For a while you can get away with being behind on your blog. For a few months no one notices. Sure it's getting cool out and you're still posting pictures of suntanned, short-bare legs and golden sunlight on the beach, but you were living life to the fullest that summer and no one begrudged you a little delay.
I'm almost a year behind on my blog.
This morning as I arrived on the farm and a cool jacket of frost lay on the crops, like the thin layer of icing my grandmother spreads on Christmas cookies, I thought about these photos. The photos of that white icing sitting deep, smothering the trees, hailing from the heavens in fat, buttery globs.
I thought about how almost a year ago I went to Vermont for the first time.
Vermont is one of those storybook states for me.
It's darkly green. It's dense. It's shaded and shrouded.
But at the same time it's blindingly white.
Our friend Greg Berry moved to South Royalton to go to law school.
Law school can be a dark, lonely place, especially when you live in South Royalton surrounded by mountains of tantalizing pistes, but all of your peers are too buried in a law book to hit the slopes.
So when we suggested a visit, a visit to experience the fabled whoosh of the Vermont mountain slopes, Greg was more than happy to accommodate our wishes.
So we drove to Greg's tiny apartment, greeted by Bow's gruff welcome and Baxter's curious meow to stay for a quick weekend of hash brown breakfasts, jokes contests, an unevenly matched game of scrabble and good ole fashion skiing.
South Royalton is a tiny little town. One little street of commerce with a Co-op, a thrift store, a coffee shop and a restaurant or two are the offerings a few minutes walk away.
We poked around the co-op, looking for treats amid beeswax candles in the shape of howling wolves. We went to the local burger joint, the joint that people travel from all around the state to go to, and had a vegan burger fail.
But mostly we hung out in Greg's apartment, strumming on guitars and enjoying the warmth of heavy quilts.
One day we hit the slopes at Suicide Six. The next day Killington. And then our trip was almost over. A weekend goes awfully quick when you are hopping from warm restaurant to warm car in between embracing the cold in a downhill free fall.
So on our last morning there was something Greg wanted to show us.
He took us through town, over the train tracks, through a tunnel and then we headed up. Slipping and sliding and stopping to admire the unbelievable white and the shrouded dark greens, we huffed to the top.
We climbed until we got to the place where the valley was laid bare. The rocks made a perfect little ledge to tiptoe out onto and spy down on the sleepy little towns below.
Kent's Ledge was a perfect way to end our whirlwind trip to Vermont.
As summer slips into fall and then so quickly into winter, I can only hope this winter's adventures will be as successful as last winter.
Thanks Greg!
