The Autumn of My Vermont
You always notice it on an August afternoon—a different hue in the sky, a crispness that isn’t summer. It evokes the smells of soggy soccer fields and fallen leaves and the woods before your mom closes them for fear a hunter will confuse your blond head with the white tail of a deer. Weeks before the first leaf changes color, it’s here: this odd, often beautiful, mostly bleak, transition to winter. If you live down in Massachusetts like I do, you count the days till the last of the mosquitoes dies, till the leaves on the poison ivy bushes flame out, curl up, and decay into the sand. You become accustomed to the crunch of acorns underfoot on the brick walkways. Most of all, you miss Vermont. There should be a support meeting for you in a dank church basement, full of lost souls who introduce themselves as “adult children of the Northeast Kingdom.” You take consolation in the fact that oysters are once again edible, but as your face winces in the cold breeze off the water, so too does your heart as you wonder if the maples up to Craftsbury Common have burst into flaming colors. When’re they going to peak? When’re they going to fall and leave the hillsides gray and ghostlike? When’s the killing frost going to paint the fields and shrink the garden greens? When the eff is it just going snow already? These are old questions, burned, like the color of the sky, into the bones of animal memory. Down below, here at sea level, you can only wonder. And you can wait. Impatiently wait for your rare opportunities to escape work and soccer schedules and point the car north. Every fall there’s this same waiting, this yearning, this hint of regret and melancholy, this low grade mourning for something more than just the fading glow of summertime. This year is different though, and it hit me on our last visit to Jay Peak: with my parents’ upcoming retirement to warmer weather and the inevitable sale of their house, the entire basis of my connection to Vermont is about to radically change. This truly is the beginning of the autumn of my childhood.
I am not a Vermonter. Back in 1974, thirty-five years ago, my dad followed in Ethan Allen’s footsteps, moving up from Connecticut; he dragged my mother, a belle of the South, along with him. By my third grade, we had lived in Burlington, Derby, and Craftsbury Common, but I did most of my growing up down in the village of Craftsbury. Here I became a fisherman. Here I became a skier. One fall afternoon in fifth or sixth grade, my friend Steve and I were building a fort around a boulder in the woods. We were taking a break, maybe eating a candy bar or a pack of Ring Dings, and he said, “You know what, Chris? If I didn’t know you was a flatlander, I’d think you were a Vermonter.” Even now, I believe this was the finest compliment I shall ever receive—not because I’m a wannabe, or that I was trying to conform to a certain type, or that I needed acceptance. Sure, it was about belonging, but more to a place than to a group or an idea. This was home, and I lamented for years that the great tragedy of my life was leaving it all behind.
After my ninth grade at Craftsbury Academy, my family moved up to Derby Line because my father felt that he needed to live in the immediate community of the bank where he worked. The next fall, I went off to boarding school and the beginning of a twenty-year odyssey of bouncing from Massachusetts to Colorado to Thailand and, recently, back here to the south coast. I spent the vast majority of my time away from home, yet it was always there for me, our blue house on Caswell Ave, a short walk from Rock Island’s infamous Del Bar. Every winter vacation and many spring breaks, I hunkered down with Mom and Dad and skied at Jay, sometimes with friends from school, usually by myself. Even in the years when I only managed a weekend or a few days in the Northeast Kingdom, I have always taken comfort in knowing that I have a home there. This sense is so acute that to take away the “there” is to take away my entire concept of “home.” The place we live now is an apartment at the boarding school—nice, sure, but there are mountains in my home. Roads are empty there. Farmers raise elk and llamas and alpacas. Deer feed alongside the driveway. Everything makes better sense. Even the fish in the supermarkets is fresher.
It’s not as if I haven’t known that the end is coming soon. Three years ago, my parents sold the house in Derby Line and moved to Newport, near the golf course. It doesn’t feel quite like home because it’s a condo, but the views are right. With Jay Peak and Owl’s Head looming above the lake, it’s a great home base for our ski trips. It also lulled me into denial; I really thought Dad would keep it. Time would come for him to retire from the bank, but he would never really have the heart to sell his final physical connection to the Kingdom. We’d keep coming up to visit indefinitely. But my parents are set. They’re going to sell, and they’re going to spend their winters someplace warm. I don’t think it’s going to happen this winter, and hopefully not next, but in this economy, who knows? If Dad gets an offer, he’s going to have to take it because there may not be another one.
Next June, I’ll turn forty, but the way I’ve been thinking lately, you’d think I’m fourteen—a confused teenager struggling to accept his parents’ decision, going, “But…but what about me, Dad?” It’s not as simple as just wanting to use his house either, though obviously it’s nice to have a free place to crash when we ski. I think what I’m really afraid of is losing some connection that I have with my father. Surely it’s a phantom, but it feels real. The idea that maybe we’ll buy a place of our own, maybe even a condo at Jay, is small consolation. Because family is part of home, Vermont just isn’t going to be the same without Dad. What I really don’t want to admit is that this move uncovers a larger truth that I would prefer to deny forever: that my parents are growing older; that someday they will no longer be here at all.
The last weekend in September, Yupin, Luke and I escaped to Dad’s condo for a good dose of autumn. We retraced many of our summer tracks: we biked the trail along Memphremagog, stopped at the beaver ponds, floated boats made of driftwood and seagull feathers at a small beach, and rode the tram up Jay. The leaves were pretty, but not yet peak. We had no big ambition or agenda, just to enjoy the cool sunny day, soak up the views, and play around on the rocks up at the summit. After our adventure in July, I wasn’t about to push Luke to hike down the mountain again. We wandered and explored, discovered little forts made by scraggly pines against the granite. We saw the remains of a campfire and a small pile of cigarette butts. We looked over the edge of the face and marveled that people actually ski down those cliffs. I told him I couldn’t believe that I had skied down there, either. He concluded that it probably looks a lot different when there’s snow. “Some day,” I said, “we’ll be able to ski these together.” At this he beamed. Then he bounded off, sprinting across the jagged rocks, leaping to spots of muddy earth below.
Raising a son is a paradox, probably on many levels. Luke’s energy makes me feel young again. I want to get in better physical shape so I can keep up with him. I relive my childhood, especially when we’re outdoors, through his new experiences. I share some of his wonder, catch contact buzzes off his youthful joy. At the same time, however, he makes me aware that my age is approaching what they call “middle.” My knees aren’t what they used to be. The top of my head is nearly bald. I’m overweight enough that I worry about my heart. And I’m not about to huck off these sharp rocks, at least not in September, when they’re naked of snow.
As I watched Luke play, unburdened by the weight of mortality, I thought about how I stood, at the top of the Green Mountains, between my father and son. As far as I could see, leaves were turning bright colors. In another few weeks they would be gone. In fact, as I write this post, snow blankets Jay Peak. I thought of how my father’s leaves are changing color, of how he’ll soon drift on the breezes south to my mother, and how some day in the not so distant future, they will no longer set foot in this Kingdom that we’ve all called home for thirty-five years. I thought about how I was raised Jay, and how different Luke’s experience will be from my own. If memory serves, Dad only downhill skied with me once, though we all used to cross country ski. But he and Mom gave me this community, this small remote part of the world, and they let me run off to the mountain all by myself, whenever I wanted. Though I would much prefer they stay, they’re also giving us the opportunity to make our own home around Jay. And while I doubt we’ll make a year-round move, building our own family experience is something to look forward to, just as we look to the clouds to end this season of melancholy. Bring on the snow, I say, for that will take us all home.
