Destination: New Hampshire

 Book: Following Atticus: Eight Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship  (September 2011) by Tom Ryan

CONTEST IS CLOSED. NOTE: This is the continuing book club run by Edie Jarolim of Will My Dog Hate me. Win a signed copy of Following Atticus by commenting here, OR at Will My Dog Hate Me. Comment both places and get two entries.

Review by Rebecca Boren

I wish I knew which wise person said that one mark of a wonderful book is that each reader feels it was written specifically to him or her. In the three months since its publication, Following Atticus, a love letter to New Hampshire’s White Mountains and the two miniature schnauzers who transformed author Tom Ryan’s life, has already achieved best-seller status, gaining such accolades as “lyrical”, “heartwarming,” and “entertaining and joyous.” It’s been dubbed an instant regional classic, a worthy follower in the footsteps of such New England literary giants as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson– whom Ryan loves to quote.

Mt.. Washington New Hampshire

But I’m convinced Ryan wrote Following Atticus just for me.

• At the start of Following Atticus, Ryan is the owner, editor and sole employee of a muck-raking alternative newspaper in a small city on Massachusetts’ North Shore. I spent the first couple of decades of my working life shoveling dirt as a political and investigative reporter.
• I used to get away from it all by spending my vacations hiking or biking in the Swiss Alps or British countryside. Ryan learns about walking meditation while climbing New Hampshire’s White Mountains.
• Ryan falls more or less accidentally into life with an elderly rescued miniature schnauzer, then deliberately takes on the puppy who became Atticus Maxwell Finch. For years I saved miniature schnauzers for Arizona Schnauzer Rescue.
• Tom and Atticus’s breeder were both abused children. No further elaboration needed.
• And finally, when Ryan starts climbing mountains to raise money for charity, he hikes through the haze of pain, fatigue, and disability that comes with severe Lyme disease. As someone who daily frequently battles just to get out of bed courtesy of rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, I’m re-re-reading Following Atticus to see how he does that.

No wonder I love this book. Keep-by-my-bedside-and-give-inscribed –copies-to-everyone-on-my-Christmas-list love this book. It’s fun, it’s tender and frequently moving.

Following Atticus takes the classic literary form of the quest – both inner and outer. The hero, Tom Ryan — overworked, overweight, and overwhelmed at his newspaper — is saved from himself by those schnauzers. Atticus M. Finch, all 20 pounds of him, takes the role of faithful sidekick (only less a foolishly comic figure than many a Sancho Panza).

While Tom is controversial, even hated in certain circles, Atticus is loved from the moment he arrives in Newburyport as an 8-week-old 6-pound puppy. He covers meetings (and stays awake!) with Tom, wanders into the kitchen for treats at favorite restaurants, tours the city sitting in his special-order bicycle basket.

Within a couple of years, Atticus lures Tom away from the politics of Newburyport and into a world of long rural weekends, mountain hikes, and the rediscovery of the White Mountains, site of the family vacations that comprised Ryan’s few happy childhood memories.

In two successive winters between 2006 and 2008, the duo mounts a “Winter Quest” of climbing all 48 of New Hampshire’s mountains higher than 4,000 feet – twice each winter — for charity. Supporters donated money for each peak, first for cancer, then veterinary, research.

Mt. .Washington from Bretton Woods

Scaling the 96 peaks in one winter is grueling, daunting, and had only been done by a single other human climber. No dogs. (No worries, dog lovers. Tom takes elaborate measures to keep his best friend safe in the snow and ice.)

In tackling the mountains, though, Tom also tackles his greatest fears. In the cold, in the dark, exposed to the heights that terrify him, he confronts demons that have haunted him since his childhood of abuse and loss. “I’d decided to challenge myself and make myself stronger, to come face-to-face with who I was in those worst of elements and in an environment I’ve always feared, with the hope I’d emerge a bit different from when I went into it.”

It’s harder than he expected. Exposed on a freezing and gusty ridge, “I thought about how such weather can strip a man of hope and good sense and make him feel lonely and empty. I thought about how easy it would be to sit down and just stop moving through the wind and gloom…”

Then he looks ahead. “Little Atticus had taken the lead, strong gusts be damned, and was ducking his head and floppy ears into each gust, matching forward with a sideways catch – like John Wayne.”

