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:
When time was young and the interstate was yet unseen, The roads wound down and around the streams and rivers like a dream. Times were slow, and people had nowhere to go that they hadn’t already been. Quechee was farms and river and nowhere was there a lake; In the summer, farm boys and girls would dream of the fish they would take. Today time is faster and the interstates connect us with the world. Quechee is a wonder, and Pineo is a lake. Still, the roads wind around rivers and streams and fisher people still dream of the fish they will take.
— by Wendy Fogg-McIntire, Bradford
Dear Daybreak:
Autumn Raindrops
The leaves fall like confetti, swirling like whirling dervish. The wind whistles through the treetops, and the scent of pumpkins floats on the afternoon sun. I remember Noble Miles in the hills of Norwich and summers spent wandering along game trails, by tumbling brooks where Bears rolled rocks, searching for insects. I wonder if I were a fuzzy caterpillar, ticking his tongue could I make him roar with laughter. And I remember listening to a child Sing-along to The Rolling Stones belting out “emotional raccoon.” It made my heart smile and I skipped along a street of cracks, and felt my own heart split, and I was so sad I laughed out loud and fell through a window of light. Little Maisie was there to dance among the shards, and so, the three fates made of her a ballerina, whose toe shoes gave her wings to fly among the stars, so that at night when I gaze at the heavens I could feel her breath upon my soul. And the moon shadows my heart, giving me quiet places to linger as the last leaves of autumn rain down like teardrops.
— by Mary Cheyne, Chelsea
Dear Daybreak:
Ice in its many forms…
By Sally Harris, in Sunapee.
By Robin Osborne, who writes, “I went to one of my favorite spots in Fairlee today to see how the ice had formed around the waterfalls, and it was stunning.”
By Annemieke McLane, out for a walk in Strafford.
[By Sharon Wight in Lebanon, who writes, “It was 8 degrees at my house this morning. Looking out the window I saw ‘diamond dust’, ice crystals falling from the sky on a sunny day.” She includes this link to an explanation.](https://prod-files-secure.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/18c58a98-106b-4728-901a-bbf009d3e05f/58dd6312-ceb9-4b4f-8af0-f17a23887d71/diamond_dust.mp4)
By Sharon Wight in Lebanon, who writes, “It was 8 degrees at my house this morning. Looking out the window I saw ‘diamond dust’, ice crystals falling from the sky on a sunny day.” She includes this link to an explanation.
Want to submit a Dear Daybreak item? Just go here!
And did you miss the last one? Here it is!
Banner photo above: Snow waves on Lake Sunapee, by Julian Devlin