(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange is a contractor, writer and storyteller who recently took a Sunday morning drive through northern New England.
(LANGE) I woke up in the cabin a little after three in the morning. The moon was bright on the snow outside. Somebody had stoked the stove before bedtime, but the bedrooms hinted at the deep cold.
The cabin stands in the woods at the base of the little thumb of New Hampshire sticking up beyond the 45th parallel. This is logging country. Once skinned nearly clean, it’s now working forest and recreation country for hunters, fishermen, and snowmobilers. And it’s proof of the difference a few degrees of latitude can make in climate. When kids downstate are playing Frisbee, these woods are still slumbering under lingering snow cover.
I had a cough that got worse during the night. I tried vainly to doze off. Afraid I might be keeping other people awake – people too polite to holler at me to knock it off – I decided to leave. I packed as quietly as possible, pulled on my coat, tuque, and mittens, and stepped out into the cold.
It was below zero, and very still; plenty of moonlight to find my truck. The little four-cylinder started without a murmur. I backed out quietly as I could and started down the two-mile road to the highway, my headlights flooding the white tunnel between the banks piled high on both sides. No rush. I’d be home by six, and didn’t want to wake Mother too early. The highway was dry and cold; the bits of open water in the river were smoking. This was going to be a very pleasurable experience.
When I was younger, I loved driving at night. Impatient, I hated to waste daylight in travel. So I often set off in the dark, stopping first for a quart of milk and a package of cheap cream-filled cookies. They usually kept me going all night, as I checked far ahead for deer’s eyes and the pavement for porcupines. This run was going to be cookieless; nothing open in northern New Hampshire early Sunday morning.
It also occurred to me, after twenty miles without meeting another vehicle, that moderation was a good policy. The snowbanks were comforting, but a skid off the pavement might entail a long wait for help. Best to keep the truck between the banks.
You see things at night you don’t during the day. I didn’t expect deer or moose; the moose were up high, and the deer bedded down because of the cold. One tiny animal, probably a weasel, flickered on top of a snowbank and disappeared. Two trucks beside the road at Pontook Reservoir meant somebody was fishing. Way out on the ice gleamed an orange light, like an oil lamp.
I turned away from the Androscoggin and crossed into the Connecticut watershed. Groveton, Lancaster, St. Johnsbury all dark. Finally in Danville, before crossing into the St. Lawrence watershed, a truck stop with gas and a dozen Green Mountain coffee flavors. I called Mother so she’d know who was driving into the yard. Dawn was breaking. All downstream from here.
This is Willem Lange in East Montpelier, and I gotta get back to work.