Just another NH vacation...  For the last couple years we've had some really good weather for our annual pilgrimage to our second home, the White Mountains of NH.  This year the scales are being balanced as seems to be the way of these mountains.  God painted beautiful landscapes all over the earth.  Like any artist though I suspect he smiled a little more about some than others.  If that is so I have no doubt he was more pleased than most with the White Mountains.  The natives who grew up in this area over the course of several hundred years found the land rugged, plentiful, and to be respected.  Western settlers found it foreboding and dangerous and seemed to feel the need to conquer it.  And so they did.  But, it took the most rugged of individuals to do so and even to this day threads of that rugged individualism are still woven into the DNA of those born here.

Judy and I have been taken by the beauty of this land since we set eyes on it.  We have contemplated moving up this way for many years and have come to the conclusion that we will in fact do so some day soon.  The attraction first started based on the beauty of the mountains and as we read the history of the area we found we had an almost spiritual connection with it.  When we hike in the mountains and sit in the quiet of a high mountain summit we hear God more clearly.   We find piece, contentment and encouragement in the kindness, candor, and simple views on life that so many locals seem to feel up here.  It seems that only the transients, tourists, and visitors who take their rushed and all too self important lives with them when they come here disrupt the natural order of things in these parts.  If only they could leave all that behind...

The question we ponder at length is how we might move into the mountains and not become just another outsider.  How do we become apart of what we admire so much in the land and the people who call the mountains home.  And so, we seek to understand its history and character, it's geography and geology, its people and their ways.  To read the history of our current home or other places of interest is always enriching and helps as the saying goes to avoid repeating the things of the past that ought to be avoided.  But, when we read the history of the mountains we find ourselves transported in time and caught up in the moment.  To be interrupted from that reading or come to the end of a passage and look up is an almost disturbing experience being pulled violently into present day chaos.

So it is that we find ourselves convinced that we were born where we were so that we could receive the upbringing and rich blessings that we have in order to have a depth of knowledge and understanding that would allow us the heart and intellect to appreciation that which we now seek.  First and foremost to be one with God and second, with his blessing, to do so in the not to distant future, amoung the people and happenings of the White Mountains.