Come With Me ... To Explore my "Home Next Door," Wonderful Vermont ...

Essay and Photos Copyright Julie M. Moran, 2001.

What can I say about Vermont I haven't written already? Its magnificent charm, grace, splendor, wondrous changes within that stay permanent deep within us ...

... always a sublime, unique character of its people, who – in slightly shrinking numbers, remarkably – cater to visitors even as they come in and are swept out for the next group ...

...always holding indurate the character of the valleys, hills, forests and mountains, stately squares and brilliant white churches and down-home homes ...

... always in that precious state of permanence.

[ This is taken from an essay I wrote

in December 2000 ... ]

"Kaleidoscopic" was a new word I heard recently to aptly describe Vermont, what was, as a child, seemingly only green in background color. My recent trips skiing to the Mt. Mansfield area (Smuggler's Notch resort) have reintroduced me to the backdrop of this unique New England state -- and quite a few new cool people, a broad stroke of different personalities as foreground, always donning that exterior texture of worn wool and flannel, inventors of the L. L. Bean style ...

Well, what Christmas card deck could be printed, or New England art gallery exist, without the artists reflecting on the deep, deep blue and bright white lights of cold, clear Vermont nights, quiet in a blanket of peace and God's blessing; and the tall narrow shapes of chimney smoke and church steeples, beseeching too Heaven's holiday love and good vibes ... and the half smiles of cold, slushy people ambling inside some old country store, sharing stories over fruit- and nut-flavored coffee and a baked goodie. All this makes for a lot of wonderful Christmas cheer, for which I feel truly blessed.

These are the trappings. There are, in fact, a lot of transplants to Vermont too, from all over, I've learned and to which I have been introduced.

In the old motels and inns and B&Bs I've met Vermonters that, yes, "sugar" and saw wood into (typically pricy, or fancy, or highly engineered) shapes and projects; make cheese, smoking meat and all that. Yet I've met more people who work in Burlington's computer industry, centered around IBM. It's rare to find a dopey Vermonter like Darrell and his brother (Darrell). If you do, likely it's just an act.

Smuggler's Notch is the "low key" side of the Stowe region, and that mighty tumble of mountains shouldering the great Mt. Mansfield (I say "mighty"since, by comparison, they are great merely by New England standards). I've been really getting into skiing this season; with my running hampered in cold weather by the chilling numbing of fingers and toes. Skiing has become a great outdoor exercise where there are also lots of tricks for staying warm; and it is, I confess, a lot more interesting than a 14-mile run.

Vermonters deck the halls with ample Christmas decoration, but it's never gregarious or overdone – unlike my house, which is now bearing a huge American and eight international flags ... and patriotic sprinklings of white, red and blue icicle lights! I can just hear my dad cursing me from heaven, "Looks like a brothel or a smokey bar!" Oh well. Certainly parents don't or can't always go along with what their kids say or do, that eternal mystery of the generations. We're all the same, but yet we're all different. Kaleidoscopic, you might say.

Recently I've been sending and receiving website correspondence with skiers from the Alps, around the magnificent Mont. Blanc in Italy like Aosta and Courmayeur; and the Dolomites of James Bond fame; and of Bormio with its ancient Roman baths; the romantic sounding "Milky Way" and the elegant singing "Sella Rondo" and "Cortina d'Ampezzo"; and Chamonix, Megève and La Plangne, Valmorel and Trois Vallèe, resorts not too far from the Olympic village Albertville, in France -- which, it turns out, features skiing certainly rivaling if not surpassing even Switzerland or Austria.

Then at the Highlander Motel, on the Mountain Road to Smuggler's Notch, I met a young ski instructor and accompanying entourage from the Andes, in Chili (it's "chil-AY" not "chili," and "and-AYS," not "andees," they scolded me). They were telling me about Santiago, and also their resorts, Portillo and other faraway ski places, El Colorado and Valle Nevado, reminding me of our great American winter resort names.

Well, I'm reminded too, that Switzerland has its Crans Montana (reminding me of my skiing in sort-of snobby St. Moritz, in 1992; but more so, my ski trips out west, at Sun Valley, Idaho and Alta, Utah, which I recalled for my new Chilean friends).

Then, Italy has its Madonna di Campiglio ... close-sounding to my own "majestic" Smuggler's Notch's middle crowning sister, Madonna Mountain -- but the latter having decidedly American-sounding trail names! That would include my most favorite ski trail of all, Doc Dempsey's Glades.

