Back to Vermont

 August 16 to August 21, 2019 – Rochester, Vermont

Entrance to Gt. Hawk Colony - celebrating 50 years...

It's August in Vermont...

            “We need to go for a walk around “the mountain”, Art insists.  It’s been barely a half hour since we drove up to our neighbor’s house, found the key, unloaded the car, and walked in.

            “Give me a few minutes,” I say as I walk around opening windows and pulling back the heavy winter drapes to let in the late afternoon light and fresh air. No time to unpack except to find walking shoes and shorts.  We leave everything and go out the door to “walk off” two days of riding in the car.  It’s not entirely because we’ve been sitting for hours on the drive from Asheville to Rochester, Vermont. It’s a habit we never questioned  and something we have always done when first arriving on “the Mountain”.  We take a walk to feel we are finally here. 

            “Listen,” I say to Art as we start up the gravel road, we know so well. “It’s so quiet!”  It’s the silence I notice first and which takes me a few days to get accustomed to.  No cars going by, no lawn mowers or weed whackers’ buzzing loudly, no background hum of traffic in the distance and no airplanes flying overhead.  Total silence. We are far away from town, cities, people, cars. We are nestled in the Green Mountains with only the sound of the breeze blowing through the tall trees and an occasional bird call or the hoot of an owl.

View from the top of Great Hawk Mountain

            I breathe in mountain air and feel myself unwinding.  I can’t believe I am once again walking the familiar hills I can navigate almost blind folded.  I think back 8 years ago when we sold our house and moved to Asheville. I knew what a move to a new place meant.  You said your goodbyes and focused on the adventure of going to a new place.  What I never imagined are the yearly visits of going back as we do now.  We’ve been back to Vermont for five summers. It’s becoming something we build in to our yearly calendar because our generous neighbors loan us their ski house each summer.  We return because it’s a joy to reconnect with a place that holds years of memories.

"Home" away from home now in the summers....

            We set off to walk the familiar loop which takes us down to the Great Hawk Pond. We decide to view the pond before going on. We meet up with neighbors who greet us like we never left. Carole is drying off after a dip in the pond and Norm is keeping an eye on his three-month golden retriever puppy who is sniffing around my feet.  They are  chatting in the late afternoon summer warmth. 

           I notice, as I always have, how people in small town Vermont have a different sense of time.  No one is in a hurry to get anywhere. When I lived here I had to learn not to walk by anyone I knew without stopping to talk for a bit.  I grew to like this…the slower paced life and the idea that connection to neighbors and friends is more important than rushing to be somewhere. Perhaps I exaggerate slightly but it’s all part of the scenario I am reminded of when I find myself back in Vermont. We simply pick up where we left off even if it’s been a year. No lengthy talk about where we are now and what we are doing.  Simply talk about the weather, the landscape, the past winter, and how long we plan to stay. “See you later,” we say as we continue on our walk.

            The summer visits to Vermont don’t have an agenda.  Our first morning we head out the door to check up on 317 Sparrow Hawk Road which is further up Gt. Hawk Mountain.  It appears no one is at the house and so we walk up what used to be our long driveway taking it all in.

            “The lilac bushes got bigger,” Art remarks.  I laugh and remind him how many years ago we planted those when we didn’t know what we were doing. We saw them in gardens down in town and wanted blooming lilacs in June. 

“They weren’t meant to be planted on the side of a rocky hill. It’s a wonder they have survived at all,” I reply. 

 317 Sparrow Hawk Road

 Mom and Dad's chairs

Home for 20 years...

            We poke all around the outside of the house having made certain no one is there. I even peer through the glass in the front door to see my rug in the living room, the coffee table and sofa we left behind and turn to get a small glimpse our beautiful dining room we added on the last few years.  But what is most astonishing is the outdoor dark green rod iron furniture on the entrance deck.

            “There are Mom and Dad’s outdoor chairs,” I tell Art.  “Can you believe they are still out here? “ 

 Fifty years ago now, I went with Mother to “All Decked Out”, an outdoor furniture store in Quechee to buy those chairs for “Hawkwood” their Gt. Hawk house built in 1970.  When they sold  the house and moved South in 1980 we took that furniture.  When we bought 317 Sparrow Hawk in 1990 we brought those same chairs and a table back and put them on our deck.  In 2011 we left it all for the people who bought our house and we moved to Asheville. (I do notice on our way to Quechee that the store is still there.)  I am overwhelmed by those thoughts as we move on to admire the new steps up to the house. Art goes to check up on his rock garden he lovingly tended the summers we lived there.

Mom and Dad's chairs - 50+ years old now

            One visit to our old house is all we need and we walk back down the driveway reassured that it is being cared for even though the owners live in Pennsylvania and only use it as a vacation house.  It’s probably not as “loved” as when we owned it but still… it’s not falling to pieces.  I find that reassuring. 

