We started our journeys from two different towns in New Hampshire.  Ina lived in Hudson and grew up with a Dad and a Brother that hunted and fished all her life.  There was always pheasants, and trout, and deer, and ducks as well as the Lithuanian fare that was a part of her heritage.  The talk of deer camps and fishing trips and always there were Springer Spaniels.

I grew up on a 40 acre farm where we had dairy cows, pigs, chickens, rabbits, goats and always at least 20 acres under cultivation.  We grew Iowa Chief corn, Blue Hubbard squash, butternut squash, potatoes, cabbage, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, raspberries and just about anything else that was edible.  We had a small orchard with apples, pears, peaches and plums.

We heated with wood, and chainsaws and splitting mauls were something that was a way of life back then.  There were no hydraulic log splitters in those days.  A good part of the late summer and early fall were spent splitting the Winter's supply of wood.

I ran a trap line for muskrats and beaver as a kid, and there was always squirrels, pheasants, grouse, ducks, raccoons, and  rabbits added to the larder with an old Stevens side by side 20 gauge.  Life was good!

Our first home together was an apartment in Killeen Texas.  I had just completed a tour in Viet Nam with the US Army and we had two more year to serve at Fort Hood. 

Texas was much different than New England.  Instead of great expanses of timber, the landscape was more open.  Rather than oak trees there were pecan trees.  The weather was much warmer than New Hampshire weather, especially in the winter.


The people there were friendly, and we often joked with one another about the Northern and Southern accents that were each a part of our cultures.  Texas abounded with deer.  It was difficult not to see deer as they were literally everywhere.  Quail hunting was superb, as was the dove hunting.  Fishing for Largemouth bass was a dream come true as most of the lakes were laden with them.

It was a 36 hours drive back to Hudson NH, non stop when we left Texas.  We missed New England and the place we had been away from for so long.

We found an apartment in Litchfield, an affordable place for a machinist and working wife.  We lived here for a couple of years and it was not the best for a marriage.  I worked 2nd shift and Ina worked days.  We'd see each other for a half hour before I was off until midnight.  We did have the week ends and managed to make the most of the time together.

The Coug was younger then.  He'd get a few hours sleep and head out early in the morning for some trout fishing on the Nissitisit River.  There were always plenty of fat trout in those days.  A short trip down the current in a float tube kept us in fish.  We hunted ducks and pheasants and squirrels and just about anything edible.  Berry picking was always a treat when the season was in.
 
Well it didn't take long for the American dream to take root.  It was time for us to buy our first home together.  We both had advanced in our jobs, I had become a Programmer and Ina had taken over a food service business.  On the way up!

After an extensive search we found a home in Litchfield, just a few miles down the road from where we had lived in the apartment.  It was a one level ranch on an acre of land, and it was ours!  There was always a half acre planted with everything from corn to kale.  We hunted, we fished, we camped.  Life was good.

We both kept gaining status in our jobs, and with that came more money.  The more money we made, the more money we spent.

In time we rebuilt the entire house.  Changed the floor in the kitchen, added this that and the other thing.  New appliances, finished the basement, added a two car garage.  Then of course the order of the day was to fill up the garage with toys.  We had a Corvette, a 5 series BMW, a 560 Mercedes convertible, and a 26 foot fly bridge cruiser moored in Paugus Bay,  a Ranger bass boat, and a 32 foot 5th wheel to camp in style.  And we traveled.  To Acapulco, to Hawaii, to the Bahamas and other exotic places.
I buried Ina in gold and diamonds.  My gun cabinets were full of high grade guns and I traveled here and there hunting game that was not indigenous to NH.  Never for trophies, always for food, but still.

And while all this was going on, the world was changing.  I had reached a level of competence in my field that I no longer had peers.  Fortune 500 companies were seeking my council in manufacturing practices, long before there was Kaizen and Kanban.  I had no loyalties to anyone.  If company B offered me $10k a year more I was gone.  Simply a game of monetary gains, I went to the highest bidder.  Little did I know that this was all about to change.

