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A New Hampshire Love Song

She has decided that she is in love with the place she now calls home. Not the actual dwelling, not the structure, four-walls-and-a-roof-square-footage-and-attached-garage. No, the home is fine, but she means the whole she-bang: home, yard, neighborhood, town, county, state, New England, east coast.

She remembers the day the moving truck arrived, so very humid, and the overgrown bushes lining the front walk that fwapped you in the legs each time you passed by carrying something.

She remembers looking out into the expanse of forest in the back, and feeling slightly...nervous. All those trees.

She remembers hating it here. Ticks, and leaking toilets, and driving half an hour to get anywhere. Why isn't there a place to buy shoelaces here? You mean there's no garbage pick-up?

So very different from what she was used to.

But, now...

There's freedom here. There's beauty. There's space. There's safety. There's peace. There are streams and forests and paths and islands and beaches and sunshine and moss.

Live free or die. That's me.

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