“Sometimes the old legs won’t carry. That’s okay. But when they do I can feel the future unfurl in my muscles again, and in my brain. On New Year’s Eve day, especially, it’s worth a shot. So I tallied up my advantages, including good health & a stout pair of ice cleats, to tackle the woods on a gun metal gray afternoon. Nothing special, no impending storms, no tremendous snow accumulation, just a solid few inches over mostly frozen terrain. And if you haven’t been in your local woods for a while, there’s a lot to catch up on. Who’s been out? Whose tire tracks have penetrated local logging roads, and why? How many new trees are down? Is there a discernible logic to why some dead falls have been left blocking the way? Where does wild country start and where does it end? Who updated their posted signs? Who put a culvert in where the plank used to be? Well, I think it was Bill. And the bow legged footprints along with the dog prints, those can only belong to one person. But past a certain point, you know you’re not going to meet anyone. You’ve made a certain untraveled area your personal stomping grounds. Because when you don’t have your own large acreage, you can kind of adopt land that doesn’t belong to you as long as no one seems to care or notice. You figure it out, you expand your knowledge of it, you pee on it, and you get familiar with the animal population by studying tracks. Just like in true crime or detective novels, your DNA has been left behind. If you have the time, you spend years of your life fixated on, chewing the fat and trading favors with folks who either have ancestral family ties to Vermont or who came in the 60s and scooped up farms, because it was still possible to steal corners of the state like that. It’s all a strange kind of crap shoot. I still revere the stewards of Vermont and the significant land owners. But the puffed up, gibberish spewing self appointed “experts” are just regurgitating mainstream views and values. I have to yawn. The life of my camera battery has more meaning to me, as do the carefully orchestrated layers of my clothing. I know I won’t be particularly warm on the ridge, nor did I expect to be, and anticipating difficulty, I planned ahead for it. That’s why I’m not too worried by the wind howling around me now. I can make it back to terra firma. I know what I’ve learned, the hard way, thanks to poverty, loss & betrayal. I’m not naive. I’ve stopped trying to tell my story. In these days of CV-19, it’s a huge accomplishment just to stay alive. Each voice, whether supportive, confused, or dishing out venom, has a struggling person behind it. Happy New Year. Dig into your soul. Don’t assume Vermont is going to ace this test. It’s not looking that way. There is so, so much more going on outside our borders.”
