Look to the Mountain

To make a correction right away, Mount Chocorua is not called Conway Mountain in the book - that was my tired eyes misreading.  It is called Coruway Mountain. Perhaps the names were changed to protect the anonymity of the ghostly denizens of the New Hampshire ranges.

I did start reading the book last night and so far, absolutely nothing is familiar. The page I read as a very young child of course I wouldn't expect to recall, but I read the whole book one summer in my teenage years. One of the joys of being in New Hampshire in the summer was the luxury of being bored, and being bored always led to adventures, including a hike up Mount Chocorua with an uncle and some cousins. Debby and I took a solo hike once, when we were of driving age, on Moat Mountain. We set some sort of record of beating the estimated climbing time of maybe an hour and a half, and in fact climbed it up and down in six hours. That was only one of the times we came home late, to the wrath of our grandmother. We couldn't understand parental worry at that age - we were invincible, and we went to bed stifling our giggles. 

Look to the Mountain was published in 1942, when I was two years old, and is the copy I am reading was reprinted in 1994. The earlier printings are surely still sitting on the shelves in summer houses, waiting for a bored teenager to pick them up. And to maybe pick them up again, 55 years later.