New Hampshire

Although a part of my teenage rebellion was to get away from the only state I had only known, New Hampshire is my home. In fact, I’ve never lived anywhere else. I was determined in leaving the state upon applying for colleges a few years ago. I was accepted into 8 schools, only one of which was in New Hampshire. And despite that, which college did my parents think I should go to? The only one in New Hampshire.

So I did, for a year.

And I don’t regret it, but I think I’ve found my place here, among the Bostonians. Being in the city allowed me to explore a different part of myself, one that I probably wouldn’t have explored otherwise. Going to art school allowed me to meet new people, make new friends, and everything else that comes along with college experience – but what made it most bittersweet was the fact that I was away from the place that had shaped me for some many years. This town I now only resented, the town clogged with brown-nosers and snobs, the exact image of New England suburbia. Being in the city was the perfect distance away. I could visit occasionally, and could bring home dirty laundry without taking a plane. But sometimes disaster struck and all I could do was imagine myself being at home. An overwhelming load of work, a fight with the boyfriend, a sickness – all made me wish that I was at home, the smell of the pine trees overwhelming my senses.



On my latest trip home, I took some shots in hopes that looking at them would give me a sense of serenity and peace that I can only experience when I’m home temporarily. In a short walk from my house (wicked short, now that I can relate it to walking in Boston) there’s a bike path the juts into the woods off of the main road. I've known it since I was little, and the neighbor boys often dragged me to it to “hunt” for frogs and toads. Between too giant bodies of water, it’s confusing how it still exists after all these years, what from all the recent floods the region has experienced.



But it does, and it’s beautiful, and it makes me forget the politics of my small town in the suburbs. It makes me forget the drama that I lived in for the past nineteen years of my life. It reminds me of my family is simpler times, it reminds me of the little neighbor boys. It reminds me of past experiences that nobody else is attached to except for me – when my old friends Meaghan, Allison, and I ran down the path only to almost run into a giant pheasant standing in the middle. Or when the boyfriend Tyler and I ventured down, thinking we were brave adventurers, only to see a large black snake and realize we’re both cowards.



Photography will never do it justice. You cannot get a smell through a photograph. You cannot feel the sensation of the branches scratching your skin as you walk through. But whether it’s there for a hundred more years, or there just until next Thursday, it’s still a place that needs documentation – if only for my sake.