Franconia Ridge Trail

Following Atticus’s third major character is New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Ryan pays tribute to these ancient peaks, which in the 19th century were the first wilderness to attract the attention and love of urban Americans. Hundreds of painters recorded the dramatic peaks and cliffs; major and minor authors recorded the history and lore of the ridges and valleys.

Tom fills a tiny rented cabin with the great New England existentialists, such as Emerson and Thoreau. In the service of his story, he quotes them, the poets Longfellow and Tennyson, the early environmental writers such as John Muir, even the mid-20th-century Christian apologists C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton.

It’s a kind of writing that is romantic in the best, lower-case “r” sense, where a beloved subject and style meld seamlessly, where the reader thinks “Of course!” when Tom compares himself to Frodo Baggins, and Atticus to Baggins’ faithful Sam. He captures such familiar sights as a beautiful sunny fall day with New England’s foliage in full color as well as those most of us will never see, like the undercast of an approaching blizzard snaking along a valley underneath a frozen ridge.

A recurring question in the book is whether Atticus is the perfect dog. “He’s perfect for me,” Ryan replies.

Is Following Atticus a perfect book? Nah. It takes some perseverance to follow the accounts of all those cold and dark winter hikes on mountain after seemingly indistinguishable mountain (referring to the end-paper map of the 4,000-footers helps.)

But it turned out to be a perfect book for me.

Note from Edie: Before she moved to Tucson and became a freelance writer, Rebecca Boren was a senior editor atThe Seattle Weekly and chief political reporter at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  A former volunteer at Arizona Schnauzer Rescue, she rescued Frankie, the muse of  Will My Dog Hate Me. There we will discussing the book as it relates to the role of Atticus and his precursor mini-schnauzer, Max. I hope you’ll join us there too. But here at A Traveler’s Library, let’s talk about these questions:

Questions

Tom and his “Little Buddha?” find peace and wonder in the White Mountains, so much so that Tom eventually sells his newspaper so they can move to New Hampshire. Have you ever found a place that special to you?

Tom writes about the town of Newburyport, Massachusetts as a community divided against itself in every way imaginable – along lines of class, newcomer versus old-timer, gay versus straight, development versus historic preservation. Given that Tom was a controversial figure in “Cannibal City” why do you suppose so many people welcomed Maxwell Garrison Gillis, then Atticus Maxwell Finch, with such love and enthusiasm?

Tom has said that he wants to be the modern-day equivalent of the White Mountains painters, whose hundreds of works featuring the mountains brought tourists flocking to New Hampshire and contributed to the decision to rescue the mountains from clear-cut logging and the accompanying destruction. Does he succeed?

Disclaimers: The book cover is linked through Will My Dog Hate Me, an Amazon affiliate, which means that although it costs you no more to shop through that link, the affiliate earns a small percentage of anything you purchase. (And hey, it’s Christmas time, so go crazy!) Photos are used with permission from WikiCommons and from Flicker.com  Please click on each photo to learn more about the origins.

Next month’s Pet Travel Book Club will discuss Dog Walks Man: A Six-Legged Odyssey  by John Zeaman.
Click over to Will My Dog Hate Me for details, and a special deal from the publisher.

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1. A Capitol Fourth, The Mall, Washington D.C.

What’s Special? You’re kidding, right? It is THE place to be–the seat of government, with an all-American entertainment program featuring John Philip Sousa marches and thousands of red, white and blue clad celebrants gathered on the grassy lawn in the middle of all those imposing marble buildings. Right there where the laws are made and administered and judged. And watching fireworks arc over the Washington Monument would give any patriot a thrill.

Although I’ve never been in Washington in person for July 4th, we never miss watching this celebration on PBS. The people in the audience can be as much fun as the show on stage. Jimmy Smits and Steve Martin headline this year.

2. Charles River,  Boston

Boston Fireworks on the Charles River

What’s Special? Mostly the magnificent Boston Pops Orchestra, but also the serene setting by the historic Charles River. The music is a tad classier, and so is the crowd, compared to Washington D.C., but it is still a heck of a show.

Now in its 38th year, Boston presents the famous Boston Pops orchestra on July 3 and July 4 and fireworks over the Charles River on the Fourth. For a real thrill, see the Boston July 4th show from the Charles River. I’ll be stopping over in Boston briefly in August, and loved our visit there a couple of years ago.

