Home Page

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul

    Writings from a Full Life
         The latest from Meghan's Blog

Hello, Ski Season

Winter arrives in a rush for my family this weekend. Never mind that we haven’t reached Thanksgiving yet, or that we’re still a month away from the Solstice, or that it has felt and looked like winter for the past two weeks.

The Ski Season part of our Winter starts in earnest Saturday morning, and there’s no way, really, to ease into that – no matter how much I love Winter. READ MORE

November Winds

The wind whipped up with November’s arrival last week, knocking out the power to our house before this new month was a few hours old. That November wind brought the chill of the season to come, a chill that seems to have settled in now for the long months ahead, where just last week there remained the hope, at least, of a bit more fleeting warmth.

November is not my favorite month. The trees are bare. Daylight is sparse. With hardly any color left in the landscape – and before winter’s sparkle of frost and snow – it seems just, well, dreary.

But I’ve seen enough Novembers to know it’s just one month. Thirty days. I don’t dread November like I used to. But the winds have reminded me of some of the fall things still left undone, things that should really happen before winter. READ MORE

Soccer and Community

The population of Franconia swelled to about three times its normal number last Saturday as several hundred young soccer players – and their entourages of family and fans – from towns throughout northern New Hampshire and Vermont descended on the Dow fields for the Halloween Cup. READ MORE

Meghan McCarthy McPhaul is an award winning author and journalist. She lives in northern New Hampshire, where she works as a freelance writer, penning magazine and newspaper articles, as well as copy for newsletters, press releases, Web sites and Blogs.

Her Close to Home column appears twice a month in the Littleton Record newspaper, and she writes a weekly Winter Notes column for the Union Leader. Her work has also been published in Powder, Northern Woodlands, New Hampshire magazine, Forest Notes, Snow East, AAA's Northern New England Journey, and several local and regional publications, as well as two anthologies of place-based writing.

She has been honored by the New England Press Association for excellence in spot news coverage and feature writing and by the International Skiing History Association for her book A History of Cannon Mountain: Trails, Tales and Skiing Legends.

Meghan is currently working on a collection of essays.

Winner of the International Skiing History Association's Skade Award!

What people are saying about

Trails, Tales and Skiing Legends:

"The author's talent in writing the oft-neglected biographies of Cannon's pioneer skiers and developers in such delightful detail is commended and certainly the reader's good fortune."

"A nifty little book..."

"McPhaul ... gracefully and compassionately ... adds much to our understanding of Cannon Mountain and the forces and people that tried to tame it."

"...a really superb, well-done book. A History of Cannon Mountain does a remarkable job of conveying the spirit, atmosphere, and joy of ... Cannon Mountain."

This is the first comprehensive history written about Cannon Mountain, one of the oldest ski areas in the United States and a cradle of American ski history.
To learn more about the book or purchase a copy,
please visit the Cannon Mountain page.

Main Navigation