And we became two of the most miserable people on earth!  One Saturday morning we sat at the breakfast table drinking coffee and talking.  At the same time we had come full circle and found that we had become what we both swore we would never become.  It was no longer fun.  It wasn't a matter of keeping up with the Jones, we were the Jones!  We had become so distant from what we believed in, who we really were.

Shortly after, I lost a high paying job.  The economy went bad, and jobs became quite scarce.  We ended up loosing it all.  Looking back on it, it was a blessing.  We found a rental split entry in Temple NH and spent a couple of years there.  Those were some good times.  Temple was sparse on population back then.  If I wanted to fire a couple of sighters with the deer rifle I simply opened the slider to the deck and lit them off.  The pond on the property was laden with bass, and the ridges were thick with fisher cats.  We started getting back to where we had come from.

We loved the place in Temple, but we longed for our own place once again.  We'd recovered enough to start looking and found a trailer in New Ipswich, just down the road.  And it had 14 acres of land!

It was an older trailer, in the Winter the windows had ice on the inside in the places the wood stove did not reach.  The water was rich with minerals which ate through well pumps and hot water heaters every couple of years.  But it was home, and it was ours.

I built a huge wood shed, big enough to hold a Winter's supply of wood where it stayed dry and in easy reach of the trailer.  The barn got rebuilt and re roofed to hold the 10 Springer Spaniels we had.  A chicken coop was built and we had fresh eggs once again.

We bought a 12 foot aluminum V hull boat and put a  small outboard on it.  Oh did we ever catch fish with that boat.

Between the forays on Blueberry Mountain, the raspberry patches, a small garden, the hunting and fishing, we ate well and enjoyed life once again.  We were living within our means and gaining ground on where we would finally move.

Ina's Dad had passed and her Mother was alone in a condo in Nashua.  That lasted until I caught her making meals of Twinkies.  We moved her into the trailer with us.  It got crowded with three people and two hunting dogs in the trailer and so we broke ground and put up a prefab house.

We sold it a couple of years later when Ina's Mother passed and had enough equity to buy the cabin here in Hill with 21 acres of land.  We'd hunted, fished, and camped up here over the years and it was a dream come true to finally have our own log home.

During all this time we had gotten older, and somewhat wiser.  When we first got here the land was void of wildlife.  Not so much as a bluejay.  The land had been timbered in the lower areas and it took a few years for the second growth to come in.  Once it did we started to see deer, and for a few years we had fawns right under the windows!  Then our Brothers the Bear found us.  This land is ours, and theirs.

Somehow, word got around that this was sacred ground.  A place for all things wild to visit and live.   We have a pack of coyotes, red and gray foxes, raccoons, a wolf, a puma, skunks, turkeys, ducks, geese, fisher cats, and song birds that by the book should not be here.  The brook running through the property is laden with brook trout, and the beavers have once again built a dam and set up residence.



Our journey has been long and hard, but at last we are home.  We have found a peace that many people will not understand.  It starts with a dream, and it is won by hardship and toil and mistakes along the way.  It is within reach, always believe.  And one day, you too will find where you should have been all along.

It's not about material things, it's about the little things.  It is about Mother Earth and Father Sky, and it's about all who dwell there.  The Native Americans who once ruled this land we call America knew of this.  They lived in harmony with the earth long before there was "going green".

Life is a circle.  We come into this world helpless, we live our lives in what is considered modern civilization at a rate that would make most folks dizzy.  And for those that live to see old age, they once again will become dependant on someone else for survival.

It's time to slow down, time to focus on what really matters.  If you are here you are searching for something.  It is our sincere wish that we may help you to find it.

Enjoy the site, enjoy life, and always, look to the Great Spirit for wisdom.

Coug2wolfs & Ina