The Silence of the North

Priscille and I have been vacationing in what people hereabouts call “up north,” in the environs of Meredith, Center Harbor, and Moultonborough, New Hampshire. 

These communities are only a few of the many small, yet numerous towns huddled in nature’s nooks and crannies about thirty miles south of the White Mountain National Forest. 

They are hard-working, resort towns that hug the craggy, irregular, granite encrusted shores of Lake Winnipesaukee, a 70-plus square mile remnant of the last glacial period, a body of water that one of Center Harbor’s eighteenth century luminaries – in typically understated Yankee fashion – referred to as “the big pond.”

Up here, surrounded by mountains, woods, sky and water, staying “at the shore” takes on a different connotation.  It assumes more a presumption of quietude than one of prerequisite activity. This is even more so after Labor Day when “flatlanders” head south, returning to work or to school.  

In mid-summer, the only sounds along these waters are those of pleasure craft skimming over smooth surface water, their distant growls absorbed by the vastness of nature.

But in September, especially in the early morning hours, there is no sound at all, nothing, virtually nothing but a sobering silence enhanced now and then by the cry of the loons asserting their presence.  The cacophony of the madding crowd is simply nowhere to be encountered.

If a person is fearful with the solitude of self, it’s not a place to be.  But if an individual is at peace with the seclusion of his or her own mind’s thoughts, “the north country” is very welcoming.

Thanks for reading.  Consider being grateful for what life has lent you.