3. Macy’s Fireworks Celebration, Hudson River, New York City

New York City Fireworks on the Hudson River

Setting off fireworks from barges on the Hudson River is a long time tradition in New York City, perhaps remembering the fireworks of revolutionary battles with the British fought in this area. Back then New York City was a rural village with cobblestone streets, and you can still see the cobblestones on the very southern tip of Manhattan in front of the Fraunces  Tavern where George Washington gave his farewell address to the troops.  In 1976, the bi-centennial of the Declaration of Independence, one of the grandest celebrations in the land took place here, and the tradition continues.

Fireworks have been cut from a lot of city budgets, but Macy’s, who in the past have been firmly associated with Thanksgiving, because of the Thanksgiving parade, now own July 4th in NYC as well. Thank you Macy’s for one of the best events in New York, a city I love to visit.

4. Navy Pier, Chicago

What’s Special: Well, to tell the truth, I love Chicago, but the city is not funding any big fireworks shows this summer. Instead, people can trot on out to Navy Pier and see there usual 15 minute show. When I say usual–they do this fireworks display every night during the summer. It is a crowd pleaser, there will be live music, and the Pier’s  a cool place to be on a hot summer night, but it doesn’t hold a Roman candle to the extravaganzas in the other cities.

5. Big Bay
Big Bay Boom, San Diego

San Diego Fireworks on the Bay

What’s Special?San Diego has a gorgeous bay and the night views looking back toward the city or out across the lighted Coronado Bridge always take my breath away. Now add tons of exploding color being fired off from barges circling the bay–sounds incredible. View them from outdoors at Shelter Island or Seaport Village or grab a 9:00 p.m. reservation window seat at one of the hundreds of restaurants with views on the bay. Yum!

(If budgetary woes weren’t enough to slow down the fireworks shows, in California a judge questioned whether San Diego’s fireworks are environmentally safe. Only in California!The  latest ruling allows the big show to go forward in San Diego, so you can safely book your trip.)

Can you afford to get out of town for the long weekend?

Air fare just keeps going up-up-up and away as gas prices stay stratospheric, but CheapO Air lists special deals to four of these five cities. As you do your trip planning, check out the CheapOAir July 4th  flight/hotel combos for New York, San Diego, Boston and Chicago.

Finally, my favorite provider of travel bargains, Travel Zoo, sends a weekly newsletter with their bargains and on June 17 they listed a BUNCH of July 4th bargains.  If you don’t subscribe to Travel Zoo, do.

Don’t dispair if you can’t get out of town, the D.C. Capitol Fourth will be covered on Public Television, and you can curl up with one of the books we have recommended in the past.

True to their name, CheapOAir did NOT pay me to include this generous mention of them in this post. However, I will give them credit. Those are their fireworks photos above. The video comes from the folks at the Capitol Fourth, though. Travel Zoo and Peter Greenberg were mentioned without incentive, too. I just happen to like them.

Where will you be on July 4th? Do you have any special family traditions?

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Books and Play: The Belle of Amherst by William Luce; The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson; and a Recipe

You’ll forgive me if I’m a bit distracted, and offer you a blog post from last year, rewarmed. My excuse–I’m doing a final review of the galleys on a book that Charnell Havens and I wrote about Navajo artist Quincy Tahoma. Instead of Thanksgiving dinner, I’ll be stewing words. And if that isn’t bad enough, The Ohio State plays Michigan on Saturday. Go BUCKS!

Emily's Study, Amherst

Autumn makes me think of travel to New England, and New England makes me want to get out The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. In a former life, I played Emily in the play The Belle of Amherst,and ever since, I have been making the black cake she is making at the beginning of that play. I make it on Thanksgiving weekend, wrap it in cheesecloth dipped in brandy and serve it on Christmas Eve. (Cut the recipe in half or one-quarter if you must, but DO NOT call it a fruitcake.)

EMILY DICKINSON’S BLACK CAKE

as adapted by Vera Marie Badertscher

• 2 Pounds flour (8 cups)
• 2 pounds sugar (4 cups)
• 2 pounds butter (4 cups)
• 19 eggs
• 5 pounds raisins
• 1 1/2 pounds citron
• 1 1/2 pounds currents
• 1/2 pint brandy* (1 cup)
• 1/2 pint molasses (1 cup)
• 2 nutmegs (4-6 tablespoons, ground)
• 5 tablespoons total: cloves, mace, cinnamon
• 2 tablespoons soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon salt

* Emily says, “Not my father’s BEST brandy.”

