It turns out we moved right into the middle of a hameau, which is a hamlet, in English (Mark and use the word). The realization sneaked up on us because the houses are spread out in various directions. But we see them, and they see us, it turns out. Very different from Harvard. And neighbors, here, mean more than they did in our other life, because there is an assumed network of need with some of them—the tradition still lives. So, all unknowing, we landed in a neighborhood.

We’ve got some salient characters in this neighborhood. Premier among all stands Trapper John, all four-feet-eleven inches of him, whom many of you (who have visited) have met because he shows up here all the time. He is so significant he deserves a blog entry all to himself. And that won’t be this one.

There is Jerry Driscoll, across Route 14, the race car driver. He lives in a fixed-up double-wide that replaced, apparently, an old farm house because he’s got a nice old barn and shed. He builds his own race cars right here and earns awards for his exploits. This year, for example, he won the record for the fastest drive of the Mount Washington access road—110 mph. He is 69 years old, his wife died in his arms of Lou Gherig’s disease five years ago, and he doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, so he can drive Mt. Washington like that. He is a sweet man. He has an artistically-arrayed collection of hub caps on his shed. I need to drop in on him again. (People, by the way, still drop in on other people here. At any time someone may show up. The law of hospitality says you've got to chat for about 15 minutes, then you can claim you are busy if you need to get free.)

Just south of Jerry lives the array at the Faith Walk community. They describe themselves as “sort of like Anabaptists,” referring to a sixteenth-century Protestant sect that abjured participation in governments and killing, among other practices. “Other religions try to do what Jesus said,” a man there told Mark, “while we try to do what Jesus did.” Other local people call them Mennonites. I still don’t know if they are just one family in that tall, awkward, somewhat Shaker-looking house, with some hangers-on in an apartment in there, or I have heard that there may be some special needs young adults up there, too. Anyway some of them have a sawmill right out front. Last summer, I finally decided that the sawmill noise was disturbing my tranquility too much and went over there to ask for some mitigation if they could. How very kind and hospitable they were, a man and a boy standing in a sea of sawdust at the big saw. Pronto they built a wall on one side of the mill, which really helped, saying I shouldn’t have waited so long to ask. Mark buys lumber from them, and the very best barn-builder in the region is part of their scene. Here’s what they donate to the neighborhood culture: The mother and daughters wear long skirts and dresses, and the daughters wear bonnets or kerchiefs, too. (The mother, Denise, has recently taken to showing her hair. I don’t know what this actually means, but if I had that thick golden brown mane, I would, too.) They are amazingly pleasant and radiate a goodness that luckily does not include that vapid and constant smile that some religious have.

One of the daughters, named Katie, walks through our land, right past this library window, on her way up to Laughing Waters Way to take care of CJ’s horses. Our place is the through-the-fields, non-road short cut. She strides through, skirt flaring, on her way at various times of day; of course she is home-schooled. Mark had a special moment one day this September when the ordinary became extraordinary, because of her. We had been making hay by hand, as you might recall, and on this day Mark was alone at the task in a golden sunny afternoon, pitchforking hay into the wagon. Katie and maybe four like-minded friends walked through the field, skirts billowing and voices chipper, and then passed out of sight. Mark felt slipped out of time as he held the wooden handle of the old old pitchfork in his hand, felt the hay beneath his feet and beheld those girls like an apparition out of the past. Nothing modern was in view.

Veronica and Ernie live on our side of Route 14 (more romantic is its old name, the Montreal Turnpike), a honeymoon couple in their seventies, still brisk and lively, she a very short former nurse with snapping brown eyes and strong opinions, and he a very tall, rangy Swede, still working as an arborist. He used to farm this land as a hired hand in the 1960’s when the land was leased to the big farm to the south of us. Ernie is the man who, when we asked where he was from, said, “No, I’m not from around here, I’m from Tunbridge. [Tunbridge begins on top of the hill we look at to the east.] I moved over here in 1963.” With that record, we sure would have said we’re from here! Veronica and Ernie might be my favorites in the hameau, though our paths don’t cross very much. We have done a little borrowing and visiting, just showing up.

The Gilderdales live in a double-wide to the south of us, tucked in against the western ridge and right across the fields. They started out friendly but have turned cool; I don’t know why and want to find out sometime. I think I should be able to warm them up again, and, if not, so be it. Sandy runs the school lunch program in nearby Bethel—she purchases and cooks all the food, buying quite a bit from local farmers. She’s not part of any hip localvore movement, she just applied her common sense. I’d love to talk with her more about it all. Dave works for the state on roads and such. We found some holes at the edge of a field above their house where it looks like marijuana was grown. We wonder about it!

Swinging around to the north of us, if taking the vantage point of the pavement, we have moved a half-mile north and turn left onto Braley Covered Bridge Road, a small dirt road that dips down steeply to the Middle Branch, crossing the little red covered bridge that is just out of sight beyond our fields. That’s where Laughing Waters Way begins, an agonizingly cute name for a row of four houses on a steep and picturesque incline, artfully developed by our friend David Shepler. He showed up in this valley from Brookline, Massachusetts about 40-odd years ago, camped up on the ridge for at least a year, and finally with a friend named Rick bought all the land in this section of the valley. Ultimately, Rick bought him out for most of the land, leaving David with about 30 acres. David is a tender and idealistic artist-who-makes-houses. Houses are his medium. A graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, he definitely did not pursue the status-laden trail of his classmates. He crafted these four houses with his hands, and two of them are some of the most extraordinary houses ever: his first house, an M.C. Escher masterpiece, now owned and inhabited by CJ of the horses, and his second house, that he is now living in and building at the same time, as people will do here. He had a dream similar to co-housing, whereby the people who would live in his houses would together steward the land around them in a conscious way. He sold his houses on the open market though, since he needed to make the money, and pretty strange people bought them. Not all David’s dreams came true. He has a 28-year-old brain-damaged son who lives with them and is an incredible trial. However, he and his partner, whom I call Leeney, have a lot of pluck and carry on and love much about their lives. They live high at the tippy top of the ridge in their beautiful Faberge egg of a house, small, oval, and intricately detailed. We see them frequently. I am going to borrow their vacuum cleaner again if ours is not fixed in the next day or so.

I have promised these entries to be short so that's all for now. But there are more people, so present in our lives--Therefore I shall carry this on into a Part II, in which you will meet CJ, the techie who tames killer horses, and the Armstrong bachelor farmers who just bought the store, big news around here.

Here’s wishing those of you who love the holiday a wonderful Christmas of love and the counting of blessings! And Happy Hannuka and ditto about the love and blessings to some more of you, and the rest of you regardless of your stance on holidays...

Love,

Josie