Kate Harrington

COVID made my world (and all of ours) smaller in several significant ways. Normally, my family spends a month in France every summer visiting family. We all look forward to that time each year when we reconnect with loved ones, visit beautiful places, and get a physical and mental break from our (hectic) life in NH. Not being able to go visit family has been really hard (as it has for many people) and as someone with a strong inner wanderlust, I have felt at times that I would go crazy stuck at home, not being able to travel anywhere. One saving grace for me this summer was getting out to do many new hikes that I had never done before, including a handful of 4000-footers. While I’m not usually goal-oriented when it comes to my downtime, making my way through a list of mountains got me out into corners of the state that I would not have explored otherwise. It has made me grateful to live in a place where there is easy access to nature and many beautiful places to discover.