Winged skulls are part of the New England colonial legacy. The region’s harsh environment invoked a stoic outlook on life. The images also inspire a collection of my poems, available by clicking here.
Tag: Travel
CONTOOCOOK STONE ARCHES
As the sign proclaims, built without mortar … nearly two centuries ago.
AFTER THE CAMERA BATTERY QUIT …
I was enjoying a leisurely trip back through Vermont, taking many breaks with my camera. All was well until approaching the New Hampshire line, I stopped to capture pictures of a Mennonite church – one of a few in New England – and was about to walk a block or two to take shots of a long covered bridge across the Ottauquechee River. Alas, my camera stopped working.
I assumed the battery simply ran out of juice, though back home I remembered (too late) sometimes you just need to remove it and put it back in – have no idea why that works, but it did on my old Kodak. Well, I’m still getting acquainted with my new Olympus from Christmas.
There would no doubt have also been additional shots of the “quintessential Vermont” general store, a bed and breakfast, and other quaint buildings clustered around the green – this was Taftsville, after all, which turns out to be a neighborhood in the iconic town of Woodstock.
The 189-foot-long span built in 1836 along what’s now U.S. 4 was severely damaged by the remains of Hurricane Irene in late August 2011 and for several years was left dangling precariously from a middle pier. (It’s listed as a Multiple King post and arch design, by the way.) Now, including a fresh coat of red paint, it looks dazzling. Alas, you’ll have to take my word for it.
More missed photo ops took place an hour later, when I stopped for lunch in Lebanon, New Hampshire – not down by the busy interchange along the Connecticut River but up on the hill, around the old green. It’s one of those New England towns that has an opera house as part of city hall, and this one has an actual opera season each summer. This year’s bill includes not just Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio and Bernstein’s West Side Story but also Aaron Copland’s rarely performed Tender Land. What I saw and heard of that, by spying through a crack in double doors from the lobby, was gorgeous. Well, again you’ll have to take my word for it. You would have seen the exterior of the hall from the common.
Finally, much closer to home, as I was stuck in a construction delay at the Lee traffic circle, I looked out my car window and saw three fawns grazing placidly at roadside. If my camera were working, it would have been a classic shot. They’re such small, fragile critters with such big pointy ears!
Well, even with the missed opportunities, I am happy with what I got that day. Now, to plan ahead to scheduling them for this blogging!
A RIVER CRUISE FOR PERSPECTIVE
Many of these Red Barn postings have illustrated the historic seacoast region of New Hampshire where I live. While our downtown is 16 or 17 miles inland from the Atlantic, the tides roll in all the way up to the waterfalls and mill dam at the heart of our city, and then roll out, usually twice a day. In fact, Dover was an active seaport until floods and silting took their toll early in the 20th century.
Situated on the Cocheco River, as well as the Bellamy and a stretch of the Salmon Falls, Dover was once a major textiles manufacturer and railroad center. It’s part of a cluster of small cities and adjacent towns, each with its own character, that drain into the Piscataqua River before it, in turn, pours into the ocean.
In contrast, downstream on the full Piscataqua, Portsmouth boasts of an active port – one with iconic red tugboats, oceanic freighters, and active passenger cruises around the harbor, its islands, and coastal sights – stretches familiar to us from both the shoreline and ventures out on water. On the Maine side of the river, the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard builds and repairs nuclear submarines.
Upstream, however, has remained far more mysterious. Since it’s hard to glimpse much of the waterway from public roads, we’ve long wondered how the route would appear. Long ago I discovered how different a shoreline fits together when viewed from a boat rather than the lands around it. This is, after all, a major part of where we live.
At last, hearing of the Inland River Fall Foliage Cruise offered each September and October aboard the 49-passenger MV Heritage, my wife and I got a chance to see for ourselves. Depending on the timing of high tide, its daily two-and-a-half hour trip ventures from downtown Portsmouth to downtown Dover 11 or 12 miles upriver or, as an alternative, into Great Bay, itself a remarkable estuary.
