places, bare rock.
Collecting Neighborhoods
Today I ride with Allen to the Papermakers in New Hampshire, where he’ll spend the day installing cable tray. I drop him off at A gate before 7:00 a.m., then cross over the river to the east side of Tansy Town to do laundry and have a spot of breakfast. I plan on driving down to the Presidential Range for study and a hike afterward.
The atmosphere is overcast mingled with smog; it’s going to be muggy. On the radio Altitude Lou is predicting locally heavy, fast-paced thundershowers. Rains are to be heavy where they hit. I pray one will go drop a load on our rented house, thirty plus miles away in Western Maine, so I can stop doing the laundry out. We are sharing our dug well water with four ancient, tall, white pines and finding ourselves unable to compete . . . for lack of rain this summer.
Depot Laundromat and Restaurant are east of the smirchy river. The bulk of town lies between the river, with the paper company on its flank, and the great pluton in the west end of town. From the steps of the laundromat, with arms full of dirty clothes, I look out at the great double-domed pluton through a stinky cloud of water and gas. Its craggy walls are streaked with various shades of rock. The first time I saw it there, monumental and strong, I thought: huh? Instantly nudged awake.
The door of the laundry is locked. I take the family’s clothes back to the car and settle down to study until it opens.
The striking thing about Tansy Town, which newcomers can’t help but notice, is that massive sheared granite pluton over there: as though it rises right up out of the little city, looming over everything, an exposed batholith, perhaps smaller—technically speaking a stock. Mighty, of geological ages, a fir-bound rock, the pluton is a result of the collision of continents. Immanent heat and pressure occur when one tectonic plate is subducted beneath another. This small mountain was once a monstrous bubble of expanding molten rock, rising through subducting crust. The ancient overlay of sedimentary rock—at one time higher than the present-day Rockies—has since eroded away, leaving this rocky (and now tree-fringed) pluton.
I have read (history) that people coming from Maine began building a town beside it. Tansy Town curves around the base of this mountain, perhaps edging a semicircle of houses, and neighborhoods, around it. I should drive to town limits on either side to see if this is so. Just what is the geographic relation of town to pluton? I have an inkling there are other relations besides.
Like any paper town in a pretty river valley, Tansy Town can be very dirty in its air. On certain days, when the atmosphere is wrong, people with lung disorders are advised to stay indoors. In Oxford County, Maine, downstream on the Androscoggin, and in picturesque Mountain Valley where paper is also made, a rare type of leukemia has emerged. Twenty-one cases of aplastic anemia in two years’ time. These two towns, on either side of the border, would both be brick-and-rock-and-tree pretty if it weren’t for paper. But then some might argue that there would be no Tansy Town and Mountain Valley if it weren’t for paper.
From a front row seat here at the laundromat, on an overcast day with paper mill stacks cranking, Tansy Town’s first impression repulses. The great pluton, with all its significant speech about the ages and continents and personal histories, could just about go unnoticed.
I had been spending laundry mornings a bit northward, parked for several hours beside the clean upriver Androscoggin. Wayside this spacious place was called, well below the road; there I studied nineteenth century apple farming. Afternoons I walked around Tansy Town, getting exercise, seeing the neighborhoods.
I collect neighborhoods. There’s something about driving into a strange new town in an area remote from my experience; to walk around and see humans gathered, living their lives in specially built and beautified boxes. Two days ago I walked around Tansy Town, seeking its views from the terraced hill, Cates Hill, on the north side. It was a good neighborhood to add to the collection: the houses were very neat, flowered and clean. People, at three different places, busy painting trim. Some people might call this optimism in the face of such an atmosphere as frequently enfolds this town. But I call it caring.
I checked out wild flowers along the way. Residents seem to prefer them to more showy cultivated varieties. I call it Tansy Town because of its golden abundance of this tall wildflower. I see it everywhere, with its alternate and finely divided dark leaves, its gold disc of minute and compact flowers. Like a petal-less daisy, only smaller. It fills lots and edges roadsides, it roots in the cracks of curbs.
I wash clothes, eat a breakfast sandwich at the Depot, load the car, and, leaving Tansy Town, its pluton and smirchy air behind, drive south toward the big mountains. My plan is to drive to the base of Mount Washington near the Auto Road and work on my apple study in the car. I’ll be in a strong beautiful setting, able to glance up at gigantic and surrounding peaks. Then I’ll take a hike.
Meanwhile, back at the mill, Allen is working with an electrician’s helper; putting up cable tray from scaffolding above the blend chest. A blend chest is a room-sized container, about 15x20x15 ft., full of the sloppy mixture of which paper is made. Dim falls of cold water are falling into the pit beside them, and there is darkness below. They are tied off with safety belts and harnesses. Working.
After writing about old apple varieties, I look for a likely trail at the Carter Dome trailhead. The parking lot is stuffed with cars; trails here will be jammed. I get out, sling my lunch bag containing remnants of lunch and iced coffee over my shoulder. Glad for a chance to shake off the kinks from a sedentary morning’s work in the car, I approach the trail-board. Before me are trail maps and safety tips for climbing. The trail I choose follows a good-sized stream roaring down among white boulders . . . Climb a few hundred yards upward . . . but, oddly, desire for the path seems left behind at the trailhead.
Then thunder.
One of Lou’s storms is on its way. A picture from the trail-board flashes in memory. A lightning bolt striking the mountainside. I hesitate but then go on. Above the rush of stream and wind I hear a swishing sound just by my ear, the left ear. I stop. Swishing stops. Spooky. Moving on, my attention now riveted on it, the sound seems louder than those of nature. It rattles with every step, as though a ghost walking beside me.
Ba-boom-boom-boom!! Thunder bellows in the hollows and off the peaks of these great surrounding flanks. I turn, scamper like a mouse back down-trail toward the Subaru. Rattle rattle rattle. I know who the spook is. I carry my own spookiness with me: ice cubes in a cup in a lunch bag on my back.
I am sitting in the car under the popular Presidentials, waiting for this storm to pass. When the pouring and booming cease I will start up and head back for Tansy Town, wipers clicking. Have decided to “hike” there instead. Stench and all, it’s where I want to be. But I don’t yet understand why.
I park the car outside A gate of the mill where Allen is working, walk up the lane to the highway. This part of town slopes up from the river toward the pluton that is hidden from view by the house-cluttered slope. I can collect a new neighborhood, explore town a bit more.
The sun comes out, shining on mill-town houses. Cars zoom by as I look across and down the highway. There is a likely street climbing the hill away from the road . . . Find a break in traffic and scurry across. The street rises steeply; but everything here is clear and sparkling with rain, the green lawns, and the houses on either side. Doggedly I climb, look out across the river at a low mountain opposite. The air between is dirty, pressing on my breath. I feel it in my chest. The green of that hill appears dull, and filmed by low level ozone. The street turns a corner and I find myself going toward what seems a deadend. The backs of houses are on one side, trees and brush on the other. I follow to the where a path cuts through trees. A sign is posted; am about to turn, not liking to trespass.
But,
