The Place of Prayer began as a Prayer Path in 2002, designed as an oasis in nature during troubled times. I had a couple of heart attacks. Recovery for me meant sitting out in nature. Our neighbor, Bill Sustito, had cut down some trees that got too big, and he gave me 12 stumps. I hired my nephew, Doug, a teenager at the time, to haul the stumps across the road to a section of our property that we weren’t using. Following the idea of the Stations of the Cross, we created a path that went from one stump to another. I had led a Bible Study at Souhegan Congregational Church in Amherst. We used Richard Foster’s book, Prayer. Each chapter describes a different kind of prayer. We named each stump for one of those kinds of prayer, and painted the name on the it. I did a Bible study on each type of prayer, and printed a page of verses for each station. We then added artifacts such as oil for Healing Prayer, water for Cleansing/Absolution Prayer, etc. One year we put a musical instrument at each station. The original stumps eventually rotted away and have been replaced twice, once by nephew, Craig, and the latest stumps by our son-in-law, Aaron. The Prayer Path is open anytime for you to come walk it (unless the snow is too deep).