The Wormlips Scrapbook

At the Spalding Inn, this time my heart knew better than to do a sentimental leap when recalling happy childhood hours there. My imagination is a liar. I will never again trust my memories of youthful bliss. Still, since I know I went there a lot as a kid, I gave the dining room a small, slightly guilty smile, the way I do a person I’m supposed to recognize but don’t.

There was a new addition to the hotel since my grandparents’ time.

I learned that the current owners of the Spalding Inn are the stars of some Sci Fi Channel show called Ghost Hunters. Apparently they got the idea for the show because of what they’ve seen over the years at their Inn. But like New Hampshire moose, haints evaded me. The only mysterious sound I heard late at night was the clanking of the hundred-year-old radiators. Or could it have been… ?

It wouldn’t be exactly a lie if I said I saw a moose today.

In the morning I found my way back to the cog railway where it was cold and foggy. The chill didn’t seem to bother the brakeman, whose job on the way up is to lean over the front of the train and check the tracks. We got to stand out there with him for a while. He informed us that the mountain is the Northeast’s highest, it frequently claims lives, its winds have been recorded at 200 mph, and that he accepts tips at the end of the ride.

We went up a 37-degree slope they call Jacob’s Ladder. It makes one stand funny, which I guess is why everyone else is sitting.

At the top of the mountain one can take shelter from the howling winds and ice formations (they had four feet of snow there a couple weeks ago) and look at heated exhibits. I noticed this faceless skier and wondered if he’s that way in sympathy for the Old Man in the Mountain. Pictured at right are myriad plant and animal specimens encased in Lucite and illuminated. I was too preoccupied with the colorful effect from a distance that I didn’t get a closer look. It was in the gift shop that I realized how much I needed this vacation. Looking through the books I saw an odd title: “Scary Cognitive Tales.” Only after several seconds of pondering its meaning, I saw that “Cognitive” was really “Campfire.”

Speaking of the Old Man in the Mountain, I noticed that the New Hampshire highway signs show the profile of the dear old gentleman when he still had a face. They need a new logo. Maybe at the same time they can come up with something more postmodern than “Live Free or Die.”

After poking around the frigid summit we climbed back into the train and watched the brakeman swirl wheels around to slow the train over steep sections. Softly to myself I was humming “Casey Jones.”

We were above the clouds at the summit and descended back into them on the way down.

Safely down the mountain, I climbed into my car and do what I always do when on an adventure: scour the map for a possible route, drive away and within five minutes head off in an entirely different direction. This time, just down the road from the Cog Railway was an enticing dirt road that took me over Jefferson Notch. Notches, even when marked with signs, are as hard to spot as moose. It took half an hour to drive the nine miles through forest, and was really lovely, even though I had no idea where I was. The road wasn’t marked on the map, but I think I was cutting my way back over the Presidential Range to the west side.

I wanted to take a little hike through the woods but, when I saw several men in trucks with guns and Day-Glo orange hats, I realized I look an awful lot like a deer. It must not be wild turkey season because I saw herds of them strutting around boldly, without a care in the world.

Eventually I landed back in familiar territory, by accident arriving at my grandparents’ cottage. This is the view from my below their old house.

After winding along a web of roads I arrived at the Connecticut River and followed it back home, first on the New Hampshire side with its wide, verdant, ripely manure-scented fields.

After many miles I got to Hanover and made a detour to see Dartmouth which was entirely devoid of ivy but brimming with pimply young academics.

Over on the Vermont side, the river road (Highway 5) meanders mostly through woods, doing playful little loops in unlikely directions for reasons I couldn’t fathom, but eventually fulfilling its goal of carrying me south toward home. Come to think of it, Highway 5 is sort of like how I work: flying all over the place on the way, but eventually getting there.

I got home, unpacked and headed to campus to meet Kim to make a banner for a surprise event for MATs on Friday. The only student group I’ve signed up for so far is what has come to be known as The “Funnest Collaborative.” I joined largely because Mike (our Group Dynamics professor) leads it, and he makes me laugh so hard that I can’t politely eat in his presence. Next posting you’ll see what we were up to.

