A short while ago I finished walking a circuit in the Amherst Village…11 times.  It was a great deal of fun and it was good exercise.  We are talking about Amherst, New Hampshire.

I started here:

 

That is the back of our vehicle.  This is where I started.

As I walked I, as is the custom, listened to my ipod.  Two ear buds strategically implanted into the ear canals to offer optimal listening of the tunes I have on a miniature juke box I can hold in my hand.  However, this time, I listened to 96.5 The Mill, a great radio station out of Manchester, for the first few laps I made on my course.

Step 2

 

The air on this New England day is crisp and warm.  Ask the natives around here and they will tell you anything over 80 degrees is hot.  Mind you, these are the same folks that looked at snow on their yards for the better part of five straight months this past winter.  For that, I will give them a break.

Step 3

 

 

When I walk I listen to my music.  I also think.  Today I thought about how excited I am to start a new job when I get back home.  I will make a new office space my own at North Harrison High School next Monday when someone hands me the key to a place I will call my own after some decorating at the discretion of my dear wife, Carrie.  Given my new office is about half the size of my old one, and with even less wall space…there are more windows…  it will be interesting to see how our decorative appointing of the space will go.

Step 4

 

One the other side of this store I take a right hand turn and come back the direction I just came from on the other side of a wooded and lawn space between the two directions.

Step 5

 

Then back down again.

Step 6

 

As I walked I thought about how I never thought I would ever get back to North Harrison again.  We have had a few rough spots.  A post I wrote here last September made mention of a few of those times.  In deference,  I took that post off of speaktherights.com.  It no longer applies or needs to be there.  I am thankful for the opportunity to work close to home and help out the community I live in.

Step 7

 

A school building that was built in 1818.

Step 8

 

Getting very close to a church that I am sure could tell some stories.

Step 9

 

This church, still serving its parishioners, was built in 1774.  Note the time.  I heard the clock strike 2.

Step 10

The Church

Step 11

 

Step 12

 

Around the corner is the Town Hall.  It was built in 1825.  Folks went in and out of it with every pass I made by it.

The folks in this village are in interesting lot.  Some of them are as kind and easy going as can be.  Most, though, don’t come off that way.  I guess they need to get to know you first.  That is hard for a stranger they don’t seem to want to give the time of day to in a New England minute.  Maybe that is what five months of snow will do to you.

Step 13

 

The Town Hall

Step 14

 

The wooded path directly in front of the Town Hall.

Step 15

 

Around the corner one last time.

 

Back to our silver car…the last one on the right.

I indulge in a few guilty pleasures on my ipod when it comes to the songs I have on there that I first listened to as a teenager in the 1980s.  Though unplanned, as an ipod shuffle lives up to its task, all the old mental images I have carried for thirty years just seemed to fade away as I listened to the song “Life in Northern Town”.  Before me was the mental-track I will see for the next thirty years when I hear this song.

Speaking the Northern Rights.

Danny Johnson