Driving New England
On Monday, we drove about 40 minutes from Portland up to Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine. In the 19 years since I graduated from Bates, this was only the second time I had set foot on campus. We saw my sister’s office (she teaches psychology there), and walked around campus a little. For a small college in a remote part of the world, Bates does an amazing job of attracting talented professors and students, and letting them focus on undergraduate learning. I enjoyed showing my family this part of my life, but I didn’t feel a lot of strong emotions about the place. This struck me as a little sad.
From Lewiston, we drove the back roads over the mountains and into New Hampshire. This was the route home that I drove countless times when I was in college. We passed the spot where my VW Rabbit had an electrical fire, the barbecue restaurant (!) I went to mid-way through the trip, and the place where I nearly hit a moose in my MGB. Somehow, the drive felt more reminiscent of my college experience than the walk around campus.
We arrived at my Mom and step-father’s home in Lyme, NH on Monday evening. The Upper Valley has had a lot of rain, so everything was green, and the rivers were roaring. We haven’t been to my Mom’s during the summer for an unforgivably long time. I had sort of forgotten how sublime the late summers are in northern New England. On Tuesday, we filled a stack of prescriptions, and kicked around Hanover and Norwich. The Montshire Museum has an amazing outdoor water exhibit, which Tallulah, in particular, really liked. On Tuesday evening, Mom and Steve (my step-father) organized a family dinner with some of my cousins and their families. It was really nice to see this group, who I grew up with, but have been reduced to seeing only for a few hours around Thanksgiving. Our kids played together, and India and I got a lot of useful first-hand travel recommendations, particularly about Australia and New Zealand. It was a nice, short visit. The picture at the top is of Lu and me in my Mom’s living room.
As we drove toward Boston on Wednesday, we had lunch with my Mom and Steve at the Harpoon Brewery in Windsor, Vermont. Next to the brewery, and hard by the Connecticut River, is an attraction (for lack of a better word) called “The Path of Life.” The path connects a series of large outdoor sculptures, each representing important stages or characteristics of life (e.g., birth, learning, knowledge, family, community, old age, death). There was a circular hedge maze which the kids really liked. It is a difficult thing to describe, but walking from sculpture to sculpture along this path, in a wide open pasture, on a sunny Vermont day, was somehow inspiring. It was a nice thing for my Mom to share with us. The second picture at the top is of Zola and me inside one of the sculptures (accountability? forgiveness?).
From Windsor, we got down to Boston in a couple of hours, and had an early dinner at Faneuil Hall/Quicy Market. This was another place with a lot of old, old memories for me. Every “Friday after Thanksgiving” from the time I was about 10 to 18, all of my cousins and siblings and I would be turned loose at Quincy Market by ourselves. It was wild to see so many of those stores and restaurants, seemingly unchanged more than 20 years later.
Wednesday evening we watched the Red Sox beat the Ranger at Fenway Park (thank you to Mike Reinold, the Sox trainer who organized our tickets). Zola was very excited, and it was special to share this experience with him, in particular. Tallulah enjoyed the first five innings, and then settled into a chant of “I want to go home NOW!” We left in the eighth inning, and listened to the rest of the game as we sat in traffic. When the game finished, Zola, India and I resumed listening to the audiobook of “The Subtle Knife,” which my Mom had given us. Zola eventually fell asleep, and India and I drove through the night, rapt by the story of Lyra and Will and the daemons and witches and multiple worlds.
Finally, we are back in the Beaverkill for two days, repacking and making the final preparations for our departure on Saturday evening. This time, the trip truly begins.