Welcome to “Dear Daybreak”, a new, occasional 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. One request right now: No more poems for a few weeks, please—the larder’s still full.

Dear Daybreak:

A tunnel of love Back road, late autumn sunshine Trees blowing kisses.

— Jane Masters, Hanover

Dear Daybreak:

Our summer home on Spectacle Pond is 15 minutes from Enfield and 10 minutes from Canaan, on a typical dirt lake road. Not a good place to have a flat tire. As aging seniors, my husband and I had already struggled once last winter to change a flat tire, so we knew better. We called our insurance company’s Roadside Assistance Service and set up an appointment. Or so we thought, as they later cancelled the appointment due to “no available service providers”.

It was getting late in the day when we started calling local garages to no avail, finally reaching one very nice man who really wanted to help us but couldn’t as it was pushing past five o’clock on a Friday night and he really needed to get home. He did, however, suggest that we “call Matt’s Garage on Potato Road” and looked up the number for us.

Matt was on his way home after a long day, but came right away and changed the tire in 10 minutes. My husband asked, “Who should I make out the check to?”

“Oh, there’s no charge,” replied Matt. “If you had been stranded by the side of the road, I would have stopped and helped you. This is no different.”

Big tip of the hat to our two helpers and especially to Matt on Potato Road in Enfield!

— Kathy Christie

Dear Daybreak:

Above Treeline

1 I crest the granite ridgeline nothing left between me and the high hut clutching the curve of the earth but this wreck of boulders in sprawled disarray giant blocks broken by giants at play.

2 High up is gray nothing but edges a vast quiet of altitude.

3 I am minuscule up here so very small I disappear.

— Lisa Sjostrom, Norwich