the name

Looking up for graphics to describe I found the following:
www.des.state.nh.us/wet/spring99.pdf -
Look at the map on page 5.

I live in Concord, New Hampshire. Concord is just south, on that map, of the line between the Northern Hardwood forest to the north and the Oak and Pine forest to the south. We're blessed in my neighborhood with many of the trees and wildlife from both areas. Most of central northern New England (central northern?) is a transitional forest from the oak and pine forests of the southern areas to the boreal forests of the mountains and beyond to Labrador.

I grew up in the Merrimack Valley about 50 miles downstream from Concord. Since then I've lived high up in the Rocky Mountains, at sea level in the tropics, in the heart of the northern forest in upstate New York, and in both a similar transitional forest and a spectacular meadow bordered by a northern hardwood/spruce and fir forest only about thirty miles apart in central Vermont. I've travelled through the black spruce of Labrador and used perfect beech leaves as currency when playing as a child.

We ended up just far enough north where the woods and trails of the larger mountains are not so far away, and far enough south that family, friends and work are still close by. I'm doing my best to live the best of both worlds, here in the transition zone. With snowshoes in the back of my subaru and my hiking boots on my feet, I put on a button-down shirt and play the company role as necessary. I'm going to be raising a family soon, so right now I need both the stability of the working world, and the opportunities for soul renewal for myself, my wife and my unborn child the forests around me provide.