This unique study of cultural introspection unfolds in a series of meditative essays about time and change in New England that reveal how profoundly cultural memory affects our lives. In March we are all alone up here in northern New England. It is a dreary time of thaws and freezes.
Winter recedes with the slowness of an ice age, leaving the land flattened and exhausted looking.
South of us, flowers bloom, and children sit in classrooms talking of poetry. But up here March is the cruelest month, Mud Season, a purgatory between winter and spring. All those odd little towns. It s like walking into family discussions. Part of me can t help but see town meetings as a ritual family gathering, each town a republic of families.