Going Back to Vermont...

            Crossing into Vermont from New York State several weeks ago, every sentence we uttered began with “do you remember when…?  Turning onto Route #7 towards Rutland we sailed past the big Hannaford grocery store that triggered “do you remember when that truck crashed into our car while we were shopping in Hannaford?”  Turning onto Route #4 and down Route #100, so familiar that I put the maps all away, I recalled, “Do you remember when we slid off the road right here?  We had to call a tow truck to pull us out and we didn’t get up to our house till past midnight.”  Driving down Route #73 to Maple Hill Road reminded me, “do you remember all the times we parked here on the roadside to ride our bikes out to Bingo Road?”  

            As we drove up Great Hawk Mountain on the familiar dirt roads, avoiding the potholes and the steeper sections that so quickly turn into a rough washboard, I wondered what had happened in the intervening years since we’d been gone.  It felt like they had simply evaporated.  Yes, we had sold our Gt. Hawk house and moved on July 29, 2011. We had left for Asheville and bought a townhouse in Biltmore Lake on Aug. 17^th, 2011. Yes, our Vermont neighbors had experienced Irene, the worst hurricane and flooding in 100 years just 3 weeks after we left.  But here we were again on a sunny summer afternoon driving up the mountain just as if we had never left. All was peaceful and calm as it had always been.

          On the Access Road I asked, “Do you remember the name of the people that lived in that house?”  Art replied, “yeah, he was on the Board but I can’t remember the name. It will come to me….that house is for sale now.”  I added, “Look at Peggy Schwartz’s old house, someone has fixed it up and is living there now…it’s nicely landscaped.” Or “look they redid the tennis courts and painted them blue.”  “I wonder who lives in the Breu’s house now since Connie died?” Except for a few memory lapses on our part, and the friends who have passed away recently, nothing seemed changed. I was reminded of all the times I’d come “home” to this place and had the same thoughts.  It’s all just as I left it.  And then I’d be reminded that I was the one who had changed…not the place.

            Habit might have lead us straight to Sparrow Hawk Road but this time we were to spend several weeks in a neighbor's house on Falcon Loop East, just one road below “our old road”.  If I were keeping track this would be the third house we’d stayed at on Gt. Hawk - the first being “Hawkwood” which Mother and Dad built in 1971 and sold in 1980, and “Hawkcrest” which we bought in 1990 and lived in ,off and on, for more than 20 years.   Getting out of the car the first thing to hit me when I would come home to Gt. Hawk was the silence. This time was no different.  There is a kind of total quiet on Gt. Hawk which I have never experienced anywhere else.  It is simply the sounds of Nature and nothing else - the leaves rustling in the trees, the birds twittering, squirrels rustling in the underbrush, and cicadas and crickets announcing their arrival especially in August.  There is no hum of car traffic in the background, no airplanes flying overhead, no cars driving by except a few times a day.  Occasionally there will be the sound of a weed wacker or a power saw in the distance.  The silence is what envelops me completely and what I miss the most.

            It was an unexpected gift of the loan of a neighbor’s house, that led us to visit Great Hawk this August.  The timing was right and all fell into place. We moved into the guest room and not the Master bedroom that had been offered us, because it was identical to the small bedroom at our house where we had slept for 20 years.  Waking up in the morning, still with eyes closed, I had the oddest sensation of never having left for my mind could roam around this bedroom picturing every detail just like it was my own.  Within an hour or two of arriving we left the unpacking for a walk around the mountain before dark wondering who might be here that would remember us.   Judy, out walking her Siberian husky, remembered us. We drove to town to buy groceries and Zeus in Mac’s grocery came right over “Kristina & Art!”.  I walked into the Rochester Library and Jeanette, the librarian looked up, and said hello without missing a beat.  Stopping at Sandy’s Bakery to pick up a loaf of bread, Sandy looked up from a meeting she was having with a few workers and smiled to say “Hi, Kristina,” as if I walked in there every day.

