To the Mountains…towards my passions

I’ve spent the morning searching hotels on line.  Well, not hotels actually. Inns nestled in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  I’m looking for a retreat; a place to hide away for a few days and escape the stresses of my life. Maybe even get some much needed writing done on my novel.  Ideally the Inn would be historical, yet comfortable; I won’t have to think about cooking or dishes because my meals are beautifully prepared. People are friendly, yet not intrusive.  Perhaps they’ll have a dog that sleeps by the fireplace in the main room and I’ll watch it snooze peacefully, adding to my own comfort.  I’ll settle into an overstuffed chair with a good book and a blanket, a cup of tea (poured by someone else) at my side.  The scent of Earl Grey will reach my nose and fill me with warmth.  It will be January or February and certainly mid-week before everyone else arrives. Solitude is a pleasure for me. There will be large amounts of snow in the mountains and if I’m lucky, a gentle snow will fall at least once while I’m there.  But then the storm will blow away and the sky will turn to a crisp blue, the sun shining brightly.  I’ll head out on snowshoes through the woods, or maybe I’ll try my hand at cross country skiing.  The bright, new fallen snow will require sunglasses as I look at the snow topped trees and the surrounding mountains.  It’s a winter wonderland and I can’t imagine being anywhere else.   I’d return refreshed and ready to tackle the world!  But the warmth of the fireplace and the gentle snores of the sleeping dog will return me to the calmness I crave.

My room will have a large four-poster bed.  A fireplace.  A touch of Victorian, that era I love so much.  I’ve found the room. I’ve found the Inn and ironically (or not), I’ve been to this Inn before.  I was there many moons ago with my ex-husband.  I was a different person then, full of hope for the future.  Perhaps that’s why I’ve picked it again.  I may even request the same room.  Not because of any fond memory of him, but perhaps because it’s familiar in a strange way.  It’s almost like a reset; a place to start this new journey of my life.

One of the critical lessons I’ve learned through Discover the Gift is that action towards your passions is of utmost importance.  Every choice we make will move us towards our gifts, or away from them.  My gifts include nature, learning and writing.  This retreat would feed so much of my soul.   Every decision and action I take, I take towards becoming my authentic self.  So, while it may have started out as curiosity, as a fantasy of escape, I’m finding it to be so much more.  This journey is allowing me to take a large step in the direction of creating the life I’m dreaming of.  It’s a small, yet poignant step towards discovering my authentic self.  I’ll be booking the room.

History, reborn

It comes from the least likely places.  A word here. A sentence there. A name. A concept. A trivial fact around a bigger event.  I never know when it will hit, why it hits, or how deeply it will hit.  But when I get that skip in my heartbeat, that catch in my breath, I know.  

Right now that heightened interest is focused around a little piece of history in an area very dear to my heart.  The White Mountains in beautiful New Hampshire.  I love the mountains. Perhaps it’s because I feel the very essence of my grandfather, Jack, is wandering the trails and I’m connected to him there.  He’s my constant hiking companion.  I love everything about the mountains, actually. The smell of the air, the feel of the ground beneath my hiking boots, the incredible, overwhelming view from the peaks.  When I first see a glimpse of Franconia Notch on 93 North, or the peak of Chocorua when returning from Maine via Ossipee, my heart rejoices.  I smile.  I’m home.  So when I wanted to merge my passions (writing, hiking, history), I naturally turned my attention in that direction.  

The first thing I stumbled on was the abandoned mill community of Livermore in the heart of the White Mountains.  It’s nothing but foundations reclaimed by the land now, but the echo of history remains, reverberating through time.  It was as simple as that.  A town, long since forgotten.  And so the research began.  Old, out of print books have been found and acquired. Livermore is a tiny part of a much larger topic and I’m captivated with a logging history I never knew existed. I’ve hiked these trails, never giving thought to the ravages to the land that took place over a hundred years ago. I see pictures and it changes my entire outlook on my beloved mountains.  How resilient they are!  

As I read, possibilities fly through my mind.  Names, areas, tiny events flash, catch my imagination and I start to form the story before I even flip the page.  I have the outline. I have the concept, the focus, the passion without getting past chapter 2.  I know where it’s going…I can barely keep reading because I want to start immediately, want to bring the pages to life NOW.  But I don’t.  I make notes and I keep reading, because it will continue throughout the book.  It will reshape, become more defined and ignite my imagination so fiercely that I’ll be consumed.  I learned a long time ago, with many other overwhelming concepts, that if I stop now and don’t keep researching, I’ll miss so much.  The passion will change, it will twist and grow until it’s mature enough to remain.  It will stick.

As a writer, I love nothing more than picking out small pieces of history and creating a world around them.  With the smallest name and circumstance, I’ve written entire novels.  It starts with nothing more than a name.  A paragraph in a text book.  A long-forgotten piece of seemingly irrelevant history no one recalls.  It was put down as an afterthought.  But something grabs my attention and no matter what else I read about, it remains.  The spark takes light and until I write about it, it will not die.  And so it goes.  A new name has caught my interest.  A new tidbit. A new world is about to be born…or reborn, I should say.