“This storm last Saturday buried half the state. It blew in hard & arrested frivolous trips, so most sensible people stayed home. Well, I had a compelling reason to keep moving, & I traveled over the mountain that day. I’ll be sad, when gas prices exceed my ability to pay. Because, in this strange interim period, I find that I want to drive my heart out. The world’s changing fast, and normal stuff we took for granted is now being irreparably removed. Snow, thankfully, is still snow, minus a little weather manipulation & looking the other way, I can still drive into it, and revel in its unpredictable, changing attributes. Maybe I’m giving the world situation the middle finger. Or probably, I’m just running. But since my local roads haven’t been plowed yet, I can come to a full stop right on the highway, crank down my window and take a leisurely photo, while ice pelts one side of my face, and without blocking traffic. There’s the cabin where I recited Japanese poetry to my lover; the apple tree where I sang “Johnny Appleseed” to my first born each morning after picking up hot scones at the bakery. I want to find a way up the abandoned mountain passes, that no one is still aware of. Because when history is lost, then snow becomes a mission, and it requires much more focus, to simply find the path. Sliding on ruts, in blinding conditions, without a horse, or sleigh: this extraordinary journey on studded, rubber wheels, careens between what’s left of our rural culture and where we think we’re headed. This makes “modern” Vermont rather contradictory. But transformative for a handful of believers. So many trials, so many memories veiled by pundits, to uncover, revisit, and resurrect. Now driving thru Waterbury in a blizzard, I can barely make out the gas station in the center of town. Strangely, I feel shame, remembering a celebrity passenger I’d ferried from the airport, and how impossibly awkward it was to talk to him. He asked me to pull over so he could run in for a six pack of Budweiser, and I’d idled my car, watching the snow fall on the windshield, disappointed. The details of my former life are better off, perhaps, officially smothered. I feel as connected to those years as to girl scout badges, long ago accrued and sewn onto their polyester sash. The wasted emotion, what was it all for. You felt you needed proof, to be loved. It was your reality, for a while, a passport for entry, where you had to beg, lie or fight, to be considered equal. I’ll remember those days, yes, I always will. As the wind roars down through the old, lost fields, to the heart of what’s left, of my wild, coded rivers.”