It was an eye-opener. Once we left the familiar, picturesque Colonial-era Portsmouth Harbor, we began passing all of New Hampshire’s industrial waterfront, which includes three electrical power plants, the world’s largest lobster operation, an oceanic underwater cable producer, oil tank farms, and the like – each with major docking facilities for oceanic freighters or other vessels. I hadn’t envisioned the extent of this activity. Nor had we anticipated the width of the passageway, in many places approaching three-quarters of a mile. Not what most folks would call beautiful, but it was impressive, even if we were grateful Aristotle Onassis failed in his attempt to put an oil refinery a bit upstream.
Once we’d passed the mouth to Great Bay, we were surprised by how much of Dover itself sits on the Piscataqua – and how much very expensive waterfront housing with expensive docks to match have been built there, mostly, as we were told, in the past two decades, now that the river’s been cleaned up from its earlier industrial pollution. In fact, looking at this and at the Maine side of the river gave the impression of passing high-profile lake shores with their ever more imposing year-round mansions. To be frank, we were a bit stunned by the wealth we were witnessing – where are these people in our otherwise modest city and what’s their source of income? Theirs is a different world, we’d say.
That’s not to say there weren’t stretches of colorful foliage or fascinating wildlife. In addition to a host of herons, gulls, and cormorants (we most loved the ones who stood atop mooring buoys marked “private,” as if the birds defiantly owned them), we viewed a soaring osprey and then a bald eagle in flight, an impressive hawk high in a pine overlooking the river, and a seal or two – all close to home.
The Pisacataqua originates at the fork of the Salmon Falls and Cocheco River, which we then followed as it narrowed on its way to downtown Dover.
What a contrast!
At one broad pool, we were told that tall-mast ships turned around here before reaching the mills by being poled by hand on high tide or pulled by oxen the final few miles. And, at the upper narrows, we appreciated a friend’s work with the Army Corps of Engineers in dredging power-plant tar from the river to reopen the passage. (That could be another posting in its own right.)
We passed the marina at the edge of downtown and circled, to retrace our journey.
Why is it, the return always seems to go faster than the first part, outward?
On our drive home after debarking, we stayed close to the rivers. Surprising how discrete the lanes to the big houses! You’d never, ever, suspect they were there if you hadn’t taken the cruise. Makes us wonder how much more is hidden just out of view.
FREEWILL BAPTISTS IN PERSPECTIVE
As another bronze plaque nearby proclaims, this is the 1818 home of the oldest Freewill Baptist congregation in America. Situated near the conjunction of Alton, New Durham, and Farmington, the site has a breathtaking view of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
ONE MORE NOTABLE FAMILY
Mount Auburn Cemetery, at the edge of Cambridge and Watertown in Greater Boston, not only lays claim to being the first garden cemetery in America but also boasts some of the most notable names in the nation’s history.
This small family plot, for instance, holds the remains of Transcendentalist leader Margaret Fuller and pioneering architect Buckminister Fuller.
THOSE FIRST BLUSHES OF AUTUMN COLOR
Last weekend, we got away to the Northwest corner of Vermont for a lovely, make that magical, gallivant enhanced by a Friend’s gracious hospitality.
The jaunt began with a long overdue stop at the Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site in Cornish, New Hampshire. Admittedly, sculpture – especially public statuary – has taken a lower rung on my visual awareness to painting, drawing, and printmaking. Let me say simply that this visit to the home – originally summer residence – of the American genius Augustus Saint-Gaudens was a revelation. The National Park Service has done a remarkable job in preserving not just his house and studio but in displaying his studies and castings of his memorable monuments. The glade devoted to the “Shaw Memorial” alone was worth the visit. And, let me add, the floral displays in the gardens at this time of year, when relatively little is blooming, were delightful. As for his work designing American currency, at the invitation of Teddy Roosevelt? The short take is we’re ready to return, soon.
