The Northeast Kingdom
“Still, there is a discontent I cannot shake. Traveling, adventure, and the land have become my comfortable friends. Just as the mariner who has been at sea for months must now stand on solid, unmoving earth, I cannot stand still.
It’s not long before the autumnal stars and chilly breezes from the great north arrive. Like the geese that must migrate, I feel the urge to travel and make an escape to the north woods of Vermont.
But that must be another tale.”
From UPHILL AND INTO THE WIND
AND SO, begins that very tale.
Our bicycle odyssey of 5420 miles and five months suddenly ended, I was restless and struggling, still numb from the culture shock of returning to “the place I was before”. I couldn’t cope with going back to the life of a Work-a-day-Johnny.
My friends, big, black-bearded Bob Caprio, “Cap” to his friends, Joanne Samuel, the freckled and always glowing girl next door, leprechaun-like Jack Walsh whose eyes hinted at a secret he enjoyed keeping to himself, and thin framed Tommy Mullen, who looked uncannily like rock star Tom Petty, would be driving to the northern Vermont and invited me along. Their mission, to help some local people they’d met finish building their house before winter.
The autumn days had grown noticeably shorter. One morning I watched a flock of geese rise en masse, make one pass around an open field and disappear to the south. I needed to flee too; escape the status quo I had returned to. I would go north with my friends to meet the waning season head-on.
We left Bloomfield well after midnight and drove north through New York State on the 350-mile journey. I let out a deep sigh, feeling the carefree serenity of being on the road again, this time from the comfort of a warm back seat. Conversation among my close friends dissolved into silence, leaving the humdrum drone of machine and highway to lull me to sleep.
It must have been a few hours later when the silence in the car was interrupted.
“We’re in the Green Mountains,” announced Joanne. Her words were almost a whisper, but exuberant, and they woke me. I sat up just in time to see a small green Welcome to Vermont sign in the headlights. By the time we reached Montpelier, there was enough daylight to make out the state capitol and the charming, pointed church steeples in town.
While the blush of autumn in New Jersey had only begun to dust the woods with snippets of yellow ash trees and slashes of paint-pot scarlet dogwoods, the ride north from Montpelier to Lake Elmore, a half hour-long twisting two-lane, flaunted a rising crescendo of color. The dogwoods and oaks had disappeared: we had passed the northern part of their range. Here the forest sparkled, a kaleidoscope of hardwoods; maples in crimson and tangerine, birch and beech in banana yellow, all quilted with conifers in mossy forest tones; white pine, hemlock, balsam fir, larch, and spruce.
Queen of them all, punctuating farmhouses along the way, stands the sugar maple, distinguished by her stately oval form, with layered branches arching out and up, anchored to a sturdy, straight trunk, perhaps the most perfect architecture for any tree. She had begun her dazzling show of brilliant, fluorescent orange, the autumn foliage so iconic for this region.
We stopped for gas in Elmore, hardly a town, a general store already open with gas pumps out front and post office inside, a few dozen yards from the lake. On the other side of the road sat a small, white schoolhouse. Everyone piled out of the car to stretch legs and arms, plaid shirts and puffs of breath showing in the crisp air. We gazed at the mountainside across the lake, ablaze with fiery orange, and dowsed in deep dark green.
“This is why I love Vermont,” said Joanne, gleaming with joy.
“It feels like home and the closest I’ve ever been to this part of Vermont is Burlington – the big city,” I replied. “The woods here are so much more…” I paused, looking for the right word, … “intense, than in New Jersey.”
Cap came over and wrapped his arms around Joanne and me, his pearly white smile framed by all that jet-black hair and beard. “Makes you feel kind of spiritual, doesn’t it?”
“Definitely spiritual,” said Joanne.
“My kind of church,” I whispered.
One after the other, we used the restroom in back and went into the store for coffee and doughnuts while Tommy filled the gas tank.
Back in the car, we headed out again, and just north of town turned right on a narrow dirt road, which led through an emerald pasture, punctuated with black Angus cattle, a curiosity since most of Vermont’s cows are for dairy not beef.
The road climbed for three miles, sometimes rutted and jarring, and just as it seemed to disintegrate into the woods, we pulled into a clearing and stopped.
To our left stood a small red building, in improbable placement, still raised on jacks. It was the size of a long two-car garage in the middle of nowhere.
“What is this place?” I asked, looking in through the open door.
“It’s been used as a temporary hunting camp,” said Cap. ““I think it was the old schoolhouse in town.”
Joanne chimed in. “Rob and Pam’s house is just up the road, but we’ll be staying here because the house isn’t finished yet.”
We stowed our gear and drove on.
Maybe a half mile further, another clearing in the woods revealed a simple two-story house, with a corrugated metal roof, and wood siding, blackened and brown from many decades of age.
The sound of the car brought a young couple out, Rob and Pam: he tall and thin, in jeans with a sweater and wool hat, she in a house dress and slippers, long, straight brunette hair, mouth agape in surprise.
“Yaay,” shouted Pam, with a big smile as she met us halfway, and hugged everyone in turn. When Joanne introduced me, Pam gave me a huge hug too, clearly happy to meet new friends.
Their twin boys, Danny and Matt, about two and a half years old, ran up to hug Joanne, Cap, and Tommy, then tore off, back to the house across the semi-cleared opening in the forest canopy.
“Rob, meet David,” said Cap. “He’s the guy I told you about: worked as a stone mason.”
“And carpenter,” I added, shaking his hand. “I’m happy to help”.
I looked around. “Nice place you got here.”
Rob straightened up now even taller, with his black mop of hair, head cocked slightly to one side.
“We’re homesteading,” he said, a word that implied so much more than just building a house.
TO BE CONTINUED
A lovely time to revisit Vermont. Thanks, David.
Love your writing: It’s a great escape. Thank you!