Three Days and Nights in a Potato Hole

Last week, my grandmother Jean passed away, after lingering for six days in the hospital. My family gathered together, the days blurring into a rhythm of togetherness—telling stories, paging through photo albums, sharing tears and laughter in equal measure. On one of those afternoons, I came across an old newspaper clipping folded neatly between photographs. Its words transported me back more than two centuries, to a time when survival meant leaning on courage, family, and faith in the land itself.

Here’s the story exactly as it was printed in November 1981:

DAVID MCKEEN and ANOTHER BLOWDOWN IN STONEHAM

David McKeen Jr. was born in Stoneham, Maine on January 6th, 1805, the son of David and Anna McAlister McKeen. His parents came from Fryeburg—his father being one of the first settlers in West Stoneham.

David Sr. built his first house of logs after the manner of building in those days, and it was in this primitive abode that David Jr. was born.

When he was a child, there was a heavy wind blow and the large forest trees fell in every direction. David Sr., fearing that his humble home would be crushed beneath some of those huge trees that grew near the house, fled with his family (consisting of wife Anna and three children, Aseneth, David Jr., and Joel) to a potato hole near the house where they lay for three days and nights, listening to the howling of the blast and the thundering and crashing of falling trees.

After the wind had subsided in a measure and they could crawl out of their subterranean retreat, they found their house roofless and the forest as far as the eye could see, a scene of wild confusion.

Both Davids found Stoneham to be ultimately the best place to reside. At one point, father and son made up their minds to go to Ohio. Not finding things as they expected, they returned, having been gone from home 3 months and traveling the entire distance to Ohio and back on foot.

David Jr. planted an elm tree while yet a youth. Still standing near the sight of his home, it remains a monument to his memory, reminding his loved ones of 'Uncle David', who for so many years tilled the soil at the foot of Speckled Mountain.

I read those words several times, trying to imagine the scene. A young family crouched underground for three nights as giant trees toppled around them. The air above thick with the sound of destruction. A father desperate to keep his wife and children alive. And when they finally emerged, the roof of their log home gone, the forest around them unrecognizable. Yet somehow, from that wreckage, they began again.

There’s a toughness in that story that humbles me. Not the toughness of the wind, but the toughness born of resilience—of staying rooted to place and to each other even when the world turns upside down. Three days and nights in a potato hole, and still they carried on.

What strikes me just as much, though, is their curiosity. Both Davids—father and son—once set out (on foot!) for Ohio, searching for something better. Three months on the road, only to return home when it wasn’t what they imagined. That rhythm—leave, search, return—is familiar to so many of us here in the North Country. We grow restless, convinced there must be something brighter beyond the mountains, only to find ourselves drawn back by a tug that feels stronger than reason.

I thought of that as I sat down this week with my friend Randall Saulnier on North of Normal. Randall grew up in the Lincoln–Woodstock area, spent decades working in the corporate world in Boston, and eventually made his way back north. He told me, “I spent 25 years trying to get out and then another 25 years trying to get back in.” His story isn’t unusual here—it’s almost archetypal. We leave to chase opportunity or love or adventure. And if we’re fortunate, we return with a deeper appreciation for what home really means.

Randall spoke about how returning gave him not just geography, but humanity back. After years of working in the financial markets, he found that life in the North Country reawakened his empathy. Here, his work is no longer just numbers, but relationships—helping people through transitions like retirement, loss, or starting over. 

As I listened to him, I realized I had my own version of that story.

I left my childhood home in Albion, Maine when I was just ten years old. By the time I graduated from high school, I had lived with my family in three other countries. To some, that might sound exciting—and it was in certain ways—but it also left me with a kind of rootlessness. I no longer knew where I belonged. Every time I started to sink into a place, we moved again. When graduation came, I looked around and couldn’t answer the simple question: where is home?

It took me twenty-five years after high school to find my footing again, and it happened to be here in Northern New Hampshire. Strangely enough, it isn’t so far from where my McKeen ancestors once huddled underground in that potato hole in Stoneham, Maine. I’m just on the other side of the White Mountains, a stone’s throw from Speckled Mountain where David Jr. tilled the soil. Something deep inside me must have remembered, even when my conscious mind had forgotten.

That memory stirred again last week as I sat by my grandmother’s side in the hospital. For six days, my family gathered in her room. We played music, told stories, prayed, and laughed through tears. And as I looked around at my aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, and my parents, I felt a pull so strong it startled me. In that room, I was as home as I have ever been.

Home, I am learning, is more than geography. It lives in the people who gather around us, in the memories that keep us rooted, in the soil that remembers our steps, and in the stories carried from one generation to the next. And home, I’m finding, reveals itself most clearly in weathering the storms that test us, whether they are the winds that flattened Stoneham’s forests, the upheavals that send us wandering across borders, or the heartbreak of saying goodbye to someone we love.

Home is the place that welcomes us after the storm. It is the circle of people who steady us when the ground shifts. It is the soil where we choose to plant, again and again, even knowing the winds may come again.

The McKeens in Stoneham, my grandmother in Albion, Randall in Franconia, and now me here in Northern New Hampshire—we are all part of the same pattern. Life sends us outward, sometimes for years or even decades. But the return home—whether to the exact land of our ancestors or to a place that carries the same spirit—offers a strength we cannot find anywhere else.

As I sat beside my grandmother last week, I felt that truth settle into me: belonging isn’t about staying put. It’s about finding, in the end, that the threads of our lives are still woven back into the fabric of people and place.

My hope, as you read this, is that you feel the tug of your own threads. Where do they lead you? What land, what people, what memories hold you steady when everything else feels uncertain?

Whatever your answer, may you carry it close. May it remind you that storms will pass, roots will hold, and that home—however you define it—has a way of calling us back when we need it most.

-Amanda