rural Vermont

Studded Snows

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

What’s the one thing that makes Vermont winters survivable? Friends? Laughter? Knitting? A chicken roasting in the oven? Nope: snow tires.

Driving to Burlington on a snowy Sunday morning to interview a young poet, I kept thinking, At least I bought new snow tires. When my daughter disappears in the darkness to work, I think, I’m so glad I shelled out for those tires.

On my way home through the Calais back roads, I pull over at the town hall, a beautiful and somewhat mysterious building to me — why is it here? what’s the history that’s now disappeared around this building? I’ve been listening to NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and laughing so hard I’m actually crying.

Outside my little Toyota, I’m immediately reminded of winter’s enchanting beauty, the bit of wind on my cheeks and the snowflakes in my eyelashes. Sunday afternoon, and no one’s out and about, save for one  grownup far down the road, walking a dog. Leaving my car at the roadside, I walk down to the meeting house and stand there, staring up at the steeple in the gauzy snow, listening. Then I put those snow tires to use again.

Winter seclusion —
Listening, that evening,
To the rain in the mountain.

— Issa

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Better Perspective

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 4 Comments

A milk truck rolling slowly up Bridgeman Hill catches the sunset on its long, silvery side. The mud-splattered Booth Bros.’s truck reflects that sky behind and above me — ruby clouds — and that movable art mural is so wonderfully awesome I’m taken out of time, snapped back into the world only as the truck has nearly passed and I realize the driver has lifted one hand, waving a greeting.

I watch the truck continue its gradual roll up the hill, where pavement gives way to dirt road. As I descend down the hill, the village glows beneath that magnificent sunset — the granite town building, the long strings of electric lines, the houses well-tended or ramshackle — players in a landscape of cosmic beauty.

When the winter chrysanthemums go,
There’s nothing to write about
But radishes.

—Basho

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Fat Garden

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

A monarch butterfly followed me to the post office. Since the store closed last year, the village is quiet — only a garage and the post office remain open, and the post office keeps merely afternoon hours. Save for the elementary school, the town feels emptied out.

With no one around, I walked with the butterfly along the dirt road, until the winged beauty turned and fluttered over the weeds along the stream.

September: with the weather still warm, the frogs sang last night. Just before dusk, the girls and I picked a mountain — and then a mountain more — of tomatoes from the garden. More to put up. The younger daughter keeps track, satisfied, with our harvest.

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