Sift flour, soda, spices, salt.  Beat butter and sugar, add eggs a few at a time, beating after each addition.  Add brandy alternately with flour mixture.  Add molasses.  Sprinkle in fruit, slowly as you stir.
Bake at 250 degrees one and a half to three hours depending on the size of the pans you use. Full recipe makes one large “angel food cake” pan; plus 2-3 loaf pans.

Remove from pan to cool.  Wrap in cheesecloth dipped in brandy.  Store in air tight container for several weeks, dribbling on some more brandy from time to time.
Note: I have looked at other recipes on the Internet and immodestly believe this version is best. Slow baking and thorough basting are key.

The photo comes from Flickr under a Creative Commons License. Click on the image for more information.

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Destination: Maine

Books: by Robert McClosky

A GUEST POST BY BRETTE SEMBER

Blue Hill village across the bay

When I was a child, each summer my family rented a beautiful old cottage on Smith Cove on the Penobscot Bay, near Blue Hill, Maine. I spent hours exploring the shore, turning over rocks, poking at mussels, finding feathers, digging for clams, and even swimming in the frigid water.

Many afternoons were spent with a good book on the old porch swing, overlooking the deep blue waters, green islands, and the foggy smudge that was Castine across the bay. We also picked wild blueberries in a nearby field, visited an old grocery store, and enjoyed boat rides. Mornings were cold and evenings chilly, but the sunlight was spectacular on the water in the daylight. I fell in love with . And with Robert McCloskey. Robert McCloskey was not a native Mainer, but his children’s books showed that he had fallen in love with Maine just as I had.

As long as I can remember, Blueberries for Sal, One Morning in Maine, and Time of Wonder were my favorite picture books. In them, McCloskey perfectly captures the cold water, rocky coast, and incredible wildlife. I felt as though I was living those stories which were set in the same portion of the coast we visited.

Blueberries

In Blueberries for Sal, a young girl goes blueberry picking with her mother in a field and happens upon a mother bear and her baby who are also picking and eating the wild blueberries. Kerplink, kerplank, kerplunk was the sound McCloskey ascribed to the blueberries hitting the bottom of the tin bucket, the same sound I heard as we picked them – but we didn’t see any bears. The field we picked in seemed identical to Sal’s with bushes set among large boulders. As a child, I was sure it was the same. The book is filled with McCloskey’s lifelike pen and ink drawings that exactly captured the Maine I knew.
In One Morning in Maine, Sal experiences a typical (and wonderful) Maine morning. The morning is cool and Sal is appropriately dressed for a summer Maine morning in a warm robe and slippers, then pants and a sweater. She plays along the shore while her father digs clams and she slips and falls on the wet, slippery seaweed that coats the rocks. Out comes her loose tooth and disappears in the gray mud along the shore. Sal spends most of the morning worrying about the lost tooth, but as she does so McCloskey shares the little details that define Maine – the seaweed that is used to cover the clams her father has dug, the small boat they take to the grocery store, the inimitable Maine characters who own the store and local garage, and my favorite line in the entire book, “clam chowder for lunch,” something I used to repeat as a child, with a Maine accent. The pen and ink drawings in this book are just as wonderful as in Blueberries for Sal and were like snapshots of my life in that magical place.
Time of Wonder is another McCloskey Maine picture book, but this one is more poetic and is about the colorful drawings which bring the coast to life. We stopped going to Maine when I was about 12, but I never stopped loving it. When I got married, we went to Maine on our honeymoon and even were able to take a drive and find the cottage my family stayed at. A few years ago we took our children to Maine and they fell in love with it too – but they were already readers of McCloskey’s books and knew just what to expect!

 

Family Vacation

Brette Sember

Brette Sember is the author of over 30 books and blogs at www.NoPotCooking.com about cooking with parchment paper. Her web site is www.BretteSember.com. She hopes to visit Maine again very soon.(This bio was updated 2/28/2011)

Thanks, Brette, for this charming look at a childhood love.  And I hope you get to make a trip to Maine really soon. Now it is our  readers turn to chime in with their favorite childhood vacation. Did it come with a book attached?

