I can remember—almost to the moment—the day I discovered my love for writing. I was in the third grade, and at the completion of a week of state testing, our teacher let us pick a prize from a table of knick-knacks. I turned in my test and walked up to the table and surveyed the loot: pencils, erasers, stickers, finger puppets, bouncy balls–so many fun little things to choose from. I was eyeing a particularly sparkly sticker sheet when my teacher said, "Hang on a moment. I think I have something you'll like much more." He walked over to his desk and returned with a red composition notebook. He was right. I liked that prize much more, and I filled that notebook from cover-to-cover.

Since then (and probably before then, too) I've had an unending love and appreciation for both reading and writing, and can enjoy most any of it. In college and for a few years afterward, I worked for a literary organization founded to preserve and celebrate one of poet Robert Frost's former homes in New Hampshire. Any New Englander knows Robert Frost lived and worked in a few different parts of the northeast and had great regard for it all, and although folks in Vermont tend to claim Frost as their own, I think he was truly a New Hampshirite at heart—and how could he not be? Some of the most beloved Frost poems and lines come from his book Mountain Interval, which was published while he was living in northern New Hampshire—including one of his most famous works, "The Road Not Taken."

It's hard to imagine that he could have written these nature-laden poems about any other place than right here. "Christmas Trees" is one that I return to every December, and as the story unfolds of the city dweller offering to cut down and buy the trees from the narrator's hillside, I can't help but glance out the window at my field of pines and imagine it playing out right in my yard.

There are many stories of remarkable and influential people from the past and present choosing to spend parts of their lives residing in this area of the Northeast. These stories tend to have commonalities; one being folks' love of the area for its peacefulness and simplicity it offers to their lives. Our agents are ready to help you discover that same affinity for this part of the world by helping you find the perfect place to build your home."

When I worked at the museum that was Frost's former home in the early 1900s, visitors would often ask if his most famous works were written while he lived there. Though it's nearly impossible to decipher when exactly his publications were written to completion, we know when they were published, which makes it easy to infer that perhaps they were written while he lived on the quiet and winding dirt road on the outskirts of town, overlooking the most incredible view of the White Mountains, amongst his forest of pines and birches. I like to believe that's when he penned them. As someone who has looked to the same mountains for inspiration and put pen to paper time and time again because of them, it almost feels less likely to believe that Frost didn't write about the mountains, roads, and woods that still surround us today. Perhaps I am romanticizing the reality of it all, but this place is easy to romanticize—so why not?

Paige O. Roberts has a degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Henniker Review, Sidereal Magazine, Rejection Letters, and Cypress. She has been nominated for a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize. She lives in northern New Hampshire where she owns and operates a pet boutique called Tailswag.