Descending "the Dempseys" is floating among ghostly, heavenly white birch trees and what the locals call the "gnarly" face of Smuggs' steeper, bumpier faces. Despite the frequent cold and inclement weather (well, it IS winter!), I've had seven lovely days on the mountains so far ... my skiing style has delightfully improved. It's beginning to feel to me kind of like a cross between ballet and football or something ... regardless, after each day all my joints feel like I've been rolled off a cliff in a barrel!

Part of mastering these slopes, it seemed, is overcoming fear of the "fall line" ... with its rush of power that ultimately can lend ... weirdly ... control, which in a way makes alpine skiing extra tricky. It comes sort of from that brief rush of pointing straight down, knees bent, head and body shooting straight downward ... a precise moment when energy of gravity can give you the ultimate power to manager each turn slice ... arms outstretched, poles metering out the "oomph" of each turn like a metronome, dancing almost, through lightening-fast quarter-turns downward. "Plant your pole, ski around it ... it really helps a bunch," one super-expert local growled at me after watching me fall a couple of times.

Plant your pole ... ski... around it ... plant your pole ... ski a ... round it ... plant ... damn, he was right.

But courage, ah, courage! Where can that come from, overcoming fear and finding courage to master the fall line, master the steeper, more gnarly slopes, life's more gnarly moments?!? My own trick, finally coming to me yesterday: Singing my favorite Christmas carols as I was making my way down through. Believe it or not, that silly little trick really worked. Try it, you'll see.

Each of my days up on Mt. Mansfield has been wondrously different, the color of the sky and the mountains in the distance, the texture of the snow on the ground and sprinkled over the trees. When high pressure rules the air, the Appalachian peaks are brilliant and bright against deep blue winter sky (yes, the Green Mountains are along the continental Appalachian line).

Even New Hampshire's white-capped Presidential Range is visible, though far, far away. It is truly stunning, on such days, how even nearly 100 miles away Mt. Washington manages to tower majestically among the others, like the pictures I've seen of Mont Blanc ... or a Chilean volcano or even Mt. Fuji or Mt. Rainier -- hey, use your imagination! When it snows on Mt. Mansfield, it REALLY snows ... typically hard-driving, huge yet delicate flakes of frozen moisture slamming into your face as you descend the mountain.

Here at home I'm in this great "finishing up" mode, Christmas stuff, working on my web site (the project that never ends), reading and writing, watching my stock portfolio plummet and wondering what January's challenges will be. For many people I know, it's been a redefining and rediscovery time, as if the whole world is quietly holding it's breath waiting for 2000 to exhale -- before the gun shot signals the brave New Year to come!

It's true, well, I guess it nearly always feels that way this time of year, just between the craziness of Christmas shopping and New Year's festivities ... between decorating the house, and taking on innocuous little crafty pursuits (I made a slew of candles and smelly bars of odd-looking soap, made with goats milk and sugar glycerine and real fruit and herbs). I've been listening to choral and organ music, the amazing sounds of memories of church festivals and concerts and masses emerging from the deep recesses of the past ...

What are you all doing New Year's Eve? I'll be enjoying Burlington's First night, then sneaking of for a day or two of – you guessed it – more craziness buckled to two boards bombing down a (hopefully) snowing mountainside. And hanging out with my new friends from Kaleidoscopic Vermont and far beyond.

October 2001, I wrote this e-mail to a couple of friends ...

Hi! I hope this e-mail "finds you well" and, returning from a wonderful run I thought up stuff I wanted to tell you about. And so I thought I'd stretch my writing muscles just a little ...

I returned today from a brief, two-day drive through Vermont -- and before you say it, I know, didn't I just got back from a vacation? I know, I know, got to settle down, stay home and get some work done, but – thing is, I was with a friend for some four days – we kind of drove each other crazy, and that was totally expected, but we both had lots of fun too. It's just that I realized today I really need time out of my house to be alone sometimes, just to get my head recharged. Which is what I did do.

I set out on a "reach," driving as I do, intending to get to rural Maine but didn't get nearly that far, owing to my guilty conscience, realizing that -- you guessed it -- I had work at home I was neglecting. But anyway, with my oft divagate I did wander through quite a few of the little towns of Vermont I so dearly love. And I thought I'd write down a few things about them for you to think over, way out there in Colorado as you are.

Ok, so, seems each little Vermont town has the same quaint, lovely stuff.

There's a little general store. Imagine, that each sits as a tiny island, proud and pure, beacon where roads intersect, no matter what your need, what you want, where you're intending to go.

