Long Before

We returned yesterday from our Thanksgiving week with my brother and his wife just outside Asheville, North Carolina. While there we counted up the years, and with the exception of a gap when my parents were too debilitated to travel, my family has rented the same house in the mountains for the last 17 years. As always, it was a great time. On the way down we stopped to visit my new friend Leah at her farm in Tennessee and got to meet her daughter as well as goats, horses, a dog and a cat, and Captain Jack Sparrow, the mini donkey.

We didn't travel with Miss Hazel this year as she never seemed to enjoy being there, spending most of her time holed up under the dresser. Instead, we brought Zora (our new kitten-friend who showed up in our lives over the summer) but I think Miss Hazel must have left her instructions because she rarely left the toasty spot next to the radiator under a nightstand.

We went on walks, worked on a puzzle, read books by the fireplace, cooked delicious meals (my brother's lasagna!), hot tubbed on the deck, and made the yearly trip to Malaprops, one of my favorite book shops. Best of all, we were together.

It's been my brother's dream to find land on this mountain and build the house that my father designed for him years ago. He and his wife have been searching for the right spot in much the same way that John and I have been in Vermont. While our journeys aren’t intentionally similar, they nonetheless feel connected by the roots of our family history— time spent here in Asheville at Thanksgivings, and for us in Vermont, the "coincidence" of finding land in the little town where my parents honored their own dreams by buying a tiny piece of property before I was even born.

I love that my brother and I are both on a search to find "home" on land that is meaningful to us. There is something about the idea of putting down roots in a place that has already grown into your bones, as though it's been part of your future long before you knew it would be.

A Lake in Summer

We went back to the Poconos again this year to visit John’s friends at their cabin on the lake. I brought books, my camera, my writing notebook, and my bathing suit— perfect.

Sailing! I’d only been in a small boat once since I signed up at the community boating center in Boston 25 years ago and learned how to sail on the Charles River. John too—who used to live on a sailboat and even went to the Galapagos via the Panama Canal—hadn’t been in a tiny Sunfish in a long time. Here he is with Richard in the race (the two boats on the left).

I spent a lot of time in this beautiful little library, reading and working on some writing. Every day I had my favorite corner table to myself, with a view out the window of the birch trees.

Katherine seemed to hit it off with Jackie the cat. They spent afternoons chilling out on the porch together.

Katherine also passed the lake’s very rigorous swim test, which was a big deal because it meant she could participate in fun activities like pirate sailing (where you try to board and commandeer other sailors’ boats— or just tip them over) and paddleboard jousting (where you knock other people off their boards with giant pool noodles).

I think she had the most fun just hanging out with her dad, though.

I went for a walk in the woods every day…

… and spent some time in the nature center. This was such a cool place, with books and activity guides, tanks of fish and frogs and snakes, and taxidermied local animals and pressed flowers and plants, birds’ nests, skulls, and monarch butterfly caterpillars munching on leaves — pretty much anything you’d find at a natural history museum but on a smaller, more intimate scale.

Ever since swimming with lily pads in New Hampshire a few years ago, I think they’re especially magical. It could be easy to get tangled up in the tendrils floating underneath, but if you just float through without moving too much, it feels like you’re being caressed by underwater fairies.

The lake is quiet. There are no jet-skis allowed and even motorboats can only be a certain size. When we swam off the dock it felt like our very own world.

Back at the cabin. Jackie loves the window seat…

And I loved our cozy bedroom, with the ferns and forest right out the window. (And with bedspreads that I wanted to steal and turn into a dress :-)

Thank you again, Marguerite, Richard, Natalie, & Alexander, for sharing your summer paradise with us!

View last year’s Poconos post HERE.

The Long Trail Album

It’s been a year since John hiked the entire Long Trail. It took about three weeks to hike 272 miles along the mountain spine of Vermont, from the Massachusetts border up to the Canadian. (Read more about the trail and its history HERE.) I never posted any of the photos from his trip, but I thought a year’s anniversary would be a perfect time, especially since he’s thinking about going back to hike at least part of it again, and I’ll be in Vermont in a few weeks myself.

Friends sometimes ask why I didn’t hike with him, and the simple answer is: 1. There is no way I could keep up. (John is a runner and I barely get 5,000 steps a day, never mind with 20+ pounds of stuff on my back. (Oh yeah, and the HILLS!— the Long Trail is one the most difficult trails in the US) and 2. I just didn’t feel like spending three weeks hiking.

Instead, I played the role of resupply queen and occasional provider of transport to laundry and a shower. I was able to visit friends, stay at my favorite inn on Lake Champlain, and look up at the mountain ridges knowing John was a tiny dot somewhere…

We bought some trail food recipe books, and I mixed up various concoctions which he would then add boiling water to (they all sorta tasted the same though, he said), sending them off in care packages.

Shangri-la was McGrath’s, near Rutland, where he splurged on a hotel room and real meals.

For the first two resupplies he was able to hike down to a post office to pick up the packages I sent, but I picked him up myself the last few times— Hooooweee!— he was stinky and his feet were encased in mud. Here he is back at the trail after a shower, a good meal, and some laundry-doing…

Apparently there are a lot of ladders and serious climbs along the way. This view is looking UP…

He made a lot of trail friends on his hike, told me some wacky stories, was wondering if he’d see a bear but didn’t, and loved his time up there. I loved knowing that a place I called home for eleven years was giving him such a wonderful experience and taking good care of him. The Long Trail is special. It’s also the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the US. Yes the Appalachian Trail and the ones out west are longer and more well-known, but the Long Trail, like everything else about Vermont, has this un-commercial, undiscovered, mellow vibe.

John earned his official trail badge (which I really should sew onto his Eagle Scout sash!) upon sending in a record of his trip diary and is now a member of the Green Mountain Club. I admire him so much for deciding he wanted to take on something pretty hard-core and then not only making it happen but having a blast doing it. Cheers, babe! xo

More photos from his trip are posted HERE.