            Our first weekend is a sudden whirlwind of socializing – the GHOA Annual cookout on Saturday is where we meet up with new and old residents. I meet a woman there who says, "You look just like your mother."  I have just told her my parents built one of the first homes at Gt. Hawk back in 1970.  
          She says, "I remember Richard and Virginia Sampson when I lived here in the 70's.  No one has told me I look like my mother since she died. When I hear someone validate that Mom and Dad were here, it's a reminder that my history in this place goes back fifty years.

          That same evening is the Park House Fund raising dinner where we connect with more town friends we have known for years.  Then it’s quiet again and people go back to their lives. We are the “vacationers” with open days and  lives we have left behind, temporarily, in Asheville.  We go to Middlebury to “check it out” and it seems to be thriving as far as Vermont towns go. We even run into an old friend from Rochester on Main Street in Middlebury who stops us looking uncertain,  “Art? Kristina?”

            “Cynthia!” we exclaim.  We talk for at least a half hour until I wonder where our friend was headed.  That’s how it goes in Vermont…

            Another day we make the trip to affluent Woodstock where go in our favorite art galleries and high end shops..  We end up at Simon Pearce in Quechee for a much anticipated lunch.  (We always tell people that all big occasions in our lives were celebrated over a meal at the gourmet Simon Pearce restaurant.) One Sunday, we drive to Hanover, N.H. to visit to the Hood Museum of Art. It recently opened after 3 years of being closed and 50 million dollar renovations. It is just as wonderful as we had anticipated.

Hood Art Museum at Dartmouth College

            We pay a visit to our dear friend Marcia who is 86 this summer and almost blind with glaucoma.  This is finally the summer she tells us that she must sell her house.

 “I can’t manage up here on my own any longer,” she says.

We have been expecting this and are saddened this will be her last summer at Gt. Hawk. She is having difficulty accepting that reality.

  

“You will always remember this house and the memories that go with it,” I tell her.  

            Another morning we have 11 a.m. coffee with Michel and Heidja, our German friends who spend the summer at Gt. Hawk.  We sit on their large side deck full of blooming flowers in planters while Heidja brings out the German Dalmyr coffee and some locally baked coffee cake. She serves us perfect cappuccinos in her china cups and we catch up on news. They are moving to a retirement community and giving up their “big house”  on Amelia Island this December. They will continue to come to Vermont as long as they can.  It seems the right decision for them.  It’s a reminder that we are all getting older even though the surroundings and occasion fool me into thinking nothing has changed. After all, this is how it’s always been - coffee at 11 on Heidja’s deck. 

            One morning we park “in the Hollows”, as the Rochester natives call it. My favorite walks are in the North Hollow with wide open pastures and Green Mountain range on the horizon.  We go on a sunny day with not a cloud in the sky and everything is a “Vermont Life” photograph.  (Vermont Life was the quintessential photography magazine that captured everything about Vermont). We make our special loop which goes gently up and down hill on a dirt road.  We are rounding the last part of the walk heading to the car when we see a familiar person coming down the hill.

Contented Vermont cow...

            “Barb Harvey?”  I exclaim. 

            “Art and Kristina…how wonderful you are back,” she says as she gives us each a hug. Barb looks just the same, petite, well groomed, walking  strongly up the Vermont hills.  She is married to Marv from one of the oldest families in the valley. They own a good part of the valley and half of the town of Rochester. Their home is the picturesque, traditional white farmhouse with the restored traditional red barn across from it.

            “This is my favorite part of Rochester,” I tell her.  She goes on to tell us they are now spending five months of the winter in Florida.

            “I remember when you could hardly get Marv to leave Rochester,” I tell her.

            “Now, he can’t wait to go as soon as the weather turns cold,” she replies.

This, too, is a reminder that we are all moving on in years and making adjustments as we need to.

 Walking in the North Hollow

Barbara & Marv Harvey's home and red barn

          Much of our going back to Vermont is remembering  20 years of our lives. All our family and friends came to visit over the years and knew us as “Kris and Art who love Vermont and will always be there.”  Sometimes we lived full time in Rochester, and commuted to Vermont jobs, other times we lived abroad in Manila and Dubai, and came home summers. Eventually we moved to work in New Hampshire but could never give up our house on Sparrow Hawk Road.  Instead, we came home weekends, school vacations and summers.  We never questioned retiring on our mountain and living there as long as we could. Not long into “full retirement” we came to the realization that we did need to move on to an easier place to live.  Not quite so isolated.  We  closed the door on 317 Sparrow Hawk Road for good and came to Asheville in 2011.  

     

            By the middle of our second week in our neighbor’s house, I realize that I 'm ready to go “home”.  Why had I thought we might stay three weeks this year?  While I have never looked back to wish we still lived in Vermont,  I like knowing that “home” is now Asheville. Our life in Vermont will always be the memories of a place we truly felt a part of for a long time. Now, "home" is Asheville and Biltmore Lake.  And that is how it should be. 

Entrance to Great Hawk Colony