Somewhere in Vermont

East Topsham, Corinth, Barre.

Baskets and baskets of yarn. Sharp manure smell. Crunch of stick, leaf, and stone beneath my boots.

May I always forget the superlative beauty of northern Vermont, always be surprised again by its lushness.

This morning we drove down dirt roads past rippling creeks and spied a fawn, less than a week old, by the side of the road ahead. Instead of running, the little deer hunkered down right next to the road, so close that I could have opened my door and touched its white spots. It stayed very, very still, and finally we moved along, afraid to shoo it away lest its mother smell our human smell, but hoping it would run and hide from the road.

This evening, after a pot luck, we stopped the car to stare at the sunset falling behind the mountains, and to disperse with our breath the mist that had settled over the fields. Ahead, on the mountain side, sat a small farmhouse and a barn; in the yard two black horses chewed thoughtfully, then frolicked along a fence. Below them, the mist shielded the ground, so it looked like they danced on clouds.

I flew into Burlington on midnight following Friday the 8^th of June after the usual airport trouble. I was originally scheduled to fly out on Thursday, but storms—hail and hard winds—in Chicago delayed the flight until I missed my connection, so I spent another night at the Langs’ (who drove me back and forth to their home; thank you, Leon!) and flew out the next day—once again delayed in Chicago. The one positive note is that all that time allowed me to plow through the remaining 250 pages of Midnight’s Children, which got interesting at that halfway point (after I became used to the author’s artificial, discursive style).

It is hot, cold, warm, then cold here again. I confess . . . I miss sunny skies. Yesterday, Justice (Aurora's 9 year old brother) asked when summer would come; he's homeschooled and doesn't mark the date by the last day of school. We had just gone swimming in the lake (dipped into the cold water and out) and gotten ice cream at the Pink Shack homemade ice cream stand. Swimming and ice cream are two other ways to mark the turn of the season if you can't tell by the weather.

I’m connected with the internet again after a welcome week’s hiatus, down at Dartmouth to meet with Professor Alexandra Halasz regarding graduate school. I respect her perhaps more than any other professor in the English department, and I can’t wait to see her again. In the meantime, I’m sitting in Collis’ dining area, where I had dreams of chocolate chip scones and fruit smoothies. But they’re closed for the summer interim, and the weather is so chilly that a cup of tea sounds better at the moment.