Lately, I’ve been scavenging donations to my library’s yearly book sale, digging through stuff I’d never read (but others may deeply love) for some real gems. In one not-so-hot memoir I skimmed, I found a reference to a Flannery O’Connor line from one of her letters. The line — such a good one — also depicts this Vermont March.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.

I skied over the pine-needle-strewn ice, took off my skis and crossed an oozy mud road. Then the snow gave out. Here’s a photo of an empty house along the road, once a farm beside Big Hosmer Pond, now padlocked up, with a For Sale sign in the front yard, waiting for new inhabitation.

In its online listing, a black-and-white photo from the 1950s shows a woman in a dress standing beside what might have been a fancy new car. Who? Where have you gone? Did you love living in this house? And did the loons sing then, too?

Craftsbury, Vermont