The Vermont General Store, it should be generally stated, has to be (a) of wood siding, ideally painted red, (b) sell everything that can possibly fit into a little general store, (c) have dirty, rickety, wobbly, grungy wood floors and equally dirty low ceilings, (d) a couple of nosegay-papered tables on which are oversized bread loaves bursting with yeasty fresh flour aroma, (e) an old, humming horizontal refrigerated slide-up case sell lots of Vermont (read: Cabot) cheese, maple sugar stuff and (f) feature at least one middle aged man or woman wearing fuzzy woolen sweater / scarf / hat and talks with that "ya can't get thear from heah" accent.

Well, you'd be lucky to get waited on in under 10 minutes. I should not be in such a hurry. But if they don't come around, you just hop in the car 'till you get to the next little town and the next little red general store. So there you go.

Oh, and there's plenty of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream around. My hunch is, I don't think the locals touch it. Let's face it, at $3.50 for a scoop of the incredibly fattening, heart-halting stuff, the cheese is actually a welcome alternative. These are, after all, two overweight hustlers with one heck of a business plan, selling the stuff. More power to them, definitely, but I'll stick to my frozen yogurt, thank you very much!

Well, I should also add here, the very special towns and villages I love -- Bennington, Brattleboro, Middlebury, Burlington and my all-time favorite, Stowe -- where all kinds of antique / locally made / wondrously eclectic bric-a-brac is waiting to be discovered in cute little shops (see the description above, only change the paint color from red to white, if its all the same to you ...).

Most importantly, Vermont seems so timeless; it resists change absolutely. Now did I mention the great skiing? I know I did in my last e-mail. In the Northeast Kingdom, the lonely outback of Vermont, I saw the mighty Jay, now in a frosty October morn, bright and clear, and it is already boasting its well endowed snow covering. Even in Vermont, that's a rarity in October.

The temperatures were cool, not cold, but these broad-shouldered mountains just don't know how to stay green as winter approaches. The beech and the willows now, butterscotch,and the turning sugar maples next to their still green silver maple brethren create a artist's panoply mixed to look like froot-loop cereal. Gray clouds roll in now, inevitably, but it can't hold back smiles in resignment -- in Vermont, another season means another time that comes always. We will always be under its skies doing what we do here.

Unfortunately I past by the grand-daddy of our mountain boys, Mt. Mansfield, as darkness came. Through the Smuggler's Notch (it really was a secret route for smugglers to and from Canada) the twisting snarly road gets hammered with snow, and that pass is nearly ready to be closed now, when the winds rip through the cavernous path. By February you'll be measuring the white stuff here by the yard ...

"Smuggs" the ski resort is terrific skiing and is savored by the locals; while Stowe, on the sunny side of Mt. Mansfield, is more for the Mercedes jet set. Still, the village road below, meandering with Waterbury River's West Branch, is still just lovely -- especially pre- and après-ski seasons.

Sadly, during my last trip to Stowe, on a cold cloudy day, I had a run-in with a fat, wooden cross-sporting lady on the nature trail who simply didn't like my dog -- next thing you know, I was being chased across the open fields by the police and the dog catcher. Later I got a ticket in the mail for $50. All that warm welcome out the window. Trust me, it's not worth any more explanation that that -- except to say, I'll be staying away from the Village of Stowe fo the foreseeable future. Let the jet-setters and the born again weirdos keep it. There's plenty more Vermont left for simpler folks like me.

Much closer by is Stratton Mountain, a quaint European-styled (if a bit phony) village in and of itself -- just the drive is so beautiful! And you know, iIf you could hug whole towns, certainly you would give big bear hugs to Manchester, on the western edge of Vermont, down the hill from Stratton; or Wilmington, close to powerful, windy Mt. Snow, both in and around Stratton's Green Mountains. These are all great, great places to be in the winter time, or any time for that matter.

A few days ago I pulled my boards out of the bag -- and boy are they are itchin' for a hill to fight down, trees to float on past, big, big moguls to battle. I'm going to give it a good fight! "Turn and Burn Forever!"

Well, you know, I was in the mood, I thought I'd resell Vermont to you. It's worth selling. Guess I got all "stoned" on the first burning firewood smoke in the air. And why not? It's legal and, well, since you can't beat the cold season, you might as well join it.

Mmmmm, my dog is wiggling. Having doggie nightmares, I'm certain. I think he and I will go for a drive up to the beverage center, and I'll settle in for some sweet Weizenbier. Life ought to be as simple as a dog dream, a great beer, a Vermont country store. Wherever we were, we'd know just where we stood, blissfully. My soul will always stand four-square ... in Vermont.

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Here's a few hiking homies I met atop Baker Peak ...