Reflections on Vermont

“You look just like your mother!” Judy exclaims when she sees me. We have just pulled up behind a car with Georgia license plates parked on the Town Green in Rochester.  It is Judy and Bill, back for the summer from their winter home in Brunswick, Georgia.  I have known Judy since Mother moved to Rochester in 1970,  to oversee the building of a new house at Gt. Hawk Colony. While Dad was posted to Saigon, Mother happily threw herself into small town village life with an enthusiasm I had rarely ever seen. She had come from an adventurous life abroad that most townies in Rochester could barely imagine but she wanted to belong here.  On Sundays she went to the services in the white steepled church on the hill (despite her strong Unitarian background), joined the Bible study group, sat in Rilla Allen’s living room with two grand pianos, listening to piano concerts, befriended Lillian Marsh who had lived all her life in Rochester, volunteered at the town library, and took solitary walks through the hills of Vermont. She regularly had tea with Helen Pierce, Judy’s aunt, who lived on the Green and who helped raise the three Pierce children when their mother died.  Mother was determined she would not be an outsider and she wasn’t. Judy still remembered her.

Coming back to Vermont since moving six years ago, it only takes a day or two of walking the familiar roads before the memories flood back.  The total silence of being far from the constant hum of traffic and city noise, the soft rustling sound of the leaves moving in the mountain breeze, and the dirt roads lined with periwinkle colored Paint Brush,  clumps of delicate Queen Anne’s Lace, and the gold Black-Eyed Susan’s, fill me with a sense of total contentment and peace.  I feel at home in a landscape I have known for more than half my life.  Walking along these country roads I feel the firm roots that I put down decades ago when I came here in my twenties. It was the first time I had ever felt a real connection to a place because I had grown up overseas.

  Being in Vermont connects me to my Mother, and to the spirit of many people who came into my life here. As we walk the Gt. Hawk roads we exclaim, “Look…there is a new owner sign on the Breu’s house….I wonder who the people are who bought it?” Or “Remember when Mary Cornwall lived here so long ago?” “ I wonder how they Eddy’s are…they finally sold their house.”  “Quint’s house is up for sale! Is she still alive?”  “They are renovating the Townley house! It’s about time!”” Doesn’t Peggy Schwarz’s house look wonderful since the new owners bought it?”  All these are friends who have passed away and whose spirits live on in our remembering them.

      Walking up our own Sparrow Hawk Road where we lived on and off for 21 years, we glance across the street from our old house and I jokingly exclaim, “Oh my gosh,  Beethoven has moved!”.  For years we were neighbors to the composer of contemporary music, Steve Reich, and his wife Beryl, an artist from New York City.  Steve composed all his music in Vermont and this summer his house had a new owner sign.  We stood gazing at it for a very long time remembering those encounters on the road with famous people we now read about in the New York Times. 

Once, I told a friend who is a classical musician, that we lived across the street from Steve Reich and she immediately responded, “Do you realize, that is like living across the street from Beethoven?”  I never forgot that. Mr. Reich is still alive but over 80 now. Perhaps coming to Vermont got to be too difficult.

Staying at the old “Todd Marble house” which is now, of course, is the Yelland's home, we continue the connection to a place that will always be part of us.   Dinner on the Weden’s large deck with warm conversation hovers around “do you remember when we sold you our red Sentra?” Or “remember when Hayden was off in Moscow for an internship in Dick’s office…he liked it so much we were afraid he wouldn’t come home to finish UVM!”  They, too, are old timers like we are still coming to Gt. Hawk in the summers but there are fewer of them.  Mary and I talk now of our grown children and grandkids but we also can talk about our love of this place without explanation.  Mary says, “These Hawk houses need people and it’s only then that they seem to take on a life of their own.”  I know exactly what she means because I feel that having come to Yelland’s, opened up the house, and felt it almost sigh with relief all around me.  The house comes to life when we are there.  I used to feel that with our own Hawkcrest.

      One day walking down the road, we see a figure wearing a bandana and baseball cap, carrying a tall walking stick and wearing dark glasses.  Of course, it’s Marcia who is in her 80’s now and struggles to get up to her Vermont house each summer. I know it’s a place that connects her to her long deceased husband,Peter,  and memories of the little girl Vanessa (now grown up) who summered happily here.  Marcia is frail and can barely see. She is bothered by sun and bugs and the chilly nights yet bravely walks the hills at Gt. Hawk.  She is an inspiration and one of the few “old timers” left.

