Sunset at Bucklin Beach, Little Lake Sunapee, by Susan Ellison
Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, a wry exchange, a poem or anecdote or reflection… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and that might strike us all as interesting or funny or poignant.
Want to submit your own Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!
Dear Daybreak:
As someone who has lived in the Upper Valley for the better part of my adult life, I often envy the wide-eyed sense of discovery newcomers enjoy on a daily basis. Things the rest of us have long since taken for granted, such as designated seasons for mud, sticks and blackflies, still evoke wonder in new arrivals.
Recently, I bore witness to this phenomenon as I watched two transplants from North Carolina being treated to a magical mystery tour of our beloved Recycling Center in Thetford. How exciting, I thought, to be introduced for the first time to which objects get thrown where, and for what purpose, if any.
Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if all recent arrivals could be offered a similar crash course on all things Upper Valley? The possibilities are endless. For example, the curriculum could include why Upper Valley residents routinely back into parking spaces or leave their windshield wipers at half mast on cold winter nights. Or explaining the difference between “wicked good” and Wicked: For Good.
And imagine if newcomers could be reassured, after they decided to tap what they hoped were maple trees, that being told to “sugar off” is not a pejorative.
Personally, if I had the privilege of being asked to serve as an “All Things Upper Valley” guest lecturer, my topic would be ‘The Wave’. I’m referring of course to the hand gestures routinely used by drivers or pedestrians on back roads … to signal what? Being seen? Being recognized? Being validated? Being in danger of running over somebody’s dog?
All I know is that the lesson was deemed sufficiently important that, back in 2024, Vermont Public’s Brave Little State devoted a whole episode to the topic. In that memorable podcast, South Strafford resident Micah Tucker, who was raised in the South, posed the question, What’s Up With The Vermont Wave? As told to Brave Little State’s host Nina Keck, after first moving to the Upper Valley, Micah could not, would not, rest easy until she cracked the code of when and how to do the wave. “It’s the thing that makes me feel like I belong here,” Micah related. And, she duly noted, “Becoming part of Vermont takes work”.
Are you listening new arrivals? If so, class dismissed!
— Skip Sturman, Thetford
Dear Daybreak:
Consider the Rogues
Snowshoeing across the yard,
I pause at the edge of the woods to look back.
Deep under the broken trail the day lilies snooze.
I picture snow melt, gentle spring rains,
pale green fronds pushing up through damp earth,
reaching and growing in the time-lapse photography of my mind,
nodding and swaying as they follow the arc of sun across the sky.
Dripping with dew they race upward to capture the power of sunlight.
Weeks of steady summer growth produce shy buds.
Can’t you just see them blooming, in full petaled glory,
stunning shades of yellow, peach, burgundy and salmon?
Long after I’m gone, the lilies will live on,
even if there is no one here to cherish them.
I consider that they may in fact, go rogue.
No weeding, no mulching, no plucking seed pods,
dividing overgrown clumps or cutting back in fall.
They’ll escape the carefully tended flower bed
and party in the soggy bottom land.
Explosive drumming of a woodpecker shatters my daydream.
A rude reminder of the season, the snow flies every which way.
Turning into the woods I walk on, a spring in my step,
spring in my heart.
— Linette Wermager, Sharon
Dear Daybreak:
“POOR MARCH! It is the homeliest month of the year. Most of it is MUD, Every Imaginable Form of MUD....” Vivian Swift
As anyone in New England knows, mud season is the unofficial time between winter and spring. When the snow melts and the rains come, everywhere there is dirt, there is mud. You start to hear people talking about which roads have ruts as deep as your wheel wells. Shortcuts become unpassable and it may take you longer to get anywhere you want to go.
In mud season, it is always good to have the number of a friend with a truck and a come-along on speed dial.
Driving in mud season is an art. You need skill to keep your car on the high ground and not succumb to being sucked into the muck. And don't even get me started on what it takes to navigate turning around when the road is the consistency of pea soup. Traveling the back roads of New Hampshire and Vermont is not for the faint of heart.
Maybe that is the reason they say not to wear white before Memorial Day. Not only is white a fashion faux pas, wearing earth tones will hide the mud splatter better!
Life sometimes feels like mud season. Dirty and messy and full of unexpected delays. Staying on course and avoiding the ruts can be exhausting.
Like mud season, being in-between is challenging. Waiting for something to end and anticipating what is coming next may feel being stuck in the mud.
Do you have times when you feel you are in a rut? How do you get out? We can apply the same advice for driving in mud to life:
Try not to spin your wheels.
Try to keep moving to maintain momentum once you get going.
Drive slowly at first to shed the mud from your tires before safely driving up to normal speed.
And find a friend to keep on speed dial who can pull you from the ditch.
Luckily, mud season does pass and spring will bloom! May we take this in-between time as a chance to find where we are stuck and to reset. May we pull up our muck boots and keep on slogging until we get to the other side.
— Lori Fortini, Lebanon
