The Princess Bride: In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

There's a land that's fair and bright,

I found it funny that my colleagues in other states didn't get Columbus Day off, but we did...suckas! They're all crying about it on the phone when they're like, but I emailed you on Monday, and I'm all, well we had the holiday off, so Tuesday was pretty busy for us. Then they pretend to feel sorry that Tuesday was so busy since they had to work on Monday--and I'm like hey, if you live in New England then Columbus Day is a required holiday off! It's beautiful here this time of year. And besides they can laugh at us when we're freezing our booties off in a nor'easter in January and they're wearing shorts & flip flops in Florida. Yeah.

I'm bound to stay
Where you sleep all day,
Where they hung the jerk
That invented work
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains.

So last holiday weekend I went to The White Mountains, home of my great-grandparents and the grandfather I never really knew. My great-grandmother lived to be an active 94- years old. She attributed this to the clean mountain air and the fact that she kept active throughout her life, both physically and mentally.

One time I went to visit her in college with my boyfriend and I stopped at a flower shop in town to pick up a potted plant for her since she loved to garden. I sort of remembered how to get to her house, but had never actually been the driver during family visits so wasn't entirely sure. The lady at the flower shop started talking to me and it came out that I was visiting my greatgrammie. Since everyone knows everyone in small towns she asked her name and I said Doris Cawley and she, of course, not only knew her, but knew where she lived and gave good directions to her house. Small towns are cute.

As we set out for the 28 mile drive along the Kangamangus Highway for some hiking amongst the fall foliage followed by outlet store shopping we passed the hotel my family always used to stay at when we trekked up north. It looked the same, but was under new ownership. I looked around to see if I could recognize the flower shop I had stopped at about 5 years ago, but I think it was more off of the main road. I like to think it's still there, and that the lady still remembers my greatgrammie, who at 92 years of age would get down and dirty in her garden behind her little white house. The house where I saw my first hummingbird visit the feeder by her window, and watched the babbling brook running by out back. The place where I listened intently to many stories about my grandpa and greatgrandfather, and the work that they did to help build the little town of North Woodstock, NH.