The pure wilderness of NH – Concord Monitor

Early last spring, I glanced out the sliding glass doors of my kitchen and saw a coyote standing by our wood pile. It stood there for a few moments and then sauntered off. A few months later, I was returning from my morning dog walk and saw a black bear cross the road from our property and head into the woods on the other side of the street. Later that year, I was on another dog walk and a bald eagle coasted through the trees near the center of town and landed in the branches of a white pine not far from me.

These and other encounters with bobcats and otters and beavers and deer are what New Hampshire means to me. New Hampshire is the promise that parts of the world are still wild.

It is not just these encounters with wildlife that make living here special. It is also the landscape itself and the simple day-to-day moments that it provides. It is watching the sunlight ripple through the leaves in the summer breeze. It is watching the snow fall and build up in the hemlocks and then come showering down in waves in the wind. It is watching the leaves turn and fall to the ground in autumn. It is walking in our forest and seeing the huge white pines as well as the trillium and the lady slippers.

New Hampshire is the trance-inducing exercise of splitting firewood for the coming winter as well as the trance-inducing pleasure of sitting by the wood stove in the winter months. It is hiking above tree line with its harsh conditions and distant views. It is biking and walking and skiing on trails through forests and alongside rivers and ponds. It is taking the dogs for the morning jog before work when it is 20 below zero.

When I was a teenager my parents and my favorite aunt and uncle would rent the AMC Wonalancet cabin for a week in August. I remember walking along the little road at night and being able to see the swirl of the Milky Way in an otherwise dark sky undiminished by ambient light.

Living with wildlife and amid forests and rivers and in occasionally fierce weather are treasures that can give us a sense of being part of a world that is bigger than ourselves. Having skies dark enough to be able to see our place in the galaxy does the same. These are gifts that New Hampshire provides for us.

There are many philosophical arguments for and against the idea of the existence of God. My own view on this is what I call the “Greeley Ponds argument for the existence of God.” It is essentially this: How can you see the ponds with the steep forested ridges rising above them and not believe in God?

My wife and I are about to donate our house and our little forest to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. We will be providing support to the Forest Society and ensure that our land will remain as forest. In return we will have a life interest in the property, meaning that as long as we maintain the house and pay the taxes and insurance, we can live out our lives here. We won’t own it anymore, but we can still live there.

I bring this up because, in a sense, this is the condition that all of us are in. All any of us really have here is a life interest. We don’t really own anything on this Earth. Our job is simply to both enjoy and to care for our world while we are here.…Read more by Contributing Writer