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Book: Summer Shift (NEW July 2010)by Lynn Kiele Bonasia

Fried clams

Mmmmm, a basket of fried clams with some macaroni salad to carry down to the rocks along the shore sounds might good right now.  The main drawback to reading this book on a Cape Cod Beach would be the constant temptation to stop reading and have a fried clam break.

You see, the book’s heroine owns a restaurant in a small town in Cape Cod (redundancy alert–are there any large towns on Cape Cod?). She has run the restaurant for 17 years, and her alcoholic husband wrapped his car around a tree a short time after they were married, so she’s discontentedly single.

As you may remember, I’m not crazy about romances, but this one has the virtue of presenting a few serious issues along the way. Her aunt has Alzheimer’s, her neighbor has Parkinson’s disease, and a cook at the restaurant has synesthesia–which isn’t as scary as it sounds–he feels shapes in things he tastes. Then there is the problem of letting go of the past, reconciling with an old love, and accepting her own maturing.

Sounds pretty interesting, and I love the setting, but I couldn’t warm up to the main character. That creates a real problem. I really didn’t like her very much. And she didn’t go out of her way to persuade me that I should like her.

As you may recall, I’m not crazy about romances, anyhow. But I’m trying not to over analyze a book that probably will be read with sand between the pages and grease marks from the fried clams on the pages. Here’s a nice description of the sea, that also tells us  the main theme of the book. Time softens rough edges.

“She got out of the car and made her way down the narrow path that led from the house to the beach.  When she got there, the horizon was defined by a deeper shade of black. Covered by a thin veil, the moon threw off enough light for Mary to see something blue near her foot, perhaps a dried jellyfish that had gotten tangled in a clump of eelgrass churned up in a recent storm. Somewhere out there, a baby winter flounder had lost its home.  Mary bent down to examine the blue object, a shard of glass, Noxema blue, not officially sea glass yet, too clean and sharp at the edges.  She picked it up and tossed it out into the water, where it, like everything else in time’s cauldron, would be sufficiently pulverized.”

Saltwater Grille

Oh, yes, Bonasia includes some recipes from the clam shack at the back of the book. Although the clam shack is a fictional place, the recipes were developed at the very real Saltwater Grill in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Enormous thanks to Alexandra Grabbe for scurrying around the Cape and taking these nice photographs. If you’re heading to Cape Cod, I hope you’ll visit Alexandra’s web site  about a green B & B in Wellfleet on Cape Cod that she and her husband own. When her customers want something to read, Alexandra supplies a collection of books which she talks about in her blog, Wellfleet Today.

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Mansions on the Cliff Walk in Newport, Rhode Island

Book: We’re There Rhode Island (2005)by Elizabeth S. Grumbach

The subtitle says it all: Games, Puzzles and Fun Facts for Children as they Explore the Ocean State.

[amazonify]0975487531::text::::We’re There Rhode Island[/amazonify] invites filling in the blanks, map reading, coloring, puzzle solving and (shhhh!) learning.

I loved the colorful layout and kid-friendly approach and language.  I think my favorite page is the back cover which invites the child to enter lists–the best and worst things eaten, places stayed, book read, ice cream, beach, etc.

Maybe other traveling parents and grandparents are better at this than me, but I tend to talk like a P.R. agent or glittery travel book, constantly telling the kids how great things are. Let’s face it, when you travel, not everything is so great, and giving a child permission to say some things just stink gives them a leg up on truly evaluating their surroundings and experiences.

My own visit to Rhode Island was long enough to qualify as a visit to the state, but too short to see anything beyond the beautiful town of Newport. I always love the ocean, and carry with me the image of sail boats departing from the pier that thrusts way out into the water.  The old portion of Rhode Island, brick colonial houses near the water takes you right back to the 18th century.  And then there is the excess of the “cottages” of the grand families like the Astors that line the Cliff Walk. When you go, do tour at least one of these tastefully opulent, if show-offy mansions.

It just happened that I discovered this book while searching for Rhode Island, but I could not wait to share it with parents and grandparents because the series also includes Boston, New York City, Washington D.C. and San Francisco. I got in touch with the author via her web page, (kidquest@cox.net) and she told me that she has travel books on London, Paris, Rome, Venice and Belize that she created for her children.

(I changed the wording below, so people would understand that this is an an offer from the author, relating to the last 5 mentioned books).

The author says: If you want to let people know that they can contact me if they are interested in having me print up pages from those books (8.5 x11, color, on a laser printer) I can always do that. She is talking about the non-United States cities–books that have not been published.

