Instagrammers, Wine, and Coyotes

The downhill half of October has begun its inexorable roll toward November with the tree tops becoming emptier. Forests full of leaves fell these past few days. Why just Saturday morning countless fashionably-clothed and flawlessly made-up Instagrammers stopped traffic at several places along Bear Notch Road to pose against the canopy of lemon yellow beech leaves. (I counted seven in one five-mile stretch of the narrow road.) It always amazes me the efforts they go to pretend as though their poses are spontaneous and their million-dollar smiles are natural.

Most of those beech leaves are now on the ground.

Meanwhile, just a few miles away in the quiet town of Bartlett, a high-end wine tasting shop is going up in the middle of nowhere. It’s replacing a cluster of aged motor court cottages that lingered from the middle of last century.

Both the throngs of wannabe models and the wine shop reveal the direction the northern and more rustic end of the Mount Washington Valley is headed.

None …