Tomorrow morning I’m heading to New Hampshire for a few days at a lakeside cabin with five of my friends from high school. Four years ago, before we all went away to college, we spent a weekend at this cabin talking about our hopes and fears for the future, reading aloud from terrible romance novels, and swimming in the lake. Now that we’ve graduated from college, we’re returning to the cabin to do it all over again.
I was born and raised in Rhode Island (which is the smallest state in the US, and which I will surely talk more about later) and I’ve spent the last four years at college just outside of Boston, so I fully identify with New England. In case you’re unaware, New England is made up of six states–Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine–and I traverse them regularly. With family and friends in each of these states, travel becomes easy and I have a tour guide everywhere I go.
Being from New England has given me a skewed perception of what is near and what is far and what constitutes travel. Crossing state lines is commonplace in New England, and taking weekend trips to the ocean or the mountains is easy. My understanding is that sometimes the rest of the US forgets about us up here in the corner of the country, and I understand, I really do. Knowing the difference between Vermont and New Hampshire is probably not terribly relevant to people living in Wyoming, let alone people living outside of the US.
However, I implore you to come visit, and learn about each distinct state, because it’s beautiful up here.
And I’d be happy to show you around.
