going home again

There's only one Henniker. That's the local assumption for this central New Hampshire college town. For more than 200 years the town, named after Englishman John Henniker, has survived alone in the world with its unique distinction. It is a town often times known for the fact that New England College is located there. The college is foot noted as being the rather brief college scene for Hollywood actress Geena Davis.

As a native born son of Henniker, I like to think of the town as being just plain old home. It is where I acquired a passion for snowmobiling.But the "then and now" of snowmobiling has changed like the old town itself. For the better, if the opinion of a wandering native son canbe counted.

The Henniker of 1997 is familiar, yet, much different. The village is more like a perception conjured up by a Norman Rockwell devotee. The sidewalks are generously brick. Handsome. Sturdy. Serving to instill a historic reference that the town history would argue never existed. The Main Street was dirt.The sidewalks of board, if not dirt. In the days of my youth the boards shared duty with concrete or asphalt. The bricks are more in keeping with the Henniker of today. A college and tourist town with white clapboarded town hall. A grade school that has expanded to encompass the high school of my youth, yet staying true to its late 1800s construction. Henniker has its traditions.

There's a quaint wooden bridge. Very traditional. Built in the old manner.But built in the 1960s. Henniker has its new traditions as well.

One new tradition is a snowmobile trail system that runs up to the "four corners" where you can select a path for the day. Over President's Day last winter, we all chose to head for Lake Sunapee, a two hour ride in a group. Little over an hour when returning with three sleigh riders.

The recently formed Henniker Trail Travelers, had made the Lake Sunapee snowmobile club's annual ride-in its quest for the day. There would be radar runs to raise cash contributions to fuel the needs of the sponsoring club.A torch light parade around the lake. Fireworks after dark, to be enjoyed from the parking lot where the local Lion's club sold hamburgers, hot dogs and coffee to reduce the very chilling effects of the wind.

Tom Duling of the New Hampshire Fish & Game Department's Snowmobile Safety Patrol was on hand to assist with snowmobile education. He would provide a free safety check of your sled. You could test your safety IQ. And if you needed remedial work, Tom would give you a safety booklet. Heeven had coloring books to hand out to the youngest sledders. It was all an effort promoted by the department to try and educate snowmobilers to the snowmobile regulations and to foster a greater awareness of safety. New Hampshire had registered seven snowmobile related deaths prior to our chat with Tom. There would be another recorded later that day, further northin a more heavily trafficked portion of the state's snowmobile trail system.

In this part of the state, local club members knew that traffic was lighter,and safer. Chip Johnson, one of our riding companions noted, "I'd rather ride here than go up north." Like me, Chip had ridden right out ofhis yard. With the system of interconnecting trails developed by clubs like the Henniker Trail Travelers, a rider could make an excursion as far as the Canadian border and over into Maine and Vermont.

Trail Traveler president, Ray Panetta, figured it would be a good ride and one that could be done with relative ease. We'd agree.

Thirty years ago my father was a Ski-Doo dealer and Ski-Doo yellow was a common sight in the fields and forests around town. Today Arctic Cat has become the sled of choice for most Trail Traveler riders. We had Thundercats and Pumas along on this ride as I was amazed how short today's snowmobiles made those long fields of my youth. Groomed and maintained trails run the length and width of Henniker. They snake along the Contoocook River, wind through the woods and meadows of my youth, and cross Amey Brook over wooden bridges.

But no bridge in the system is as unique as the one Ray Panetta built under Route 202/9 on the fringes of town. It keeps the trail alive and sledders as well. Angled into the abutment that holds the automotive bridge above it, this wooden structure is anchored with cables to native granite slabs that permit snowmobilers to ride under the busy highway and along side the unfrozen waters of the Contoocook. It's clever. It's innovative. It's very "Yankee."

There's a thriftiness to the trails. They are narrow and tight. There'san appropriateness not wasted on the returning son. Everything is concise.The groomer and drag can be spun around the trails and up steep inclines with a brevity of effort. And since most club meetings are held at the Intervale Pancake House, the trail winds its way there. The Mobil station sits just off the trail. Food, fuel. Necessities. Conveniently addressed. And scenery.

Scenery is Rockwellian. Kearsarge mountain beckons. Trail travelers respond. The hills with names of pain, misery and hardships given to them by the earliest settlers are friendlier by snowmobile. We stop next to a classic New Hampshire farmstead with a white house across the dirt road from thered barn. Our eyes capture a mental Kodak moment in this calendar quality scenery.

This is the land of Robert Frost. The poet. The speaker for tradition. For fences. And for something that doesn't like a wall. And for birches. And the tiny brook that asks you to come, too. This is New England. Livingand true. And covered in white. This is home.

Home is in the memory. My home was memories of riding snowmobiles in long ago pastures that for one weekend came alive again. Forgotten were the high school basketball games that were lost. The confusion that comes when you realize that you have to leave home and don't know what you want to be when you grow up. Henniker has always been home. It is a Henniker that most likely never really existed. A romanticized Henniker of my mind that grew in stature through my aging. And a real Henniker that has grown for the better. The snowmobiler's Henniker is better than ever. With the new generation of Henniker trail travelers, snowmobiling and Henniker are in very good hands. Very good hands, indeed.

PS - A special thank you to Bob and Randy Cichutti at Rochester(NH) Sports Center for the generous use of their Arctic Cat snowmobiles. AS