Might be worth taking a look. After all, we always need something to keep kids busy on the road.

Meanwhile, Kerry Dexter  over at Music Road suggests a Rhode Island music festival as part of her Music for the Road series that parallels the Great American Road Trip. I would love to go to that festival, and am so glad that Kerry pointed it out.

See other children’s books:  One about Japan, here. Africa here, Costa Rica, here,  Switzerland , France, and Michigan.

Please pass this post on to others who may be looking for children’s travel books or music for the road. You can use the tabs below for social networking, and even to e-mail the link to friends.

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Dogtown, The Book

PEN New England honors Elyssa East for Dogtown as best non-fiction set in New England.  The relevant part of the press release is below. Just look at the great company that Elyssa is in!

You can see our take on Dogtown, the first inspiring travel literature in our Great American Road Trip Series.

The ceremony will also honor writers Anne Sanow, Meg Kearney, and Elyssa East as recipients of the 2010 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Awards, given annually to a New England author or a book with a New England setting. Ms. Sanow is being honored in the fiction category for Triple Time (University of Pittsburgh Press); Ms. Kearney in the poetry category for Home by Now (Four Way Books); and Ms. East in the non-fiction category for Dogtown (Free Press/ Simon & Schuster). Judges for the Winship Awards this year were authors Dorothy Allison (fiction), Tim Seibles (poetry), and Michael Steinberg (non-fiction).

The L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award was established by The Boston Globe in 1975 to honor long-time Boston Globe editor Laurence L. Winship. It has been awarded in the past to E.B. White, Andre Dubus, Susan Cheever, Tracy Kidder, Mary Oliver, Susan Quinn, Jill Ker Conway, Jan Swafford, Anita Shreve, Stanley Kunitz, Leo Damrosch, Jennifer Haigh, K.C. Frederick, Sebastian Junger, Louise Glick, Rishi Reddi, Kristen Laine, Ann Killough, Nancy Pearson, Patrick Tracey and Margot Livesey.

Ceremony at the JFK Library in Boston on March 28.

Yaaay!

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Sy Montgomery and the Good Good Pig

Destination: New Hampshire

Book: The Good, Good Pig:The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood, by Sy Montgomery.

Where would we be without librarians? While New England teems with good writing, going back to colonial days, I wanted something contemporary for our visit to New Hampshire.  Susan Reiner, a reader who lives in that state, contacted her local librarians and they suggested a book about a pig.

Should New Hampshirites be insulted? Heavens, no. Christopher Hogwood, star of this show, is a[amazonify]0345496094::text::::Good Good Pig[/amazonify]. While Montgomery educates us about the porcine life–

piglets gain as much as five pounds a day–

the book tells us about a lot of good, good people in the small town and among the community of people who cared about Christopher.

Pigs are generally turned into pork chops by the time they are six months, so she was not sure how long a well-cared for pig would live.

Sy Montgomery described in the Boston Globe as “part Indiana Jones and part Emily Dickinson” writes about animals and nature for magazines like National Geographic, crafts documentaries, and she writes books for children.  Her study of animals takes her to interesting places–far too interesting for the more timid traveler like me.  She travels to an area teeming with tigers in India, to the bug-ridden Amazon, and cavorts with elephants and emus in the wild.

Her training and her belief that she is more closely related to non-humans than to humans, makes her the perfect person to explain why we should love a pig–specifically the lovable Christopher. 

Much is made of the intelligence of pigs, but the author failed to convince me.

Pigs have roughly the same intelligence as dogs.

Yes, he is an escape artist. Montgomery and the girls next door catalogue the various sounds he makes and believe that he greets different people with different tones and types of communication.

Montgomery and her husband, both writers, live on a property with a barn, although it is not a full-fledged farm.  The have a flock of chickens, called the Ladies, and soon after Christopher arrives they adopt an injured border collie. That is the limit of their livestock.

A bunch of pigs is called a drift.

Although the book concentrates on describing animals,human and otherwise, rather than dwelling on the landscape, Montgomery’s way with words brings us poetic treats like this:

It was the last day of August–an achingly beautiful, golden day when the air throbbed with cricket song and buzzed with dragonfly wings and smelled like ripening apples.

She writes with a directness and charm that seem just perfect when talking about small town New Hampshire–whose name, after all, starts with ham. Christopher, like his owner, is a vegetarian–but for a different reason (Sorry, you’ll have to read the book!)

