We head home today, down the northeast corridor on an Amtrak train. This after travel in a van, taxi, hired car, rental car, commuter train and subway.
The transportation has been as varied as the trip itself, which has featured a wedding, hikes through farms and conservation lands, and lots of visiting. We’ve seen sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews and cousins, wonderful friends and adorable doggies.
It’s the kind of travel I’m seeking now, which is not just about rekindling adventures … but renewing relationships.
The composer Franz Schubert wrote his Moments Musicaux between 1823 and 1827. These short pieces are some of the composer’s most popular. He wrote them to give his public what they wanted, a chance to play music at home. He gave them much more; he gave them a masterpiece.
Yesterday, I heard pianist Jonathan Biss play Schubert’s three last sonatas. He performed them flawlessly, viscerally, emotionally. The last piece on the program was the Sonata in B-flat Major, Opus 960, which begins so melodically, with such depth and richness, that another world seemed to open with those notes and harmonic shifts.
We sat around the piano, about 200 of us, and at intermission the piano was flipped so that those who saw Biss’s hands in the first half of the program saw his face in the second half. I’m not sure which was more moving. Biss’s hands never stopped, even in “rest,” but his face was transporting.
I was lucky to watch it during the final piece, the Opus 960 Sonata. Biss then became a conduit for Schubert, lying on his deathbed, sending his last notes to the world. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so moved by hearing a piece of live music. It was my “moment musicaux.”
It was home for almost two years, and I loved it for the light that poured in the windows and the hill across the street. We were lingering at the bottom of the steep driveway when its owner drove up.
“Sorry we’re standing here, but we used to live in your house,” I said.
“You lived here?” he asked, amazed. When we said yes, he invited us inside to look around.
For the next 20 minutes we chatted with the current occupant of our long-ago home. We walked inside and up the stairs, saw the new patio and the old fireplace. He asked us questions: was there a wall here? a door there?
I couldn’t stop thinking of the young couple who rented the house, the baby born to them there (now a young mother herself) and all the wonderful people who lived nearby. So often I imagine the rooms and contours of our old house. To see the real thing was a strange and wondrous experience.
I took dozens of picture-postcard photos yesterday. The sun was finally shining and we were back in a place I loved so long ago. There are hiking trails now and we could walk the whole day, leaving the car parked for 24 blissful hours.
We found the Nashua River Rail Trail and made our way north then south. It felt good to stretch the legs and move through space. Next, we hiked to Barcroft Castle on Gibbet Hill, which burned in 1932, leaving only the pebble-stone walls.
I was looking for the backdrop of the scene in Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women” where Laurie and Jo break up, which was filmed a mile from my old house. I think I found it, looking west from the castle across the Nashoba Valley toward the mountains of New Hampshire. I share it with you at the top of this post — and just for good measure — below, too.
We arrived during rush hour, as a steady stream of cars headed north on Route 119. Time for only a quick walk before dinner. There’s a pizza place across the street. Could it be the same one we patronized years ago? We didn’t enter to find out.
Up the hill from the inn is the First Parish Church, scene of our friend Kip’s funeral. Standing room only for that kind and friendly soul. I miss him still.
We searched for the post office, and found it … now an antiques shop. But the large white houses remain, and Hollis Street still angles off to the east.
It seems like a lifetime since we lived here. And in so many ways it has been.
When I lived in Massachusetts years ago I thought I’d fallen into a fairytale. Here were small villages with big white houses on a hill. Here were narrow lanes and old barns. New England wasn’t like anywhere else I’d ever lived.
When we moved from Massachusetts to Virginia, we tried to replicate that experience, searching for a house in a small town outside Washington, D.C. It didn’t really exist. Virginia wasn’t settled by small farmers and tradespeople. It was carved into large plantations, and when those went away the settlement patterns were newer and more individualistic.
It’s fun to think about how people and history shape the places we visit. I’m doing it now, at least in an informal way, marveling at the twisting roads we took last night driving from New Hampshire back to Haverhill. And I’ll continue doing it today as we drive to Groton.
(A detail from Haverhill. Bird bath on a boulder.)
It was a rainy Saturday in Boston, perfect for inside activities. So we visited the library — not just any library but the Boston Public Library, the first free municipal public library in the country. We walked up the marble stairway, past the lions and into the reading room.
Here were scholars at work, green-shaded lamps and a vaulted ceiling. Here was a temple of knowledge. The library holds 23 million items, I learn from its website, including Mozart’s scores, Shakespeare’s first edition folios and John Adams’s personal library.
The Boston Public Library serves 4 million people a year and millions more online (one of them me). It was the first public library to lend books and the first to offer a children’s room and a branch library.
I took only this one photo of the reading room. Intruding any further would have been a desecration.
We’re off today for Boston, Massachusetts, where my niece will be married on Saturday. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in New England, though we lived there for two years. I’m readying myself for the distinctive difference of that part of the country.
When we first moved north I didn’t know what to expect, didn’t realize how unique each village would be, how some (Groton, where we lived) were market-type towns and others, like Lowell, were mill towns. After some lonesome weeks early on, I found a newcomer’s club and began to make friends. Our oldest daughter was born there, further endearing the place to me.
By the time we left I was hooked on the vibrant autumns, the apple orchards — and most of all the people. I miss them still.
The rains have stopped, which means not only a return of sun but also of shade. I saw some spectacular specimens on yesterday’s long walk on the Reston trails. In fact, some of the patterns made me stop in my tracks, pull out my phone and snap a shot.
What contrast, what texture! It reminded me of the shade during the eclipse, the tiny crescent-moon shapes into which it was carved.
No eclipse yesterday, of course, so the textures all came from leaf wag and leaf meal, from earth and pavement, from the filter and the canvas.
The views went on forever. The Blue Ridge that appears first as a smudge on the horizon driving west from D.C. became a green and glorious reality late Monday during a brief trip to Sperryville and environs.
The hike to the Stony Man viewpoint was uphill enough to get our hearts pumping but not so rigorous that we couldn’t talk along the way. We passed some through-hikers, serious folks with heavy packs. But we were there for the visiting and the views.
I often find myself in the park around this time of year, mountain laurel season. And there was some of that on Monday, too. But what will remain with me is sitting on warm rocks with friends, catching up, looking west and south: the light green of trees with leaves newer than those at sea level mixing with darker firs and pines. Beyond the trees the hills rose ever bluer and more distant, less distinct, until it was impossible to know whether I was looking at earth or sky.
