Tom Ambrose:  

My wife Kelsey and I now live in the highlands of rural New Hampshire, along with lots of wildlife, including bears, moose, fisher cats, lynx, coyotes – well, you get the picture. We’ve lived here for 16 years but, having previously lived on the West Coast, the changes and accompanying culture shock were a bit of an adjustment initially – changes that have sometimes been both difficult and pleasant – like having to take our own garbage to the dump, shoveling 6 to 10 feet of snow and raking snow off our roof each winter, missing old friends, drinking water from a deep well that doesn’t taste like it came out of a Clorox bottle, breathing clean air instead of smog, experiencing very little crime, confronting wild animals that like to eat our cats and chickens, and watching a family of baby skunks (picture: bouncing white cotton balls) coming up to greet us when we come home, or a family of foxes that took up residence in our backyard one year. All said, we’re glad we moved here. We still miss our friends, but we’ve also made new friends. Michelle, 26, was valedictorian of her high-school graduating class and was captain of her cross-country team. She graduated from Emory University in the Class of 2014 with a bachelor’s degree in Biology, where she was on full scholarship and spent her third summer in Italy. She also worked as a teacher at a school that helps children with autistic disorders. She completed her first semester in medical school with A’s and B’s, but decided to withdraw to raise a family. She has since become married to a young man who also graduated from Emory in 2014, and they gave birth to their first child in May 2017. Kirsten, 24, graduated from Emory University, as part of the Class of 2016, where she was also on full scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree in Psychology and African Studies. She lived in Spain during the first half of 2015 as part of a student program through Emory, and during her third summer she studied in Scotland and England, as well as traveled through much of Europe. She was awarded third honors in her graduating high-school class, and served as a captain for both the cross-country team and the track team during her senior year. Additionally, she was named a Scholar-Athlete by the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association and the New Hampshire Athletic Directors Association. She was also chosen as one of five high-school student finalists from New England to present her research on the impact of food additives and dyes on the growth inhibition of E. coli (located in the human intestinal tract) at the Northern New England Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, and was later selected to present her...Expand for more