As a city boy who grew up in the Philadelphia area, New Hampshire means elbow room. With Mount Kearsarge in the background, the physical beauty of my town, Wilmot, is stunning. New Hampshire means a great place for dogs. For me, it is about hiking back roads, trails and mountains with my golden retriever, Blue. It also means hoping Blue won’t get porcupined.
New Hampshire means the darkness of a long winter but also the warmth of reading a book near my wood stove. It is the spring thaw also known as mud season where dirt roads turn to gravy and your car can literally sink in the road. We start hearing peepers and they are loud. Planting my tomato plants, the black flies get intense even before Memorial Day.
Living rural, it is hard not to love the long days of summer. As a morning person, I love the days lengthening in May. When the fall comes, I always hope there is no early frost to take out my garden. There are always the sly woodchucks too, hanging around.
Although it is little remembered or celebrated now, New Hampshire was very much part of a proud New England abolitionist tradition. Abolitionists started as a tiny despised minority and ended up persuading much of the nation of the evil of slavery. Before the civil war, New Hampshire had radical abolitionist leaders like Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, editor of an anti-slavery newspaper, Senator John P. Hale who opposed slavery’s expansion and Parker and Sarah Pillsbury who were both in the William Lloyd Garrison wing of the abolition movement. They were ahead of their time.
In 1835, abolitionists opened a racially and sexually integrated school, Noyes Academy, in Canaan. Many young Black men and women flocked to the school. It ended up being destroyed by a mob but the school had brought Black and white students together. Considering the racism that still defines America, I am proud that there was a strong anti-racist tradition in our state and that New Hampshire pioneered integration. That is the New Hampshire I am proud of.
I just drove down to Philadelphia and I realized another reason I like New Hampshire: lack of traffic jams. After hours on the Garden State Parkway, I am happy to report we have no equivalent even on busiest days. If there is a traffic slow down it might be caused by a flock of wild turkeys stubbornly lolling in the road.
Back in the 1980s I moved to New Hampshire to start a legal career. For me, New Hampshire means New Hampshire Legal Assistance. Talk about an underapppreciated, devalued asset. New Hampshire Legal Assistance has helped thousands of the neediest and most vulnerable people in our state for over 50 years. Its contribution to the well-being of people in the state has been immense and life-changing. New Hampshire Legal Assistance has maintained a tradition of excellence that continues to this day.
There is, of course, a dark side to New Hampshire but for today, the good stuff deserves highlighting.
Jonathan P. Baird lives in Wilmot.