I’ve realized that if I don’t take a break, something will snap, either inside me or within arm’s reach. So I made a plan to escape midweek when we have the unusual circumstance of no classes for two days.

On Saturday night Lauren came over to co-study. Look at all those books I’ve got. Oh: and look at that bench I sort of made. I didn’t really make it because this guy Don sliced the wood for me and drilled the holes, but I shaped the top ends of the branches. And it’s not really made at all, because the branches shrunk so they’re flopping around loose in the holes. But for now it’s a good place to put language texts.

The next night one of my barn-mates came by at dusk and invited me on a walk. I’d warned her that I’m antisocial and if she invites me to do anything I’ll probably say no. But I painfully squeezed out a quiet “okay,” and had a wonderful hike with her (and two dogs) along the river. I like her a lot. In a former life (I mean, the real kind of former life; not the California kind that was 400 years ago in Ireland or something), she was a dog trainer. We got home after dark.

In our Approaches class yesterday (I don’t know what its full title is; we just call it Approaches for short. For all I know, it’s short for Approaches to Finding Moose at Highway Crossings) anyway, in our Approaches class we learn various methods for teaching languages. Yesterday, we studied Communicative Language Teaching. Here is Sabah trying to read the menu in Afrikaans.

And here is our teacher and some of the students. We’re playing Afrikaans Go Fish with cards picturing food and drink items.

Last night I stayed up till a thousand o’clock, trying to get enough work done so I could take my trip. Wisely I’d already booked my hotel reservation so, though my work is unfinished, I can’t back out. And here I am, at the Spalding Inn near Whitefield, New Hampshire, where I used to come with my grandparents. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I didn’t have time to pack, so I tossed a bunch of random items into two coal bags — four pairs of socks and underwear (for one night), no clean pants, a razor because I’ll see my first bathtub in two months, an audio recorder, earplugs that my psychiatrist suggested I bring for the cog railway trip up Mt. Washington (but I’m getting ahead of myself again), more books than I could read in a month, my knitting, my trekking poles, a dress and pair of fancy shoes…

My power went out as I was packing so I had to take a wee detour to Peter’s apartment to ask him to fix that. He’s a sweet guy.

Another sweet guy is the one who gave me the idea of choosing New Hampshire’s White Mountains as my destination. Aside from just wanting to see the area, I had a goal: to try to find Granddad’s old cabin in the woods.

Up north I went, driving on freeway for several hours before taking off onto back roads. The scenery looks very different than it did early this month. No more arboreal brilliance, but just a sea of rust hatched with white slivers of barren birch trees. Still very pretty.

From a distance, every New England town looks the same: a mass of brown trees pierced with almost equal numbers of steeples.

I saw more bridges than I could shake a stick at. Actually, I did shake a stick at one, only to discover the unmitigated inanity of that idiom.

Finally I arrived at the edge of the national forest where Grannie and Granddad’s cottage was. My bro had told me to turn on what he thought was Starr King road, after which I’d pass the old brook and then the house. I did cross the brook but didn’t recognize the house. I pulled off onto a forest service road that was so thickly covered in leaves I couldn’t distinguish it from the forest floor, and picked my way across slick leaves and rocks down to Priscilla Brook.

What I remember most about Priscilla Brook is that it ran with the coldest water I’ve ever felt in my life. Some things don’t change. Though my hand hurt within one second, I endured the pain for the sake of my siblings. I wanted to grab them each a little pebble from the creek bed as a souvenir of our childhood. I stood up and took a last look around me. “I remember this place so well,” I thought as my heart did a funny little wobble.

A resident of the area drove by and I told her about my grandparents. Amazingly, she’d never heard of  Priscilla Brook. “It’s right over there,” I pointed. “Now you know what it’s called!”

