It is my honor to be part of Elizabeth (Liz) Gauffreau’s blog tour for her latest poetry collection, Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right. Liz is a wonderful poet, storyteller, book reviewer, and blogging friend. If you don’t already subscribe to her blog at lizgauffreau.com, please do so now! We’ll wait.

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Okay, now that you’re back, let’s continue with the tour!

Today Liz shares photos of ruins in Pawtuckaway State Park as well as a bit of the area’s fascinating history.

Without further adieu, here’s Liz!

Thank you, Marie, for hosting me on my blog tour for Simple Pleasures: Haiku from the Place Just Right!  For today’s tour stop, I’m sharing photos from a set of ruins in Pawtuckaway State Park, which is a hop, skip, and a jump from our house in Nottingham.  These ruins provide the larger context for one of the poems in Simple Pleasures.

The Pawtuckaway region was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples, the Pennacook, a division of the Algonquin Natives. The Pennacook were hunter gathers, who referred to Pawtuckaway as the land of “sticks and stones” because it wouldn’t support crops. When European settlers moved in, they thought they knew better. They cleared the land of trees; built houses, barns, and stone walls; and planted crops. However, the farms were not profitable because—wait for it—the land wouldn’t support crops. The early settlers’ descendants finally abandoned their farms at the end of the 19^th century and joined the westward expansion.  (Source: https://blog.nhstateparks.org/tucked-away-in-pawtuckaway/)

Walking along the trail that goes around Pawtuckaway Lake, we come upon the last signs of those abandoned farms: derelict stone walls and cellar holes. 

The glacier strikes again! This so-called boulder field was created 18,000 years ago when a mile-high glacier slowly moved through the area, picked up boulders from a nearby mountain and deposited them here.  (Source: https://blog.nhstateparks.org/tucked-away-in-pawtuckaway)

Author Biography

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story “Henrietta’s Saving Grace” was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg  prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press.

She has published a novel, Telling Sonny, and a collection of photopoetry, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance. She is currently working on a novel, The Weight of Snow and Regret, based on the closing of the last poor farm in Vermont in 1968. 

Liz’s professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband. Find her online at https://lizgauffreau.com.

Book2Read Purchase Link: https://books2read.com/SimplePleasures
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Bookshop Link (paperback): https://bookshop.org/p/books/simple-pleasures-haiku-from-the-place-just-right-elizabeth-gauffreau/21613107?ean=9781735929293

Amazon Link (Kindle Fire or paperback): https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Pleasures

My review of Simple Pleasures:

Reading this collection was like forest bathing, the photos of Liz’s favorite outdoor places filled with green mountains, blue lakes, red and yellow leaves, gray rocks, white trees, and pink-tinted and fiery sunsets. And yet the photo and haiku that stirred my soul the most was that of the snow-covered pond with a border of dark trees in the background.

the pond in winter
windswept snow, crystalline sky
frigid air, silence

I spent the first 21 years of my life in upstate New York, among farms just northeast of Albany. Although I often say that fall was my favorite season, sometimes I miss winter more, especially the silence of winter.

Simple Pleasures is a wonderful pairing of photographs and poetry. You’ll want to keep this book by your bedside or writing desk for when you want to enjoy a simple pleasure or to be inspired.