Happy autumn to all: Go SOX!!!!!!!!!
Been a busy week plus in the Green Mountains. We’ve been out viewing the leaves, getting out on water in the unusual warmth, checking out starving artist studios, going to church suppers and having visitors. Took a lot of pix- so have provided two options to not bore everyone. You can check out the twenty or so highlights via the attached photos, or go to the Shutterfly link below to see the full 69 pix extravaganza (recommended). Lots of autumn shots, pix of friends visits, boating shots and the quest for the ultimate Vermont dirt road are included.
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Art in Vermont and Suppers: Artists in Vermont are an interesting clan. Almost all do a variety of things from raising animals to organic gardening, to cutting firewood/carpentry and working in restaurants. Everyone has a studio (I am going to have to set one up here- though not sure yet what will be in it). No sooner had we come back from our visit to the Islands, than our friend Nancy arrived for last weekend. We had our first Chinese takeout of Vermont with Nancy and our neighbors last Friday night with a massive display of little white boxes. We spent the weekend driving around for the autumn artists’ studio tour. Since it rained most of the time, we were the only people at all the studios we went to, and got to have personal tours of the artist’ work and space…which led to a bunch of new friends and dinner invitations. We met a Yiddish speaking New Yorker who raises and slaughters turkeys (just like on 59th St, he said), a Joe Pesci look/sound alike who turns wood, and a 78 year old water and oil color landscape artist, Robert Smyotovich, who is somewhat of a legend in these parts. We came away with several soggy objects d’art, visited a 60 year old Finnish sauna (pronounced around here as sow-nah), saw baby piglets just born and had Mexican food made by lily white Vermonters. Oh- and we saw a lot of leaves. After our day of labors, we went to the Southern Baptist church in nearby Proctorsville for the Harvest church supper, where we wound up sitting with the Minister and his family. He was a wildly intellectual character , who when I asked him how he found his calling said, “ at my bar-mitzvah”. For real..a lot of interesting people wind up in Vermont…
Chasing Leaves: Chasing leaves is a full time vocation, and we take it seriously. After our trips to the Adirondacks and the Lake Champlain Islands, we headed out this past week to follow “the peak” wherever it could lead us. Spent a couple of nights with our old friends Connie and Georgie at their B&B in Brookfield – the home of the world famous floating bridge (you can look it up). After a day of heavy rain, the sun came out and the leaves sparkled as we made our way over Roxbury Mountain to the quaint villages of Warren and Waitsfield to see leaves, ruminate on the condition of the world (Connie is a world class ruminator) and visit all manner of art and Chotchkies shops. We snuck in a picture perfect picnic lunch (with wine) in the shade of the Pitcher Inn in Warren and went on a rabid hunt for brownies in Waitsfield. The road was closed at the pass- so we had to detour which is the best way to catch a great view in Vermont. From there, we headed north to the remote town of Averill one our favorite haunts- the 125 year old Quinby Country. QC is a hidden jewel in sight of the Canadian border. Run by the Quinby family for over a 100 years, originally as a hunting camp- it became a family summer vacation place in the 1940’s. When Hortense, the 100 year old last survivor of the Quinby clan, was passing, she set up a land trust for the place with a Board and shareholders of folks who had been going there all their lives. They hired a guide from Alaska to run the place and now it is thriving both as a summer family place and a hunter’s haven in the fall. We get a little cottage heated by wood stove on a lake filled with loons and hang out with two dozen bird hunters (and their dogs) at meals (they seem to be a little more effeminate than your traditional hunters and drink a lot of red wine from France). We have been there many times before and it is usually pretty cold this time of year, but this week it was in the 70s and gorgeous- so we got out hiking and on the water for both a row and paddle. Not much better than sitting in the middle of a crystal clear lake on a brilliant fall day and reading a book (you can tell we are pretty serious boaters). Nights are crisp and dinner in the lodge is simple and family style…and we had WIFI in our cabin in the middle of nowhere- though about 50 miles from any cell service. More leaves below….
Columbus Day weekend- is this an important holiday to you? Well- it’s about on a par with July 4th or Rosh Hashanah. New Englanders and New Jerseyites flee their urban/suburban ghettos for this last dose of fall color- often arriving in quaint villages in Vermont (if not too far from the freeway) with massive photo lenses, haphazard parking and rolls of bills in their hands- to take in a little of the sanctity of the fall (Though it’s a pretty loud sanctity). They are like divining rods for pumpkins, antiques and maple syrup. So we try and go to places they can’t find ( we even did this when we were tourists, since we did not see ourselves as one of “them” ). Saturday we went to the event of the year in our local Belmont green- Cider Daze, featuring a 100 year old cider press and a lot of local schmoozing. From there it was down to Proctorsville for Singleton’s general store annual soup cook- off (really, a lot of bad soups with some nice grilled cheese sandwiches in a parking lot- but a really pretty parking lot). After a recuperation back at the ranch, we went to the monthly supper at the Oddfellows Hall (really!). Roast beef and lots of Vermont humor (yep, yep, nope, nope).Sunday rose magnificently in the mountains- so Jenn got her haircut and learned all the local news at some English woman’s house on Route 103 (her mum was visiting). We then headed off on a trek to see the migrating snow geese up in Addison at the Dead Creek wildlife refuge (bad photos attached). We stopped on the way (can never get anywhere in a straight line here) at an art show in the park in Rutland, a pick your own pumpkin farm- for Hog Heaven’s food truck bar-b-q lunch in Adirondack chairs staring at the mountains, and at a maze of odd shops based on everything purple. We arrived at the windy plain of the refuge to see a horde of both Snow and Canadian geese (a 1000 a day) flying over the field. Hung out for an hour while they re-positioned themselves over and over in a very segregated manner – blacks on one side –whites on the other
I believe this is the origin of the term “wild goose chase”….
So it’s now Monday of the holiday weekend- and we are trying to catch up with chores around the house- including burning some of the beautifully fallen eaves (we like them much better on the trees). Off to Boston this week for our last trek of the fall, then settling in for a month before heading west.
We hope this finds everyone well, just because…
Stu