I left the dirt road and turned back onto the highway. A mile later I came upon another dirt road that looked familiar. I decided to check it out. In a hundred feet I crossed a brook. I saw a familiar house. At that moment, I just didn’t know how to feel. Was I happy that I’d found the real Priscilla Brook? Embarrassed that my profound flash of memory fifteen minutes earlier was a mere fabrication induced by longing for the familiar? Or was I mortified that some old lady will, for the rest of her days, go around calling some little creek the wrong name? As penance, I reached into this icewater to retrieve a few more pebbles.

It was too grey and wet to take many pictures. In fact, I really couldn’t even get a sense of the topography around here, which I suspect is spectacular. Most of the mountaintops were shrouded, some in a most interesting way: clouds almost like a blanket resting along the exact contours of the ridge. There are dozens of peaks, collectively called the Presidential Range: a haphazard disarray of Mounts Jackson, Pierce, Madison, Garfield, Adams, Jefferson and of course Washington. I was interested to note the names of lesser mounts: Dolly and Nancy.

I don’t want a mountain named after me. I’ve always wanted an overpass in my honor: The Ginna Memorial Overcrossing. But today I changed my mind. Forget the freeway. Here there’s Pinkham Notch and Crawford Notch and Jefferson Notch. Someday, if my dreams come true, there will be a Ginna Notch. I’m not really sure what a notch is in this context; all I know is that I want one to commemorate me.

Remember Old Man of the Mountain? He was a New Hampshire legend: a ten-thousand-year-old cliff discovered in 1805 that soon became a major tourist attraction because of its resemblance to a — well, you know. Sadly, in 2003 his face fell off. Maybe they can put Ginna Notch there.

The people who live in small New Hampshire towns have too much time on their hands, I figured. That can be the only polite explanation for the way they name their shops: Thyme to Heal, Seams Sew Easy, Bear Foot Gallery… Another guy who had too much free time had a bunch of homemade Adirondack chairs on his front lawn — with their backs made out of colorful downhill skis.

I have never seen so many signs for moose — nor such a profound absence of same — in my two months here. Crossing signs everywhere, including one that said “Brake for Moose! It could save your life. Hundreds of collisions.” And then there are the moose businesses: Strictly Moose, The Moose’s Antler, Moose Tours. I even read one sign as Benjamin Moose Paints.

And speaking of signs, I noticed a lot of construction warnings that were bilingual English and French. Can anyone explain that? We’re nowhere near Quebec.

I was going to take a drive up Mount Washington because I’m curious to see the place that kills so many people, but the road is closed for the season, and the advisory sign about the nature of the road is classic New England understatement.

Whenever I see a wild animal, I call softly to it with great affection: “Hey, Sugar Lips.” I don’t know why I do that. There was that mountain lion in Costa Rica, watching us from the hillside above. “Hello, Sugar Lips! How ya doin’, you cute thing.” And the black bear in West Virginia that was breaking off apple-tree branches as though they were toothpicks? “Sugar Lips!” Once again I had a sugar lips moment, up at the base of the cog railway up Mount Washington, where, as I’ve told you, I’ll return tomorrow morning to take the train up.

After a bunch of wrong turns I finally found my way to the Spalding Inn, and though I’ve been here many times in my youth, I am now not afraid to admit that I have absolutely no recollection of it. Meatloaf, however, does. His autographed photo hangs prominently above the registration desk. He sure wasn’t here when Grannie and Granddad were. I don’t think they would have liked each other. And he’s not here tonight. I am the sole guest in this whole place. I feel like running up and down the entire hallway naked. Actually, not really; I just felt like saying that.

Really: I’m not kidding. There is too much work here. I mean, look at what we had to do today in a certain Class-That-Shall-Remain-Nameless, in which our group tends to be dynamic.

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Geese are leaving here in droves. I think I even saw a gaggle or two. —”Take me with you,” I call to the skies. But they turn their heads down toward me as one, laughing vindictively at my church-lady wool hat, and continue on toward warmer climes.