“The text came in, with a ping. “Soon we go Woodward on the west side of Chateauguay to the north to a secret stream”. I knew exactly what he meant, and where. We’d stumbled onto it, like fools, a few years back. Trespassing, probably, but out where no one cares. There are still a few places like that, or a lot, but similar to Chanterelle hunting, lips are generally sealed. What’s left of Vermont, is largely hidden from view. Control by larger bodies of governance may hem & haw, and pass legislation, however ... we know better. For now. You’re either born into it, or you’re really dedicated, like, for a lifetime, or, your children were delivered in your kitchen. Here. In Vermont. At a time when free-ranging midwives were still, a thing. I see that culture dying, and a new wave, coming in. The good, the bad, and the ugly ... it’s all coming in. I’m not sure I can separate myself from it, because I am part of that change, though with blinders on, I might claim not to be. And so it goes. I remember the road we explored, up and down, even peeking into a camp, at a time when cameras did not grace every corner of the woods. It wasn’t far from where the “gold crushing machine” we’d read about, and written songs about, could still be found, leaving its strange mark on the overgrown landscape. So many generations, of hopefuls, of charlatans, and dirt poor migrants. They’re now melded among us, and drawing in, seemingly, a continuous flow of modern counterparts. All because the land was, or is, so pure, and uncharted. Well, not much is left to the imagination, now. Thanks to realtors, and those interested to make money off the sale of anything, at an inflated price. It was probably always so, but in present day, with GPS and digital mapping, there’s much less, that’s just left alone... to be discovered by someone with a heart that truly belongs in the wilderness. We’d split up, that day, as he followed his deer hunter instincts deeper into the woods, while I skirted the edges making a more careful inquiry. In the end, we always found our way back together. His call to me, was often a hoot. Finely honed from years of practice as a teenager, now indistinguishable from the real thing - almost. I was alert to the difference. Crushing ferns, and dodging rotten logs as I followed, his call led me across a false stream, to the real deal. It amounts to nothing without the context, of the exploration. How we would go into the woods, without a notion of what we were looking for. He’s the only one I would trust in this regard, having spent a couple years, being un-trusting, and scared of the possibility of becoming lost. Somehow, it all proved to be a partnership, of instincts. I wasn’t just any dufus in the woods, just a slower, more measured observer of things he was occasionally, unaware of. We came at it, from vastly different early trainings. I was a child, left alone, to wander, in the unmanaged lands of 1960s suburbia, while he’d been groomed for survival, as a 9th generation Vermonter. I had no formal training, but I’d made connections, with trees, and animals, and plants, on my own. He, to the contrary, had been thrust into the wilderness by elders, but also, very much expected to hold his own, despite the weather, or adverse conditions. This is how and where we met. I’m convinced of the beauty, of how this unraveled. I can say that no other person has ever met me so completely, and so quietly, in the wild. If we could only find the time, right now, to go back and retrace some of those miraculous first steps again, together.”
