Last week, I had the honor of interviewing Ted Bonner, who lost his Mountain Road home to a fire in February.
About halfway through the interview, I asked Ted if he had photos of his former home on Mountain Road. As soon as I asked, I realized it was a tactless request, as Ted had lost everything he owned, including all his old photo albums, in the fire. Ted just laughed and said he probably had some photos — which had been stored in the cloud — on his new phone.
It’s hard to imagine losing everything you own. Only a few weeks ago, I wrote about Bob and Judy Bitterli, who lost everything when their historic Francestown home burned. This has been a terrible winter for fires.
Bonner is well-known and much appreciated in Greenfield as the creator of the “Ted and Carolyn’s trails” on North Pack. The trail network, which Bonner created in honor of his late wife, Carolyn, leads to a waterfall that was previously inaccessible. A group of Bonner’s friends, who maintain the trails, convinced Bonner to officially name the falls “Bonner Falls,” and they are now a much-loved hiking destination.
Richard Roy, a member of the Monadnock Writers Group and a friend of Bonner’s, has been interviewing Bonner about his long and fascinating life and is writing a series of biographical articles about his life, including the process of creating the trails, which Bonner calls his “proudest accomplishment.”
Walking up to the barn apartment Ted is now renting in Peterborough, it struck me that there was just one pair of shoes on the doormat outside, because of course, Ted lost all his shoes.
Ted’s landlord, Robin Hulbert, asked me to let Ted know he had several packages at the front door, and I handed a few of them to Ted.
“I’m just replacing things as I think of them,” he said. “It’s the smaller things you miss the most. One of the things I wanted right away was a good book. I’m a passionate reader, and I lost all my books.”
In the early hours of Saturday, March 14, Ted, who has lived in Greenfield since 1972, woke up to strange noises and the smell of smoke. He opened his bedroom door and saw thick black smoke in the hallway.
“I mostly just remember images and sounds. There were things crashing, there was smoke,” he said. “I just remember this sense of fright. Not terror exactly, but fright. I have the imagery of running through the flames. They were 30 feet high, and they were only six feet away.”
Ted, who is 90 years old, ran out of his house in just his pajamas. He did not have time to grab his car keys, his phone, a jacket, or shoes. Temperatures were in the low teens that night, with a bitter wind, and there was over a foot of snow on the ground. Bonner has no close neighbors, and at 1 a.m. on a winter night, no one saw the flames.
“Luckily, my car wasn’t locked, so I could get in there. I was sure someone would drive by at some point, but no one drove by,” Ted said.
Ted knew his home would be a complete loss.
“All I could do was sit there and watch it burn down,” he said.
After an hour or so, when the fire had abated and he was starting to freeze, Ted found an old raincoat and a blanket in his car and wrapped them around his feet to make the long trek through the snow to a neighbor’s house.
As soon as they heard about the fire, Bonner’s friends and neighbors at Plowshare Farm, a lifesharing community for adults with disabilities, offered him a room for as long as he needed to stay.
“They gave me the most beautiful room, and I just fell in love with it. I was there two weeks, and I met the most wonderful people, who I otherwise never would have engaged with,” Bonner said. “They are just the most incredible people at Plowshare Farm. I’m going to go back and eat lunch there once a week to see everybody.”
Bonner said he is mostly unfazed by losing all his possessions.
“My late wife, Carolyn, kept diaries, and I still had them all, and sometimes I would take them and pick them up to revisit things, but those are gone,” he said. “Everyone is asking, how will I replace all the art we collected, all the books? But it’s all in the past. That house, all those things, are in the past now, and I’m just looking ahead.”
Because Bonner had no way of calling 911, the house burned to the ground before Greenfield and surrounding fire departments could respond. Nothing remains at the former site of the Bonners’ home except a chimney and an iron clawfoot bathtub.
Bonner’s friend and neighbor, Dave Barton, helped him navigate the immediate aftermath of the fire.
“Dave just stayed with me all day the next day, and he helped me figure out how to replace things. My car keys burned up; I couldn’t even drive my car,” Bonner said. “My wallet, my passport, all my paperwork. Dave helped me with all of that.”
None of Bonner’s immediate family, including his two children, live nearby — his daughter is currently working with child refugees in Ukraine — so he is considering his options for the future. He will stay in his apartment at the Hulbert’s farm for a year while he figures out his next step.
“I may do a tiny house on a different spot on my land,” he said. “All of this has made me think: how much do I really need? How do I want to spend my time?”
Bonner said returning to the site of his former home has not been as painful as he expected.
“I had some dreams about it at first. I thought it would be harder to go back to the house. but it’s just all in the past now,” he said. “We’re going to get everything cleared, we’re going to start seeding it, and we’re going to start working on the land and restoring it.”
Bonner was able to salvage a small metal sculpture that survived the fire, which he says will be his one memento of the house.
“What I have learned from this experience is that the things you care about are never really lost. Those images stay with you. When you really cherish something, even if something isn’t in your sight, you still have the images and memories,” he said. “I think that is enough.”
Bonner said he is grateful the fire happened because it is forcing him to rethink what he wants to do next.
“I’m 90 years old. I think I was getting a little too isolated; a little too set in my ways. This has really made me think: what do I want to do now? Where do I want to go? It gave me the most wonderful sense of gratitude. It’s broadened my scope of life, which really overshadows the things I’ve lost,” he said. “It made me realize I want to be around people more; it’s made me think about how I want to do that.”
Bonner says that overall, the experience of losing all his earthly possessions in the fire has been “a positive experience.”
“The way I was before, I had kind of fallen into this mindset of ‘Ok, I’m not going to be social anymore, I’m just going to stay home with my books, I’m ok alone.’ It was almost like I was waiting to die. You pull in, naturally, as you get older,” Bonner said. “But when all this happened, I thought, ‘Well, what now?’ It has made me expand my life. It’s making me think I want to do some things that I have never done before. And there is so much more to do.”