November 18
Chap would love to swim, I thought, but the lake looks awfully cold. I felt the fuzzy tennis ball in my pocket. Chap is passionate about water retrieves. The lake shimmered, barely rippling in the light breeze. I zipped my vest higher. Chap ran through the dry leaves behind me. We were in northern New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest on a cool, overcast day. If I threw his tennis ball into the lake Chap would shiver as soon as he got out. Then I would have to dry him off, heat up the camper, let him inside, hang up his towel and wait until he warmed up. No, I thought, we’d better just play fetch on land.
As I turned away from the lake I heard a splash. Prudence is not in Chap’s limited vocabulary. As Steinbeck wrote of his dog, Charley, Chap “never thinks of the future.”
Since he was already wet I threw the ball in for Chap. He brought it back. I lathered him in dog shampoo then threw the ball back in. He retrieved it. We played fetch until Chap was shivering so violently that I worried about hypothermia. I took him back to the truck and dried him. At least he was clean.
Chap and I left Boston this morning where we’d stayed with Chrissy, a friend of mine from the Semester in East Africa I did in 2002. We had a helluva time. Chap got to sleep inside since Chrissy’s roommates were gone and I got to smoke a cigar a great cigar bar, a basement hideout replete with pipes in the ceiling and all the Johnny Walker a man could drink. It was in the Italian section of town near Chrissy’s apartment. The lights were dim and the smoke was thick. The candle on our table flickered. I faced the bar’s only entrance and explained somewhat melodramatically to Chrissy that James Butler Hickok had died because he failed to take similar precautions. The place felt like a Speakeasy for Capone’s best gangsters.
Chrissy puffed on her cigar as we talked. She works with brain injured adults in Boston and has risen in only a year from a simple caregiver – a “wiper of asses,” in her words – to managing two separate wards. Now she wears a suit to work. But she has dreams as wide as the world and wants to do lots of things before she settles down. Social work in South America, or maybe Africa. I sipped my scotch and nodded. In this bar we knew life would last forever. Maybe Chrissy could find work in an orphanage. Anything. Social work is her passion, but not her identity. Many people, she says, perceive the injustices of the world and take them personally. They start seeing themselves as victims and become indignant. Then they become self-styled activists. Their advocacy can be outlandish, self-promoting. Sometimes it is downright silly. She sipped her wine. “I am not going to chain myself to a fence for gun control,” Chrissy says. “I do what I can, but you’ve got to leave it at the office at five.”
Chap is snoring in the corner of the camper now. He is warm, dry and smells like shampoo. No vestige of the dripping, shivering Chap I saw forty-five minutes ago remains. He lived his passions but left them at the lake.
* * *
Spent the afternoon driving through the countryside of New Hampshire and Vermont. Beautiful. Now I understand why everyone who sees it uses the word “quaint.” But “quaint” only describes the way the country would look if you took a photograph and stuck it in a magazine. “Quaint” is too simple because it implies simplicity. Beneath the whitewashed wooden churches and clean-swept fields pulses a vitality as robust as anywhere else – it just gets hidden by an exterior visitors find so pleasing that they never get past it.
I did not find the reticence for which Yankees are so famed and about which Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley. Several times strangers initiated conversation with me. I found the urge to befriend passers-by – an urge I have come to believe is nearly ubiquitous – stronger here than in most places. The impulse is always strongest in rural areas, but today was exceptional. The old man at the gas station came out to chat as I pumped; the mechanic at the auto parts store gave me excellent directions to another store where I could find the parts he didn’t stock. I like it here. I’ve stopped Squatter for the night beside the Housitania River in Connecticut, and the policeman who came by to investigate didn’t even run me off. Talk about a pleasant place.
As I turned away from the lake I heard a splash. Prudence is not in Chap’s limited vocabulary. As Steinbeck wrote of his dog, Charley, Chap “never thinks of the future.”
Since he was already wet I threw the ball in for Chap. He brought it back. I lathered him in dog shampoo then threw the ball back in. He retrieved it. We played fetch until Chap was shivering so violently that I worried about hypothermia. I took him back to the truck and dried him. At least he was clean.
Chap and I left Boston this morning where we’d stayed with Chrissy, a friend of mine from the Semester in East Africa I did in 2002. We had a helluva time. Chap got to sleep inside since Chrissy’s roommates were gone and I got to smoke a cigar a great cigar bar, a basement hideout replete with pipes in the ceiling and all the Johnny Walker a man could drink. It was in the Italian section of town near Chrissy’s apartment. The lights were dim and the smoke was thick. The candle on our table flickered. I faced the bar’s only entrance and explained somewhat melodramatically to Chrissy that James Butler Hickok had died because he failed to take similar precautions. The place felt like a Speakeasy for Capone’s best gangsters.
Chrissy puffed on her cigar as we talked. She works with brain injured adults in Boston and has risen in only a year from a simple caregiver – a “wiper of asses,” in her words – to managing two separate wards. Now she wears a suit to work. But she has dreams as wide as the world and wants to do lots of things before she settles down. Social work in South America, or maybe Africa. I sipped my scotch and nodded. In this bar we knew life would last forever. Maybe Chrissy could find work in an orphanage. Anything. Social work is her passion, but not her identity. Many people, she says, perceive the injustices of the world and take them personally. They start seeing themselves as victims and become indignant. Then they become self-styled activists. Their advocacy can be outlandish, self-promoting. Sometimes it is downright silly. She sipped her wine. “I am not going to chain myself to a fence for gun control,” Chrissy says. “I do what I can, but you’ve got to leave it at the office at five.”
Chap is snoring in the corner of the camper now. He is warm, dry and smells like shampoo. No vestige of the dripping, shivering Chap I saw forty-five minutes ago remains. He lived his passions but left them at the lake.
* * *
Spent the afternoon driving through the countryside of New Hampshire and Vermont. Beautiful. Now I understand why everyone who sees it uses the word “quaint.” But “quaint” only describes the way the country would look if you took a photograph and stuck it in a magazine. “Quaint” is too simple because it implies simplicity. Beneath the whitewashed wooden churches and clean-swept fields pulses a vitality as robust as anywhere else – it just gets hidden by an exterior visitors find so pleasing that they never get past it.
I did not find the reticence for which Yankees are so famed and about which Steinbeck wrote in Travels with Charley. Several times strangers initiated conversation with me. I found the urge to befriend passers-by – an urge I have come to believe is nearly ubiquitous – stronger here than in most places. The impulse is always strongest in rural areas, but today was exceptional. The old man at the gas station came out to chat as I pumped; the mechanic at the auto parts store gave me excellent directions to another store where I could find the parts he didn’t stock. I like it here. I’ve stopped Squatter for the night beside the Housitania River in Connecticut, and the policeman who came by to investigate didn’t even run me off. Talk about a pleasant place.
posted by Jeb Butler at 6:21 AM
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