That was followed by a late afternoon jaunt across the Cornish-Windsor covered bridge spanning the woefully low Connecticut River, due to an ongoing drought, into Vermont and eventually through the Green Mountains, taking a questionable route our host suggested through Rochester Gap and Middlebury Gap, one I doubt we would have found via GPS but altogether perfect. This was the real Vermont, not just twee but also working-class hanging in there, apparently happily so. We’re still wondering how many of these folks get to work through the winter.
Not much later we were sitting on his deck, sipping hard cider we’d brought from the Granite State and munching some amazing cheese from his locale. Oh, yes, while watching a feathery sunset stretching toward us from the New York State’s jagged Adirondack mountain range. Does life get any better than this?
The next morning brought my reason for being here, a committee meeting an hour to the north, and the first of two breath-taking mornings with a drive that included Adirondacks in the distance on one side of the highland farm country I traversed (with its seemingly contented dairy cows and huge barns), and the Green Mountains, a wall on the other side, along with glimpses of long Lake Champlain far below to the west.
Still, we weren’t seeing what we’d anticipated: signs of frost. Not all that long ago, northern New England – especially this far north – would have had a killing frost by mid-September. Instead, where we live, we’ve been able to get to the end of October with an occasional throwing blankets over the garden. In other words, global warming is real. And that frost, by tradition, is essential to the famed New England fall foliage.
Leap to Sunday morning, when we ventured off to Appalachian Gap in a second crisp, dewy morning with the mountains veiled in a haze – breathlessly, as it were. What surprised us the most was how quickly some trees were already in prime foliage, albeit surrounded by green. The color comes in waves, actually, and much of the glory depends on the ephemeral angle and quality of light more than the leaves themselves. So the autumn foliage was beginning to arrive. Just like that.
In the week since, it’s starting to appear where we live, too. And, to heighten our awareness, we know all too well what will follow, just a month hence.
~*~
My essays and photographic slide shows on New England autumn foliage are available in the archives of my Chicken Farmer I Still Love You blog. Take a peek!
OH! WOW!
Gourmet is one of those words I’ve come to detest, in large part because it’s lost any genuine meaning. Well, these days it’s usually an excuse to charge more for an assembly-line product, but that’s about it. As an adjective to suggest quality, it rarely reflects excellence. As for its other definition, as a noun, we have glutton or pig.
So here I am thinking once more of the “wow factor” on our tongue and palate. It’s the surprise that accompanies an amazing first morsel or sip, when our reaction is “Oh! Wow!” in discovering the treasure before us. Often, it’s uttered before we’re fully conscious of doing so.
I know those who take the over-the-top approach here, adding and adding to a dish until it’s simply overwhelming. Or taking a drink to near-lethal alcohol levels for its whammy.
For us, the “wow factor” is more simply direct. It honors the ingredients and makes them shine. It knows there’s no substitute for freshness, and its techniques aim at enhancing that.
If you want to read more of this philosophy, Angelo Pellegrini’s writings, as my wife attests, lay it out delightfully. A generation before Julia Child, he began instructing fellow Americans on the ways of applying homegrown herbs and spices and appreciating the pleasures that follow. His lovely essays are about gardening as much as cooking, along with a few diversions like making your own wine or the joys of being a granddad.
I come back to this each year as our own garden kicks into gear. Forget any argument that gardening is cheaper – it’s not, even before you consider your own labor. It’s the taste that accompanies freshness – sometimes while the strawberry’s still warm from the sun or the lettuce was crisped earlier in the afternoon. Real tomatoes in contrast to the impostors at the grocery are another matter altogether. I’ll go ten months without the latter, if necessary.
We managed an overnight getaway to the Cape recently and decided to try the bakery-bistro combination across the highway. There are good reasons the line’s out the door in the morning. As for the evening, when we decided to stop for drinks and appetizers, we figured we could walk home rather than drive.
As I was saying about Wow? From start to finish. Let me warn you, it wasn’t cheap, not even by today’s average. But it was worth every penny – something I won’t say for any of the chains where I’ve eaten in the past few years. And what they’ve done to the former clam shack in the past six years is amazing – you’d never guess something this charming could come out of something that had been so decrepit.
