New England Gothic
Apple orchards that spring up over night. Nobody knows where they came from but they’ve always been there and the old man at the farm stand knows your name and your mother’s name and your grandmother’s name and your great-grandmother’s name and when he smiles his teeth are just a little too sharp. (You ask him for directions. “Well,” the old man says, “you can’t get there from here.” You can’t get anywhere from here. The dirt road keeps winding but you could have sworn you passed that tree before.) The Old Man in the Mountain who gazed across the valleys, a silent guardian, then one morning he went away and no one knows where he’s gone and nobody’s quite sure what will happen, now, without the protection of his watchful eye. Mt Monadnock is the most climbed mountain in the world, they say. 125,000 people climb it every year, they say. They never say how many of those people make it back down again. Some of the coldest temperatures in the world have been
