“People are brilliant. Some are. They leave signs & chalk board messages, telling you what they’ve done. Adding plywood to protect their plow from your wood pile. Secretly stacking some of your cord wood while you were gone. Choosing gas caps for you, when yours went missing. Driving hours to meet you in front of the court house, to share a smile and a book. Ringing in the new year with a bourbon on the porch in sub-freezing temps. Leading you up an obscure trail to see a footbridge, to nowhere. So beautiful, the hidden interactions we Vermonters have and have always had, tucked away. Little bits of money, in tidy greeting cards. That make groceries possible, generator repairs feasible. And so I started my Saturday with an early trip to dump, planned the night before. Car filled, well thought out, scheduled to beat the crowds. Not that it’s that busy. There was one truck there at 8:45 am, but people like to gab. It’s an easy place to report hay-related events or town gossip. I had to wait. Until they finished their chit chat. I don’t really mind. Now you throw the money through a sliding window into a bucket and you can’t always see who is in the warming shed. But I understand. A lot of folks just go along with what they think is credible, out of habit. Oh, the NY Times, or someone you used to have lunch with on a regular basis, who reports on the legislature. This is our fish bowl, god bless. And just like when my house burned down that I’d just ceded over to my ex, on my birthday, events can ring with strange portent and even evil, at times. There’s no way of knowing what others are up to. Secrets are well kept and easy to keep, in cults and corners of nefarious society. That’s why the hidden woods is a refuge, and a place we can go to understand what is unencumbered by “forethought of grief” [Wendell Berry]. The discussion of how badly we ski, how difficult the terrain looks on a portion of the Catamount Trail, but how sitting on our butts & just sliding might work well for these certain stretches, is worth having. With a little laughter, any insurmountable object becomes manageable. Our lives, for example. Our country’s odd appearance of being split down some imagined middle. The monopoly we call our “news”, diligently presenting us this ugly picture. And those who believe it, robotically sharing phone videos to condemn and criminalize neighbors. Dear Vermont. This is a love letter. Just don’t.”