I’ll try not to go into a restaurant review, but let me say I never imagined corn (fresh, local) could be pureed with (forget the cooking-school terms) the sweat from a baked salmon to produce a cold soup this heavenly. As for the oysters on the half-shell, the presentation was breath-taking – generous in the ice, accompanied by the in-house sauces – but the oysters themselves were fat and succulent, the way they are in November or December, fattened up for winter, rather than this time of year. Responding to that observation when chef/owner Philippe Rispoli stopped by our seats at the bar counter, we heard his pride in working with Richard Blakeley and paying top dollar for the best. I know this was Wellfleet, but I’ve had Maine oysters that have surpassed what I’ve had in other establishments in town – until now. As for their variant on Oysters Rockefeller, we go back to Wow.
We ordered wine by the glass – and our sauvignon blanc was priced reasonably, and the portions were generous. Perfect.
My wife, always a critic when it comes to food, declared her pate to be everything she’d hoped for, even before she got to the accompaniments and salad. The vinaigrette, as she noted, was amazing – whatever measurements he’d worked out, there’d be no changing this recipe.
Curiosity taking priority over any appearance of sophistication, we also ordered a side of pommes frites – or French fries, to most of us. They arrived in a glorious presentation with a red-and-white checkered napkin – and one bite once again went Wow. The chef asked how we liked them, grinned in response, told us he made them himself.
I should explain that we’ve decided fries are often a reliable test of a restaurant’s ability. Are they straight from a supplier’s frozen batch – or made from scratch, like these? Are the outsides hot and crusty and well seasoned, like these? Or limp and flavorless? Are the insides creamy and yummy, like these, or merely whatever?
The test also extends to a restaurant’s attention to its frying oil and batters – fried onion rings are another big litmus test here. Light and fresh? Old and heavy? As we say, “They do cooking oil well.”
OK, if you’re planning a trip to Cape Cod (I first typed that Cape Cook, make of it what you will), I won’t keep the place secret. Just click here.
NEWMARKET
Like Dover, the town of Newmarket flanks Durham and its state university campus, and as a former textiles mill town, it, too, is home to a number of University of New Hampshire students and the kinds of businesses one would expect as a consequence – small restaurants, bars, pizza parlors, bookstores, yoga studios, nightspots, and so on. The Stone Church Meeting House has long been a venue for emerging musical acts.
The town of approximately 9,000 also has a strong blue-collar side, which also feeds into a distinctly funky feel.
But to me there’s always been a sensation that the place isn’t fully New England. It somehow reminds me more of small cities in central Pennsylvania or even Galena, Illinois, near the Mississippi. I think that has to do with the way the central street twists through downtown and the prevalence of stonework rather than the traditional brick in the mills and a few prominent houses. It’s picturesque, all the same.
Key to its industrial development was a large inland saltwater estuary that allowed extensive shipping. In generic usage, Great Bay also encompasses Little Bay and a host of small-town waterfronts where humble rivers fall to sea level. These include Durham and its Oyster River; Exeter and the Exeter/Squamscott; and Newmarket, with the Lamprey River, before passing Dover Point and emptying into the Piscataqua River on its way to the Atlantic. It’s a major breeding ground for fish populations all along the East Coast, and the current at Dover Point is always intense.
Hope you enjoy this quick tour.
ROUND AND ROUND WE GO
Drivers from other parts of the world are often terrified by New England’s use of traffic circles at busy intersections. We’re not the only people to use them – Washington, D.C., has some of the worst – but they do become landmarks. In New Hampshire, for instance, a set of directions might mention the Portsmouth Traffic Circle, or the one at Epsom or Stratham or Alton or Lee, shown here.
Other terms for the routing around a central island include “rotaries” and “roundabouts.” What Romans call theirs would be unprintable in a family-friendly blog like this.
Jnana's Red Barn 