Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a weekly Daybreak column. It features short vignettes about life in the Upper Valley: an encounter, some wry exchange with a stranger or acquaintance… Anything that happened in this region or relates to it and strikes a contributor as interesting or funny or poignant—or that makes us appreciate living here.

Dear Daybreak:

While hiking up snowy Cardigan recently, I thought about something I wrote years ago...

One day, I pushed up a steep hill in heavy snow and rested at the top. I leaned on my poles and then heard footsteps, a kind of champing sound behind me, like hooves in deep snow. I held my breath to listen. The champing came faster and closer. I snuck a quick look behind: nothing but my own tracks, the sun filtering through the pines, random snowflakes. The champing grew slower and quieter and that was when I knew:

My heart. I had been given the fantods by the sound of my own beating heart! Why had I not noticed? Had I just not been paying attention all these years? The heart has a life of its own in its home in my body. My mind can change the heart’s beat, but the heart is its own. Its rhythm can tell you things. But then, everything can tell you things if you only listen. Plus you can see many more things when it is quiet enough to let your eyes work with your brain and your heart.

— Jay Heinrichs, Orange

Dear Daybreak:

Wood

Again and again, I bring wood to the stove.  A winter’s worth of wood lives down the basement stairs.  September to May, it heats the core of the house.   Down I go, filling arms, back up…don’t fall.  Feed the old wood stove, heart of the house.  Grateful for the wood warmth.  The fire dancing, always changing…like water.  Reminding me of the cycles that take us back and take us forward.    Again and again, I bring wood to the stove.  A winter’s worth of wood lives down the basement stairs.  September to May, it heats the core of the house.   Down I go, filling arms, back up…don’t fall.    A winter’s worth of wood lives down the basement stairs.  Feed the old wood stove, heart of the house.  Down I go, filling arms, back up…don’t fall.  Grateful for the wood warmth.    A winter’s worth of wood lives down the basement stairs.  The fire dances, always changing…like water.  Grateful for the wood warmth but reluctant to begin again…again…again.  Reminding me of the cycles that take us back and take us forward.    The fire dancing, always changing…like water.  September to May, so many months, it heats the core of the house.  Reminding me of the cycles that take us back and take us forward.  Again and again, I bring wood to the stove.

— by Pam Kneisel, Thetford. And if the form seems familiar but just a tad off-kilter, it’s another form of a pantoum, this one laid out by Padraig O’Tuama of the Poetry Unbound podcast: eight lines that are then rearranged in a particular order, creating a new 16-line poem.

Dear Daybreak:

Try it, you'll like it.

Do you sometimes find yourself in the checkout line at the grocery story, and you are standing in front of or in back of a store employee who's buying a few items to eat on their break? If so, I encourage you to tell the cashier you'll pick up the tab for those items. Not only will it surprise and delight the employee, but it will make you feel great. For just a few dollars, you will have made the employee's day, perhaps the cashier's day and certainly your day. I do this whenever I have the opportunity, whether it's the holiday season or not, always to a very positive response!

— Mark Chamberlain, Claremont

Want to submit a Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!

And did you miss the last one in December? Here it is!

Banner photo above: Sunrise hitting Mt. Ascutney, by Stew Stryker