The Northeast: Part 2

6/22/13 – Mount Philo, Vermont

Four hours ago I was worlds away, packing up my tent, wandering down to the river one last time to see the morning on the waterfall, and saying my goodbyes to Randy and Laura Huckaby, the Texas couple on a slow trip up north to Prince Edward Island (because of Anne of Green Gables) with many stops along the way to “see the land.” They were packed up tight in a little white sedan and when I saw the license plate as I was walking past, I had to ask them: “Whereabouts in Texas are ya’ll from?” “Corpus Cristi” Randy tells me. About two sentences later he asked if I wanted a burger and a drink and I said I’ll be back with my guitar and a song in an hour.

My dear friend April once described “Texas nice” to me. She was an air force brat but calls Texas home herself, so I trusted her. I don’t know what it is about Texas that makes people so friendly. I think that if I can just be try to be as nice or nicer than them, I’m doing okay. Randy and Laura had a few kids back home and a few more grandchildren, and they fed me a tasty burger and some fresh strawberries and snap peas they picked up from some amish folks on the side of the road. Laura showed me a picture of their horsedrawn cart on her smartphone; the fruit was delicious.

I’m never good at remembering conversation, but the light dried up and the fire got smaller. They told me about how they had kept a pet squirrel for two years until he died. A good natured, fat squirrel named Ranger, who liked to hang out with other squirrels outside. Until people came around and scared all the wild ones away. More nuts for him. Other acts of texan animal husbandry included: raccoons, badgers, and foxes. These are the sorts of things campfires are designed for discussing.

After they went to bed I wandered around the campsite and gathered things to make my own fire, which was ordered like this:

pine needles-treebark-twigs-larger twigs-log-leftover firewood

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It went up easy, so I must have done it okay. I think one of the keys was arranging everything beforehand. I spent some time staring at the collapsing glow pondering whatever it is that most folks think about while looking at a fire alone. Out here I’m so focused on essentials. Each event leads into the next like the order of my fire. I get stressed out without a plan, but more than stress, I sink into a world where nothing happens.

Laura and Randy made me breakfast before breaking camp themselves, and I did the same not long after. I aim to be in Burlington today. I drove up 9N to willisboro and then south to the essex ferry. Randy told me it was $30, but it was $9.60. A pleasant surprise!

Lake Champlain had an easy surface of barely acknowledged waves. It was that kind of morning, with misty Vermont mountains growing out of the background. These places exist so much stronger here than in my imagination, which doesn’t have space for the vertical complexity of mountains, much less the liquid fact of lakes. The breeze was cool, and all around us was the veil of weather, past and present, dancing between the clocks of New York and Vermont.

I struck up a conversation with a sunglass-wearing, wavy grey haired man named Pat, who had been golfing and staying at a friends house in New York. A native Vermonter, he was on his was home.  He was an easygoing man with a polo shirt tucked into his shorts and drove a black Ford pickup truck.

I asked him where he would go for a day hike, and he thought for a moment and told me to go to Mount Philo. In the middle of explaining where it was, he told me that when we got off the ferry he’d just have me follow his truck to the road and he’d point it out to me. Apparently “Vermont nice” might also be a way of being. Or perhaps this is just how folks traveling alone operate.

Our plan worked, and I found myself parked in front of a little mountain not twenty minutes later. I changed into my hiking boots and set off, losing the trail almost immediately but found it again soon enough. Wooded areas on mountains might as well be anywhere – it’s just through the going up that you know something is going on. I practically ran up the thing – it’s been two years since I have seen a summit. Before we came along, Philo was known by the native Abenaki people as Matagusaden, which means rabbit mountain.

A little while later I’m here, sitting on warm stone, looking out at farms, lake, and distant geography. I ate an orange and some beef jerky, and now it is time to go again, find the next stepping stone, and enter the world of Burlington.