            The joy of waking up each day to the quiet and going to bed at night with windows open to the masses of stars in the blackness of the sky was enough.  But all the in between hours of visiting our favorite haunts was a delight.  We sat at a table on the terrace at Simon Pearce restaurant with a view of the rushing waters at Quechee Gorge, remembering all the “special occasions” we had celebrated here. Making the big decision to buy a house in Vermont, bringing all the friends and family who visited us over many years to this favorite place for lunches. All the birthdays, new job opportunities, graduation, retirement and all good things that came our way were marked right here. We were doing just that a few Sundays ago celebrating our return after four years away. 

            Heading west over the mountain from Gt. Hawk, we revisited Brandon and savored lunch at Café Provence, still serving gourmet food in rural Vermont cooked to perfection by the Montreal chef who opened the restaurant when we still lived there.  Who could argue that Vermont is not a “foodie” state?  We found Middlebury in its summer vacation mode, too early to see students walking around and mostly catering to tourists passing through. We could not miss the scenic drive from Rochester to Middlebury past the famous Bread Loaf Summer School and the Robert Frost trail we enjoyed so many years.  

           One of our best days was the long drive South on Route #7, along the Western Vermont border to Bennington and into Williamstown, Mass to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute. Having read in the Wall Street Journal that the Clark was newly renovated in the last few years we were eager to go.  The Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed the minimalist building attached to the traditional white marble museum that is a dramatic, all glass Visitor Center, Café, and special exhibition area.  There is a large white marble reflecting pool outdoors contrasted against the Berkshires Mountains in the background.   The special Van Gogh Exhibit of paintings created towards the end of his life was worth the two and a half hour drive to get there.

            A day in Burlington was another of those “do you remember” days as we recalled the years we went back and forth when Hayden was at UVM.  I could picture driving Hayden as a freshman to Burlington, unloading the packed car at his dorm and his turning to say a quick good bye leaving me an “empty nester”.  Memories of going to UVM tennis matches flooded back.  Passing the Flynn Theater downtown I could see myself standing in the park across the street on a warm May afternoon with Hayden in cap and gown, Mother and Dad with us, and me sobbing with the emotion, my only son having graduated from college! It seemed one of the biggest milestones of my life.  What had come over me that day?

 Walking up and down Church Street on a sunny summer day is just as festive as it always was and we, who had been there so often, were looking for all the familiar landmarks. The Ben and Jerrys is still on the corner, my favorite kitchen shop, and the Frog Hollow Arts & Crafts Gallery are there. Why was I not aware that the church at the top of Church Street is actually a big New England Unitarian Universalist Church.  I looked at it with new respect. The street musicians were lively the day we went and outdoor restaurants were packed with tourists and the Burlington lunch crowd. The lake was brilliant and sparkly in the sun as we walked down to take a closer look stopping on the way to get ourselves a Maple Creamee, a specialty down by the waterfront.  The wind was blowing in great gusts and many of the boats were tied up as if it was too rough a day to be on the water.

            The afternoon we drove to Proctor to visit the Vermont Marble Company Museum was a day of remembering but the memories went back before Art.  I needed Mother to be there with me to fill in the blanks the summer I spent in Vermont with her.  I fell in love with Vermont and declared I would stay to live there when Mother reminded me I’d need a job.   So I drove into Rutland to the Supervisory Union without an appointment, walked in to ask if there were any librarian openings.  Yes, they had one in Proctor.  I filled out forms, produced my MLS and I had a job for fall at the all-marble Proctor Jr. Sr. High school.  I stood in front of that school the other day and calculated it had been 45 years since that late August day I’d started working there as the librarian.  Did I remember that far back? Some of it but Mom would have verified it all for me.

            Our last day in Rochester, we visited the town cemetery, something we had never done.  But several of our beloved neighbors and “old timers” we had known for so long have passed away and we wanted to find their graves and pause to remember them.  And we did.  It was then that I realized what a long connection I have with Vermont and with the village of Rochester – longer than anywhere I have ever lived in my life.  And it continues… What has changed is me because despite the warm welcome and the sense of being “home” I do not want to live there full time any more.  I watched my neighbors spend part of August stacking wood in preparation for the winter to come, and heard conversations about the coldest winter on record they had just lived though, and remembered the long drives to the grocery store.  No thank you…my pioneer days are over.  And yet I came home with the realization that Vermont is my true spiritual home and the place where memories of more than half my life rest.  It only takes a visit to bring them to life…but they are always there for me and I shall go back to find them again.