Old friends and familiar places...

          

          Vermont never loses its magic. I still felt it this summer. Coming from New York state into Vermont I knew when we had crossed the border. No “Welcome to Vermont” sign was necessary.  There are noticeably fewer cars on the roads and traffic moves more slowly. No one is in a hurry. Everything moves at a slower pace. This annoys some out-of-staters, like the cars with Massachusetts or New Jersey license plates who rush past us as if escaping a fire.  I am used to it now as I have visited and lived in Vermont for almost half my adult life. As we drive alongside Vermonters with our North Carolina plates we fall in line with them. We enjoy the journey and there is not a trip in the car that doesn’t elicit the thought that there is no more scenic road to be on than the one we are traveling at that moment.

            We stop in Rutland at the supermarket for groceries before heading to Great Hawk in Rochester.  In the Women’s Restroom I overhear two girls chatting.

            “Gosh it’s so hot out.”

            “Oh, the rain has cooled things down a bit, I think.” 

            “Yeah, but I saw where it’s going to be 80 this weekend…that’s too hot!

            “Yeah it surely is…” 

Weather talk is the number one topic of conversation with Vermonters either because it’s too hot too cold, too rainy or too snowy.  Weather permeates life here in a way it doesn’t in other places.  When we pay for the groceries the cashier doesn’t tell us to ”have a good day” and only says, “thank you”.  That is how I know I have left the South behind temporarily. I don’t mind the Southern greeting but a plain “thank you” is welcome for a change.

            Driving north from Rutland to the cutoff for Brandon Mountain Road takes us to Rochester.  There are very few cars on this 15 mile stretch of road. Arriving at the house we sit still for a moment simply listening to the deep silence. There is no background traffic hum, no airplanes flying overhead, only the soft swish of the leaves on the branches of the maple trees fluttering in the breeze and a distant “woo hoo, woo hoo” of an owl. Later in the afternoon there may be a rain shower making pattering sounds as the rain hits the ground.

            As we open our friends’ house that we will stay at for two weeks I am reminded how the Gt. Hawk houses come to life when people come home to them.  This may sound strange but all our Gt. Hawk friends who still own houses on the Mountain say the same thing.  Their houses make them feel missed when they come back from periods of being away. This house is becoming like an old friend each year when we return.  It is comfortable, large and airy although it’s probably happiest when it’s real owners with their two white Scottish terriers come back to live there and the house is enveloped in a blanket of newly fallen snow.

Our friends' home...

            After unpacking the car,  we are out the door to explore the familiar roads and see what changes we notice.  On our way up to Hawkcrest, the home we sold 7 summers ago, we pass a couple walking…the man slightly stooped wearing a hat with ear flaps to ward off the bugs.  

It isn’t until we are past them that I impulsively turn around and call, “Arthur?  Arthur Jacobs?”  They walk back towards us. 

“Yes, it’s Kristina & Art Aaronson,” I say. “Remember us?”  

“Of course,” he says in his Manhattan accent, although I would not have recognized him as he’s aged considerably. I wonder if he’s thinking the same about us. Our old lawyer neighbor still comes up for the month of August and “yes” he tells us, he is still working as a lawyer although his clients are fewer now.

            Down by the pond an SUV passes us and then stops in the middle of the dirt road.  Barbara, our old neighbor, hops out and rushes over to greet us with hugs. She is still a young 50 year-old and hasn’t changed a bit.   She leaves her engine running, the car door open, and not a single car comes by as she takes time to chat for what turns out to be a half hour. That is what you do in Vermont…you have time for people and schedules matter less.  Barbara is a full- time resident and the source of all information as she catches us up on new homeowners and which “old timers” (like us) are still around.  

Great Hawk Pond

       

The following day we are at the Rochester Café, a restaurant in a building which dates back to the mid 1800’s.  It has gone from being a rest stop for people traveling by stagecoach passing through town, to a pharmacy and then a soda fountain where Robert Frost was reported to have stopped on hot summer days for some refreshment.  Today, the restaurant and country store are run by a couple who have owned it nearly 20 years and who work 7 days a week serving fresh breakfasts and lunches to locals and tourists alike.  A blonde waitress whom we don’t recognize gives us menus and says “have you ever been here before?”

            I don’t think she expects us to say “Oh yes, we’ve been coming here for at least 25 years.”  I don’t even mention the years in the late 1960’s and into the 70’s when my parents owned a house at Gt. Hawk and I was here before I was married. Sue, the owner spots us and comes over with special greetings as if we hadn’t moved away at all. I remember to ask about all four of her children and where they are now and doing what.  That’s how it goes during our  two-week visit io Rochester.

Rochester Cafe

The old soda fountain at the Cafe frequented by Robert Frost

            Across from the Café we notice The Bookery, a new children’s bookshop my friend Sandy just opened.  I can’t resist a bookstore anywhere and so we walk in. Sandy looks up and says “Hi, Kristina…” as if I’d never left. She shows me around her new enterprise while I am remembering the many years I’ve watched her involvement in Rochester.  She moved from the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester to Rochester and opened a book business and became the town librarian for several years. She was a much better bookseller than librarian but no one knows books and authors better than she does.  Husband, Larry, now has a thriving business -the Vermont Soap Company in Middlebury. I am a walking history of everyone’s life here…and I have not forgotten any of it! 

