After my consultations I split my home-leave* up into some time with my family in New England, and then my daughter in New Mexico.
I went up to Vermont and New Hampshire and spent a week visiting my mother, brothers and sister. While the foliage was just changing colors, I arrived just a few weeks before peak color, something I miss a lot from my childhood as I have only been home once since 1980 during peak color change. New England is spectacular in the fall – and is my favorite time to be there. If you think the following photos show a lot of color, this is nothing compared to what New Hampshire and Vermont is like at peak foliage!
New Hampshire on Fire!
This is the old mill dam is located in my home town of Claremont, NH, and is a place I used to play around as a child. Why I never drowned I’ll never know! I would be terrified if my 10 year old child was using this area as play ground, but I guess things were different back in the early ’70s. Most likely my mother just never knew! Anyways, this was an old woolen mill and was built in the 1850s. By the early 1900′s it was producing the finest cotton “Monadnock” style linen in the world; the White House was a customer as well as the Waldorf (Astoria) hotel in NYC, while in 1918 the mill produced army bandages and blankets for our troops during WWI. When I was a child it was a cotton label factory and was an exciting and adventurous place to play for a kid, so I stopped by just to relive some distant memories. It is now a classy (for Claremont) restaurant and hotel.
New England Mills
While home, I was able to relax and get back into the normal routines again and go out in public without being nervous. In Pakistan every time I drove past a parked vehicle I would turn my face away to avoid getting glass shards in my eyes from the impending explosion. I watched every person on bridges to see if they were carrying an RPG. It’s nice to be back home!
After 2 weeks in Vermont, I fly out to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
