Half layperson half scholarly reading, Nature and Renewal: Wild River Valley & Beyond by Dr. Dean Bennett is a fairly local book. We frequently visit Evans Notch. I bookmarked a few whole pages by scanning them. The book was borrowed through interlibrary loan. In some such margins before I accidentally began writing and had to replace it but got to keep the one borrowed. I’ve printed the scanned pages of Dean Bennett’s book and will be able to highlight these. Frixion is recommended by Joel J. Miller on his Miller Book Review Substack, an entry entitled Let Us Now Praise Humble Bookmarks. (Where a bit of this post initially appeared as a comment.) He wrote, “you can make all your marginalia vanish with the application of a little heat. When I do feel the need to erase, I simply warm a spatula on my gas stove and touch the blade’s conductive surface the page. Voila! It never happened.”
There were mill villages, over 120 years ago now scarcely remembered, whose in habitants, there for the purpose, clear-cut nearly half a 100,000 of mountainous acres, building railroads, creating thousands of acres of slash. In reading my hastily scanned and printed pages I’m not finding the true amount. It all caught fire and blew-up, burned like an inferno for days, maybe weeks, on end. Followed by continual erosion and flooding from tributary streams. Today it is all tall woodlands with a lonely mountain pass going miles through The Notch. You’d never know it happened, never know of the village. Remnants of irregularly constructed rail lines full of brokenness and boulders, scarcely discoverable suggest this history. And old newspapers: the author used old newspapers as source material.
My response to this reading:
Wild River Valley & Beyond revealed many mysteries inside a wooded rivered notch, both deep and high, among a little known surrounding range of mountains, The Carters, with which we gradually became familiar while living in the greater Mahoosuc Mountains… in the borderlands between New Hampshire and Maine. We are delighted to understand more and more of individual nooks and crannies, trails and hikes, an astonishing 300 year old Hemlock, and other surviving and naturally reclaimed old Grants and woodlands’ townships. Gradually reclaimed after great devastations more than 100 years ago.
How it moved me, how I reckoned with this new understanding, recognized the voice of my old and articulate undergraduate instructor, answering my questions, Setting my mind and imagination to work, as before, when I began my way midlife college and living explorations of the western mountains of Maine.
And here is where my original comment (since edited) on Mr. Miller’s Substack virtually ends. Commenting there was a great help getting me started here because I needed a certain momentum to help with my thoughts and possible review of Dr. Bennett’s book. It did not occur to me until just a few minutes ago, a few days after that initial Substack commenting, that this would be a great help to me. Now I think I can go ahead. Hopefully there will be another Wild River post with images to follow.
coldhighmountainwind 