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.)