The Trade I Didn’t See Coming

The Third Chapter Series: Health & Wellness

People ask me a version of the same question, usually a few minutes into the second cup of coffee or after we’ve seen a few houses together; basically, once they’ve decided I’ll actually answer honestly. It’s never phrased as a question about doctors. It’s phrased as “how do people manage up here if they need serious health care,” said in the tone you’d use to ask about something slightly taboo. What they mean is: if something goes wrong with my body or my mental health, am I going to be okay?

So let me answer it plainly.

If I could change one thing about leaving Boston Metro, it isn’t the takeout, really; though long time readers know how I feel about the lack of access to Bhindi Masala and Injera. It’s specialist access. That’s the real trade. For the ordinary stuff, the sprained ankle, the flu, the stitches, you’re fine. Wolfeboro has a hospital. Plymouth has a hospital. Dover has a hospital, all solid, all staffed, all capable of handling what most people need on most days. But the minute you need a specialist, a particular kind of cardiologist, a rheumatologist, anything requiring a subspecialty and a waiting list, you’re probably opting to drive. Portland. Portsmouth. Manchester. Or Boston, which is where most of my neighbors end up when it’s something serious. And, its where we still drive every three months to see the Endocrinologist who’s treated a family members Type 1 Diabetes for the last 10 years.

The ambulance response times in the more rural corners of this region come up at kitchen tables more than you’d think, and access to ongoing mental health care, especially for younger people navigating something complicated, is thinner here than in a city with a hospital system on every corner. Also worth naming is that most people working with me on a third-chapter move aren’t raising teenagers here, so that particular gap, real as it is, isn’t the center of this decision for most of my clients; though it does come up at times.

For the people this piece is speaking to, though, the calculus is different. It’s not “can I get to a hospital.” You can, and you have choices. The underlying question often turns out to be, “will I still feel like myself here,” and that’s where the story is actually a really good one.

Start with food, because it is a rural trope for a reason. You’ll pay more at the farmers markets than you will at Hannaford or Market Basket, no argument there, but the range is the part people don’t always expect. Produce, dairy, eggs, meat, all of it available direct from the people who raised or grew it, and once you know the rhythm of who sells what and when, you could conceivably go an without setting foot in a supermarket, unless you need orange powder mac and cheese (no judgement, we eat a lot of it at our house) or a specific spice or something wrapped in plastic with a barcode. That’s not a romantic exaggeration. That’s just how the sourcing works once you build the habit.

Fitness is its own strong case, and it’s not the one gym in one town people picture when they imagine rural New England. There’s a real gym within twenty minutes of almost anywhere in the Lakes Region, and on top of that, classes happening constantly in places you wouldn’t think to look. Town halls. Libraries. School gyms after hours. Yoga studios that run out of a converted barn or a storefront on Main Street. The infrastructure is distributed rather than centralized, which means you’re rarely more than a short drive from something.

And then there’s everything that isn’t a class at all, just the region doing what it does. Ski at Abenaki or Gunstock. Swim almost anywhere the shore touches water. Snowshoe or hike depending on the season, run if that’s your thing, kayak when the lake’s calm enough to make it look easy. What strikes me isn’t just that the activities exist, it’s how many people are already doing them, in every town, which means you’re rarely doing any of it alone unless you want to be.

I had a good example of this on Friday. I was at my knitting circle, and there was about as much talk happening as knitting. The hostess looked down at her watch mid-sentence and gasped, “ladies, we have to wrap this up, three of us have to get over to the Nick for pickleball in ten minutes.” That’s the texture of it. Nobody’s schedule up here has room to be lonely even if they wanted one.

Often when pundit talk about the loneliness epidemic, the advice offered is abstract. Join a group. Build community. Put yourself out there. What actually happens here is less deliberate than that. You go for a walk on the rail trail to move your body and come home having had three conversations with people you didn’t plan on talking to. You join a knitting circle for the knitting and end up double-booked for pickleball. You pop by the farmers market to pick up some peppers and end up agreeing to help herd some pigs into their enclosure later that day. The third-chapter people I actually know up here read as unusually well-connected, not because they worked at it, but because the region makes isolation a choice you can make if you want, not a foregone conclusion.

Behind all of it sits infrastructure most people never think to ask about: town senior centers doing the steady, unglamorous work of running programs week after week, and regional senior organizations stitching those towns together so nobody’s cut off just because their particular town is small.

So that’s the honest read, both halves of it. The medical side asks you to accept a real tradeoff. The fitness and social side hands you something back that’s harder to put a price on, and for most of the people reading this, it isn’t a close call which one weighs more.

Here’s to knowing what you’re actually getting and what you really want.

🧭 Jenn

Keys to the Lakes

This is part of an ongoing series about what the third chapter of life actually looks like in the Lakes Region, for the people who chose it.