Curtis Hollow
“I remembered the road well, because he’d grown up nearby, & had pointed out to me exactly each wooded ravine he & his brothers used to bushwhack & ski, almost killing themselves. Yet, that suppleness of youth, it’s like a charm or a chant, or a yell that reaches the gods, who in turn, send down their protection. Not always, but for this bunch, yes. Today the road was blocked off. Some catalog you might probably have heard of, danged if they didn’t feature a farm on the road, turn it into a pinup, & attract too many gawking visitors with cameras. It was a bold move for the town to close it, but necessary. Heck, I loved a road like that too much, probably. One named “Cloudland”. But I had spidery connections, that rang, and buzzed and rippled up my spine on that road, and I’d earned them. I’d worked for the widows, of the famous publishers, of the seminal magazines. I’d sat at fires with shamans who turned out to be greedy entrepreneurs, and done my time sloughing them off Well, I wasn’t exactly on that road. But I was on a related road, one that a topographical map could show you how it actually did connect: logically, to the rest of the town. Or used to. Once upon a hundred years ago. I was, frankly, ecstatic to have a reason to drive five miles to the end of a remote hollow. A gardening consultation, on its face, but also a reunion. And I knew a secret, or thought I might. This unassuming day was full of synchronicities, and surprises, & the bumpy, rutted thoroughfare I was on, was now going to deliver, I was sure of it. However, you can’t always go by the numbers, in Vermont. They’ll go in one direction, then the town will change and they’ll be suddenly going backwards. This was the case, leaving Woodstock, abruptly as the gnarled maple turned orange, and into Reading. At least I could feel happy, that I was going upwards, climbing upwards, and would soon have a view in one or the other of the four directions. Just like the fake shaman had said. He likely intuited that in Vermont, we care about navigation, a tad more than the average Joe. It is not hard to be lost, in Vermont. To lose cell reception, and all contact with normal looking humans, knowing full well that as the crow flies, there is a trout fishing club within reach, or an amazing waterfall. Thankfully, I recognized the barn, and as I looked up into what I was later to discover was Calvin Coolidge’s namesake forest, I could only be in awe of so much beauty at my fingertips. So many unattainable peaks and valleys to look at, but never traverse, on foot. Again, thankfully, I have a task at hand, to divert me from my metaphysical, albeit temporary, psychosis This old, worked farm so recently abandoned by its elderly owner, who’d raised children here, at the end of Curtis Hollow. My friend emerges from what is now her barn, reminding me of a haunting silhouette of Tasha Tudor. We walk around the house, up to the height of land, down to the pond, along the stream, to the old fallen in cabin, and up across a field that needs brush-hogging. Gabi cooks a gracious lunch for us, in the crooked building, while I catch up on life with her deep & soulful husband, then all three of us sit at a simple table, unwittingly falling into meaningful conversation, reflections on illness & old age, upon art and renewal, and more pondering as to which of the old flower beds is still reclaimable. This is what life is. It’s not about war. On the drive home, I choose a route, and I know why I’ve chosen it. The secret paths that are roads to some, and forgotten by others, exist, as surely as gateways. or portals, do, that go both to the past and the future. I need to check, and without anyone knowing I’m doing so, making sure of my trusted entries and exits. The ones I’ve always stumbled onto, when my heart was nearly done.”