The senses are especially attuned when you travel to a new place. Minor differences, like No U-Turn signs on highway onramps, spring to life as glaring and intriguing eccentricities. The eye flits across the landscape, soaking in the splendor of the unknown, while the car radio scans the frequency for local color.
Growing up in Southern California, snow was little more than the white chalk that dusted the mountaintops. But here it was a thick coat blanketing everything. Trees drooped under the weight. The deep white reflected my headlights, making the road that much more navigable. And jersey barriers of snow lined that road: 3-foot high ridges of mud and snow on the roadside keeping you on the right path.
Coupled with the cold, the snow seemed a perfect aid for contemplation. Something in the beauty of the landscape elicited a Pavlovian urge to think before speaking, to take a step back – probably indoors – for further thought. The stillness of a frozen pond passed at 70 miles per hour centers you as you speed away, the image lingering on your lids hours later.
This was reflected in the New Hampshireans we first encountered. The car rental clerk, a fellow former Californian, was excited to share tips on how to see the candidates. The innkeeper – a seemingly anachronistic term – didn’t hesitate to offer his justification for supporting Sen. Joe Biden once we told him why we were here. Moreover, candidate signs sprung like weeds along the roadside and in front lawns and windows. Often, street corners were little more than an arena for competing signs: Romney’s eagle blocked by McCain’s simple star-based sign or Hillary’s mini-flag eclipsed by Obama’s rising sun.
Riding on this wave of dispassionate energy, we were dismayed when we went to the Portsmouth Gas & Light Co, a restaurant in Portsmouth’s charming waterfront downtown. With results beginning to pour in from the other frozen white landscape picking a president, the restaurant was surprisingly empty. The television was playing a football game, and the three or four patrons did no seem like the political apparatchiks I’d expected. In fact, the atmosphere was exactly like one you’d expect to find in any small restaurant in a town of 20,000 people on a night with a wind chill pushing double digit negatives.
But that wasn’t the New Hampshire the state’s politicians have heralded the past few months. Maybe they are that willfully indifferent to Iowans’ preferences; confident that the Midwestern farmers’ decisions have little bearing on their values and priorities. Maybe people were gearing up for the impending onslaught of the next 4 days, when candidates would be roaming the countryside like wolves, salivating for undecided voters. Maybe it was just plain too cold.
Either way, there were no gushes of emotion or sighs of desperation as Obama and Huckabee ran away with Iowa. Our bellies warm with chowder, we wound through the historic downtown district in search of more activity until, daunted by the frozen air and lack of electoral excitement, we headed back to the room.