Another day we visit Lina, our Russian immigrant friend who lives in Connecticut but keeps the second home at Gt. Hawk . With Valery’s sudden passing two years ago, we still mourn his absence.  This summer we get to meet Valerik, her one year old sturdy grandson born after Val died. It is bittersweet and I think how hard it must be for her to stay in a house she and Val loved so dearly together.  I take note of how brave she seems carrying on the tradition of coming to Vermont.

  I receive an email from Lesley inviting us to her home off the Bethel Mountain Road to meet the professional musicians she is hosting for dinner.  I was once on the Rochester Chamber Music Society Board and their last concert is Sunday, which we plan to attend.  I happily accept and we drive over to her beautiful home with wide views of the Green Mountains and gardens that she has planted and nurtured each summer.  It is as lovely as I remember it and she greets us as if she had seen us yesterday.  Dinner with professional musicians who are experts in Renaissance music is a new experience for us.  Where else would this happen?

We pick buckets full of blueberries at the organic blueberry farm on the outskirts of Rochester.  We’ve been going here for years and hear that this summer the berries are better than ever. The owners are ecstatic after several bad seasons and trying to sell the farm.  A younger woman picking at the farm one day when we are, greets me with “Hi, Kristina”.  She looks so familiar… but why?  “Remember me, Pam…from the Randolph Bank?”  Of course, I say, relieved that she has nudged the memory of our friendly interactions over the years taking care of bank business.

One day I stop at the Rochester Public Library which is now a showplace in a small town of 1200 people .  It’s only open 3 days a week.  The library is in an old church which, over the years and with much fund raising, has been beautifully renovated down to the original stained glass windows on the second floor.  I spent much time in this library and when I left, I donated half my book collection.  I can never come to town without “taking a look”.  I see a book I’d like to read on the new book shelf. Jeanette, the librarian, greets me with “Hi, Kristina!” as if I’d never left.  I ask her if I can borrow the book during my visit. “Go ahead,” she says, “as long as you are still in the computer.”   I take it to the checkout person and my name is still there…no problem!

One morning I meet my friend Susan in the North Hollow for a walk.  I remember how Susan and I met at Bethel Elementary School in 1995 and have been friends ever since.  We are the same age and same coloring  - we both had short strawberry blonde hair (now turned white blonde).  She was Mrs. Rule, the music teacher and I was Mrs. Aaronson, the librarian.  The students would confuse us and call me Mrs. Rule and her Mrs. Aaronson.  She drives over from Bethel on a sunny summer morning and we greet each other as if we’d never been apart. We walk the gravel roads on the North end of Rochester. There is not another soul out walking and only some cows in the field who flick their tails lazily as we walk by. Occasionally a car or truck will pass us with a wave from the driver, but all is silence and beauty.  There are wide open views out to the Green Mountains and miles of green open meadows. Once this was all farmland.This has always been my favorite walk in any season, and we do it easily while catching up on our lives, children, grandchildren, and exchanging the joys of being retired now.

A visit back to Rochester calls for a walk or bike ride out the Bingo Road.  Having no bikes, we drive part way and then get out and walk the familiar shady dirt road.  Above us, the maple trees create a tall canopy shading us on a warm summer walk.  “Remember how buggy it used to be out here? “ I say to Art.  He nods.  “Well, it still is,” I say as I swat the gnats buzzing around my ears.  It’s all as it was.  Several miles down the road we come to Harlan’s house built “off the grid”.  The roof has neat solar panels and there is a very large vegetable and flower garden on the narrow plot of land.  Harlan’s house is the most pristine house on a country road with many neglected and falling down “camps”, log cabins, and shacks.  Harlan delivered our mail for years.  As we walk by we see a thin man with long gray hair wearing a bandana and shorts come out of the house headed towards the garden.  Suddenly Art heads across the lawn and reaches out his hand saying, “I’m Art Aaronson.  Do you remember delivering our mail at Gt. Hawk?”  “Of course, I do,” he replies without hesitation.  And so the conversation ensues from the question “how have you been?”  Harlan is happily retired now as we are.

Our two weeks are up so quickly and it is time to go back to our “real life” in Asheville.  We take our last walk up and down the familiar roads glad that not much has changed since we were last here.  I don’t wish we lived here full time any longer because our needs have changed and we live in an easier place.  But I am comforted knowing I still feel a strong connection to Gt. Hawk and Rochester and always will.  As we drive down the mountain to head South I muse to myself, “I wonder if people will walk by our house and remember it as the “Aaronson house”.