Nessa Flax - Voices in the Hills. Collected Ramblings from a Rural Life

Collected Ramblings
from a Rural Life

NESSA FLAX

These mountains know more than they tell,

yes, and more than you or I ever will.

Theres magic hiding underneath a country windowsill,

and therere voices in the hills.

Dick McCormack, singer, songwriter, and Vermont state senator

This book is dedicated to small-town
newspapers everywhere

to the people who work to keep them alive

the businesses that advertise in them

the people who read them

And especially to the Journal Opinions
publisher emeritus Robert Huminski

and current publisher Connie Sanville,

thank you.

www.bunkerhillpublishing.com

by Bunker Hill Publishing Inc.

285 River Road, Piermont

New Hampshire 03779, USA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright 2012 Nessa Flax

All rights reserved.

Voices in the Hills and Rare Ones and Fair Ones song lyrics used with permission, copyright Dick McCormack.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012930407

ISBN 978-1-59373-095-6

Designed by Joe Lops

Printed in Canada

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.

by Cicely Richardson, former

managing editor, Journal Opinion

by Cicely Richardson

When I joined the Journal Opinion in 1996, I inherited the duty of editing Nessa Flaxs weekly column, Rambling Reflections. Years ago, these reflections found their home on page four of the Journal Opinion, beneath the editorial (except when bumped slightly to the side by an extra-wordy editor).

An independent, locally owned weekly newspaper, the JO covers more than a dozen small Vermont and New Hampshire towns, with populations from six hundred to forty-seven hundred, spanning the Connecticut River.

Editing with Nessa was always an adventure. Nearly every week for the ten years I was managing editor of the JO, wed roll up our sleeves and tackle her column together in our quest for the best way to convey her thoughts and observations. Occasionally in person and more often by phone, we wrestled over words, phrases, and those pernicious dangling participles.

In her ramblings, Nessa captures the place, the people, and her connections with her adopted North Country homereflecting the light, colors, and moods of the seasons, reflecting on friends and neighbors, their habits, and the lessons she learns from them.

Some rambles become rants on the vicissitudes of life and change. Others convey Nessas quirky, philosophical, or delightfully witty reflections on the wider world. New experiences rekindle childhood memories of her grandmothers garden, her fathers infectious love of football, her mothers knack for choosing perfect peaches.

Local readers and distant subscribers know where to find Rambling Reflections. For years, they have clipped favorite columns and asked when Nessa would collect them in a book. Here at last is that book, the product of a lengthy winnowing process over the past several years.

This new task was daunting. We began with more than six hundred columns. Spreading them like decks of cards on a friends dining room table, we rejected, selected, and culled to narrow them down to the manageable 126 that make up this volume. Then we reedited every one.

Some were clear winners; others were harder to choose. After all, over the years, Nessa has found countless ways to conjure up images of the North Countrys amazing autumn glory, its wintry drear, or the bounty and drudgery of a raspberry harvest. How many can you include in one book?

The columns we chose represent the best of Rambling Reflections, ranging in tone from lighthearted to nostalgic, descriptive to philosophical. They are essentially arranged by seasons within four categoriesNorth Country Life, In the Old House, Transitions, and At Home in the Woods.

Whether you read Voices in the Hills from cover to cover, leaf through it for old favorites, or dip into it to ponder a column a night or once a week, I believe youll come away with new insights or find yourself saying, I wish Id written that!

After college, I intended to move back to California, where I spent my adolescence and young adulthood.

Nearly forty years later, here I am, still in the North Country. From Hanover, New Hampshire, I followed the Connecticut River north, living for more than a decade in Newbury, Vermont, before settling in Ryegate Corner.

Once, my father teased that I had moved as far away as I could and still be in America. Hes not wrong. An easy, under-two-hour drive up Interstate 91 brings me to the Canadian border.

And even all these years later, its nearly impossible to describe my conversion into a country girl.

Sometimes I say the mountains got into my blood.

Sometimes I think its the green.

Sometimes I say, hey, if you think its comforting to go to a bar where everybody knows your name, try living in a cluster of towns where thats true.

By the time I began writing my column Rambling Reflections for the Journal Opinion, I had rambled a bit myself. I worked at a New Hampshire regional magazine, sold motorcycles at a small shop in Vermontexperiencing North Country beauties from the back of friends bikes, weaving through the landscape on country roadsand had a sixteen-year teaching and coaching career at Oxbow High School in Bradford, Vermont.

There, I was plunged into the complexities of overlapping small-town loyalties, stumbling over historical rivalries and resentments. There, I experienced the joys and sorrows of staying put long enough to watch my students grow up, marry, and, in more cases than my heart could hold, be buried.

Much has been depicted in movies and television or written about rural New Englanders taciturn natures and disdain for flatlanders (referring to outsiders). We have seen them as laughable hicks and narrow-minded hypocrites, as amusing eccentrics and hermits.

The truth is much more complex.

As I suspect is true of most rural areas, life in the North Country is hard. But people here have roots sunk deep into the land and into their small communities. Communities where elected representatives are the folks next door, and campaigns for town offices consist of standing up at town meeting and saying a few words.

My suburban and city background left its mark. The North Country continues to present an ongoing, unfolding introduction into a wholly different way of life.

My columns have chronicled the adventure. Along the way, many native residents of Vermont and New Hampshire have taught me how to live this life with richness and joy.

I hope I have made them proud.

More than twenty-five years have passed since I moved to the North Country. I find it so strange that Ive become old enough to say a quarter of a century in reference to a single phase of my life.

Such were my thoughts during a recent meandering drive over back roads with a friend who was raised in this area. Wherever we went, he had a story, a memory woven into the landscape.

A cabin where hed spent summers as a child. Places where the landscape itself had changedlong-gone swamps now meadow green. Houses where his family had lived, brooks where he had fished.