Thanks, Susan and New Hampshire librarians for a good, good read– and it DOES make me want to go to New Hampshire.

Take a look at Music Roads for some music by a New Hampshire native to slip into your CD as you travel to New Hampshire.

Is there a famous literary animal who hails from your state or country? Tell us the story.

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Here is Ben and Bill’s Chocolate Emporium on the web. Their Bar Harbor location is closed until next month, but they also have a store in Massachusetts–and mail order.

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Lobster boat off coast of Maine

Destination: Maine

Book: The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island by Linda Greenlaw

And don’t forget your musical accompaniment over at Music Road, where Kerry Dexter will introduce you to a Maine fiddler and a list of “storytellers in song” that hail from Maine.

If only somebody would make lobster ice cream. Oh, come on…it would be slightly sweet, and a beautiful pink color. I think it is a great idea. But then I think lobster anything is a great idea. When I went on a road trip in Maine, I was in lobster heaven.

We sat in a shack at the end of a wooden pier and ate broiled lobster dinners with baked potatoes and corn on the cob. We had lobster salad served on fine china in a glass-enclosed sun porch or lobster rolls from McDonald’s for lunch. When I did not see them on the breakfast menu, I asked for a special  lobster omelet for breakfast, and got one–no problem.

I also wanted to see the lobster boats and learn more about how they are caught and processed. On our road trip through Maine, we took pictures of lobster traps and fishing nets and boats of every kind. When we left Acadia National Park, we even visited the lobster museum and hatchery just outside Bar Harbor. It is called the Mt. Desert Oceanarium, which caused us to drive right past–because, of course, we were looking for LOBSTER. (Sorry, I just checked and it was not presently open, and no word when it is reopening. That is a shame, because it is a great attraction for kids.)

And when Maine come up on the schedule for our Great American Road Trip, and needed a piece of travel literature that sets the stage for a visit to Maine…of course I thought of Lobster–[amazonify]0786885912::text::::The Lobster Chronicles [/amazonify], a book about a woman lobster fisher, Linda Greenlaw.

Memories came flooding back. Northern Maine in general has its own character–gray weathered buildings, bookstores in every town no matter how small, historic markers commemorating some of American’s earliest history.

Isle au Haut Lighthouse

As I read this travel book about life on the speck of an island called Isle au Haut, I heard the rhythm of the sea. Greenlaw’s sentences reflect the shushing of water against the shore.  Except, that is, when she gets angry and her rhythm quickens. Then she chooses harsher words and creates in the reader the frustrations she feels. Her chosen career provides plenty of frustration. She and her father pull in empty traps for days at a time. “Changing the water in the traps,” she calls it. Off islanders impinge on the fishing territory, and the local lobster fishermen’s association–all twelve of them– can’t bring themselves to do anything about it.

She would like to find a husband and start a family, but on this island of forty-seven permanent residents, the single men are either related to her or gay. She describes her people, “whose family tree is rooted firmly in granite, spruce and salt on both maternal and paternal sides.”  Although Greenlaw turned down the opportunity to go to law school, she clearly excels at communication.

In The Lobster Chronicles, you will learn a great deal about lobster and lobster fishing, but you will also learn a lot about Greenlaw, who is open and honest and down to earth. Life on the small island struck me as similar to  life in a small town–arguments that erupt over strange things and keep going for generations; jealousies and mutual caring in equal portions.

Because the lobster season runs May to December, Greenlaw has a lot of time to write. Her first book,[amazonify]B00008RWB7::text:::: The Hungry Ocean[/amazonify] (2000), talks about her life as the first female captain of an swordboat, ( ocean fishing) That life became part of the movie, The Perfect Storm. She has also written mysteries (2007 and 2008) and with her mother, wrote a cookbook, [amazonify]1401300731::text::::Recipes from a Very Small Island[/amazonify]. As far as I know, they did not include a recipe for lobster ice cream.

Maine, like all the states we visit, can present different faces in different places.  What is your favorite part of Maine? What means Maine to you? For Kerry Dexter, at Music Road, it means music. Kerry is part of the Great American Road trip with the music to go along with the visit to Maine. Please join the Road Trip conversation. (And please remember that any shopping you do through my Amazon links, gives me a few cents to buy books and rent movies to share with you.)

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