Radio plays nothing but classical music, jazz and the most liberal of NPR's programming. They have the absolute worst fund drives in the history of public radio: pure whine.

4. The selection of cultural opportunities is very limited. If you want to be in a choir or a play, join an orchestra or just listen to one, visit a zoo or a museum, spend time at a really good library or attend a concert . . . . well, Boston is a pretty long drive. People aren't kidding when they talk about cabin fever.

4. There are very few homeschoolers and virtually no organized groups or co-op opportunities.

5. The winter is not only long and cold but it is DARK. My least favorite months are November - very dark and gloomy with no snow to brighten the gray landscape, and April which is still muddy, brown and wintery here when the rest of the world is enjoying warmth, flowers and bursting green. March I can forgive, but April is too much. About half the roads in our town are unusable by normal vehicles for weeks at a time because they are unpaved and the mud is too deep. To add insult to injury, we pay the highest electric rates in the country to illuminate our long, dark nights.

6. The proverbial close-mouthed, mind-your-own-business Yankee personality is not an exaggeration. At first it seemed quaint, but now it just makes me tired. I cried when we came home last summer after three weeks in the South. I had more conversations with total strangers in those three weeks than I have had in the last ten years with people I do business with almost daily. Southerners just naturally seemed to take an interest in you and want to be friendly. Here, if you try to strike up a conversation with a salesperson they wonder what's wrong with you.

7. Bicycling around here is possible only for Olympic-calibre athletes. I loved bicycling in Ohio and Pennsylvania, but around here if you go more than about 1/3 of a mile you have to climb a hill - usually one which is either long or steep. There is the occasional downhill, to be sure, but what comes down must go up.

8. You have to drive (and drive, and drive) everywhere. There is no public transportation and nothing is convenient. To paraphrase a movie line, "Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Twenty miles from everywhere."

9. Nothing in the flower catalogs grows here. We are somewhere between Zone 3 and Antartica as far as horticulture is concerned. Nearly everything I like grows in Zones 4-9.

10. With the exception of Dartmouth, there are hardly any opportunities for higher education. That means I can't take a course or pursue an advanced degree and my children will have to move away for college. Just one good quality public institution would be a dream.