Introduction

Like I said, I'm a simple man. A man who doesn't want to hurt anyone. A man who expects to be accepted for who he is, for what he is.

I grew up in a small town nestled in between the "lakes region" and "White Mountain National Forest" in New Hampshire. There was a clean river, called the Pemi, that you could swim in (and see clearly to the bottom, though of course at the time I didn't know how rare that was) and tube or canoe down. Sometimes the river is only a couple of feet deep at the green bridge that seperates my town from Ashland. But sometimes the river floods; I remember a couple of times where people brought out fishing boats just to traverse the road on the Ashland side past that bridge. The water had come and flooded all the way to the college field-house.

Winters in Plymouth were cold, too. Even my father agrees with me that it used to snow "more", and that every year since I was a kid it seems like we're getting less and less. Summers are hot, humid affairs for the most part. Not like down in VA or NC, but it's bad enough. I much prefer the summers in Colorado or Montana. But you can't beat the autumn in New Hampshire. Especially where I'm from. I don't really consider the southern part of NH to be "in NH", if you understand my meaning. Not enough mountains, too many people. And in autumn, there's nothing like seeing the mountains afire with red and orange. People come to New Hampshire in droves just to "see the foliage". Again, another thing I didn't appreciate as much as I should have until I'd left.

When I was a kid, I knew lots of people who wanted to leave Plymouth, to go to a city and get out of that small, nowhere town. To find a nitelife and "culture". I never wanted to leave. I loved my mountains, the high places and rock I had such an affinity for. I loved walking in the woods, or swimming in the river.

But leave I did. If I recall correctly (which, if you knew me, would be a dubious statement at best), I was working bumping chairs at Loon Mountain, living with my parents, home from flunking out of college in Montana. Too much dope and frisbee, not enough understanding of what was going on. Everybody expected me to go to college somewhere. And I wanted mountains, and an adventure away from New Hamsphire. The times I'd been out of New England were few and far between, and I wanted to see the rest of the country, to see what was out there. But I wasn't ready. I lost sight of why I was there - scratch that: I never knew why I was there. I just went because it was expected of me. I eventually forgot my schedule, stopped going to most classes alltogether. That whole time is like a fog to me. I can remember a few things clearly. My friends, the mountain so close (within 200 yards of my dorm), the Blackfoot running through Missoula (again, close enough to walk to and hang out at). The eatery near campus, the wide streets there and how polite people were driving, going to the point of consistantly stopping for you while they were driving down a road and you were standing on the sidewalk by a crossing line. My friend Pete streaking through campus. The first hit I had of marijuanna. Crouching on a rock somewhere upstream of the bridge that lead to Pizza Hut over the Blackfoot river, thinking to myself: "It's true. People don't come here to learn anything. They don't come here to increase their knowledge. They come here to get a piece of paper that qualifies them for certain jobs."

I remember long days of playing Ultimate Frisbee with my friends, my feet stained green from playing on the Oval without shoes, my heels both cracked open in the back. I remmeber the first time I got drunk and puked, playing football at night. I remember my friend Tyler wanting to be photographed humping the grizzly bear that was the school mascot, a large life-size statue on campus grounds. I remember sitting on said statue and speaking to a short blonde girl who was a friend standing below.

I have lots of memories. I think they're all there, buried by time and my adult ADD (which still remains officially undiagnosed and untreated). I'm not hyperactive, but I have trouble remembering things. I have trouble staying focused, and my mind wanders a lot. I'll forget what I was going to say in the middle of a sentance. I'll forget words, mostly nouns, and then go on to describe what the word actually means. "You know, the truck you bring the icecream ... Icecream truck!" I am easily interuppted and distracted. I often walk into a room and think "What am I doing here again?", unable to remember and just walking off, hoping it will come to me. It does, as often as not.

But enough of my recollections; that's not what I'm here to talk about. I did leave New Hampshire, but not for Montana. Montana was a vacation, my home was always still New Hampshire. And even when left the Air Force, coming home with my fiance, I came back to New Hamsphire. But by then, it was less home than before. I'd been gone too long. When I really left New Hampshire, I'd come home from Missoula, MT. My car broke down, and I had to evaluate my options. I decided what I needed was a job where I didn't need a car, and that would cut down on my living expenses. So I got the bright idea of joining the military. And join I did, to the great surprise of everyone that knew me. I was not the "kind" of person who would join the military. Too much of a rebel, too much of a free man. But also too much of a pragmatist. When the time came, I left for Basic Training.