            From Sandy’s we head back towards our car  but not without stopping at the Mobil gas station which has its summer sign out announcing “Creamys”.  How can we pass up a baby chocolate and vanilla creamy for just $1.50? Taking our ice cream cones to eat on a park bench on the town green, we watch things slowly wind down on a Saturday afternoon.  The parking lot by the Café has cleared out as people have gone home from their morning shopping. The library across the street closed at 1 p.m. as it does on Saturdays.  The town library, which is only open three days a week, occupies what used to be a white church building and still has significant historical stained glass windows that have lovingly been restored. It is one of the most unique buildings in this village of 1200 residents.  As we finish our ice cream I think about the saying “rolling up the streets” which is what has happened on this lazy warm Saturday afternoon. We head back up to the mountain outside the village to our house and where it is always significantly cooler than in town.

            There is no itinerary when we go to Vermont.  Now that we come as visitors,  we are free to do as we like. A priority is to walk every road in Gt. Hawk to remember the many years we spent here.  It is like turning the pages of an old photo album that has been put away for some time. Each curve in the road, each clump of wildflowers, each driveway, and each home ellicits memories and I am filled with gratitude for having lived some my life in a place that has changed very little over the decades.

            “Do you remember when our car got stuck on the hill going up Sparrow Hawk Road in a snowstorm?  We were trying to get up to the house and never made it?”  Art remembers instantly how we left the car in the middle of the road while we hiked up to the house with a few things.  We left the car where it was till the next day when the snow plow came.  Only in rural Vermont…

            I think about the wildflowers that grow on the road that I could not resist picking in the summer -  daisies, black eyed Susan’s, Queen Anne’s lace, purple Indian paintbrush. I made bouquets with them to bring in the house.  I glance up at my deck at Hawkcrest high above the road overlooking the Green Mountains and remember the lazy afternoons in a chaise reading a book, listening to the birds, and  glancing down when a car would pass by…usually once an hour. 

Walking the hills at Great Hawk...

            Peering down the long driveway to my parents old house, which my mother named Hawkwood, I remember back to Thanksgiving in 1970 when it snowed hard the weekend the house was finished and they moved in. My brothers and I were all there.  My father was on R & R from his assignment at the US Embassy in Saigon during the war  That house is nearly 50 years old now. 

            I love to walk in the North Hollow, on the other side of Rochester from Gt. Hawk.. There, the views are wide open with fewer trees and wide expanses of pastures, farm land, and red barns dotting the landscape that could be a picture postcard.  We walked the North Hollow loop one misty Sunday morning. As we walked I paid no attention to the light rain.  Instead, I visualized the fall foliage and colors of the maples along the road, felt my hands in the pockets of my warm parka on winter walks, and recalled spring walks with fields full of flowering apple trees and contented Vermont cows out grazing after a long winter. This is my most favorite country walk.

 Views in the North Hollow

Walking the North Hollow loop...

            We picked buckets of organic blueberries at Sunshine Valley Farm just outside of Rochester.  The farm sits in the most picturesque green valley between two mountain ranges with the White River running alongside of Route #100. Rob, the owner, told us this was the best picking season ever as he handed us buckets to fill.  We probably ate as many as we picked as the clumps of the various varieties were falling off the bushes and we had to sample them all. We are back to our summer ritual of picking blueberries while supporting Rochester’s blueberry farm. But wandering up and down the rows reminded me of picking with Hayden and my niece Megan, and other friends who visited us in the summertime.  It was where we took everyone.

        We saw many old friends this summer....even our South Royalton friends, who have since moved to Sarasota.  They were renting a cabin in northern Vermont and on a drive up to see them we got lost.  Getting lost in Vermont is a joy as each road is more beautiful than the one you have turned off of.  We sailed along wondering where we’d end up when suddenly we saw familiar tennis courts and lots of young people playing tennis. 

Hayden's camp

 By accident we happened on Windridge Tennis Camp – Camp Teela Wooket in Roxbury where we sent Hayden the summer he was in 8^thgrade and where he worked as a camp counselor two summers when he was at University of Vermont. I pulled off the road abruptly, grabbed my phone and took pictures to send to Hayden. He was thrilled that it is still there. Getting lost in Vermont can bring about the unexpected.

It was the summer when we took Hayden to camp that prompted us to stop in Rochester to see my parents old house which they had long since sold and moved on from.  It was a perfect Vermont summer day and we found ourselves walking into Hawk North Realty to ask if there were any houses for sale. There were three and Tom Paino took us to look at them all.  One month later, back in Princeton, NJ, where we lived on the campus of Princeton Day School, we bought our house at Gt. Hawk on Sparrow Hawk Road. That was in the fall of 1990.  

 Celebrating birthdays with Helga and Peter at Simon Pearce restaurant...

            We went to last concert of  the season of the Rochester Chamber Music Society on the first Sunday after we arrived.  For 25 years Rochester has hosted top notch chamber musicians in the village that perform in the white steepled church on the hill.  This concert was superb and during intermission we were overwhelmed by people welcoming us “home” so to speak…even though technically it is no longer home.  

            A neighbor had a special luncheon for us one day and we were invited out to dinner many evenings with old friends.  Somehow it surprised us that our friendships of long ago have continued to ripen despite our having moved away.  Perhaps it has to do with the many years we came and went from Vermont and the “"history" we have with people in this one town.

Fun evening with Wedens & Zemelmans at the LaRue Farm in Watisfield

Having spent time in this village in Vermont made a big impact on our lives and still means we have much in common with friends who still live here.. We will always feel a connection to this place. Our friendships have ripened and so has the place despite the fact that we are now seven years into “The Asheville” chapter of our lives.

 Day trip to Middlebury, Vt.