The Summer of Angry Dogs

Cookbook Winners!

It’s been an unusual summer. Due to the drought, we did not have our first thunderstorm until this past week. Samwise, Emily, and I luxuriated in the booming and the echoes among the ridgelines as we all sat by an open window and watched the rain pelt down.

There has been a ton of development where trees used to hold raccoons, owls, and bears, and the outflux of Subaru driving-octogenarians has been matched by the crush of forty-somethings arriving in BMWs and Teslas. A local builder was approached by a Massachusetts man who gifted each of his three adult children a million dollars to build a house here. He wondered if it was enough. All of this has left the Mount Washington Valley searching for a new identity.

Lin Manuel Miranda once said, “I think if you want to make a recipe for making a writer, have them feel a little out of place everywhere, have them be an observer kind of all the time.”

That’s me—in the trees, by the river, searching for bears and beavers, on the edge of society’s spread, taking notes, and saying my prayers. I can’t help myself. I see things and often feel them.