EAST MONTPELIER – Well up on a heavily wooded mountainside in the eastern Adirondack high peaks, in a lonely, sloping seep between two rocky ridges that likely sees no human beings for years at a time, there lies an anomalous cast-iron cauldron, almost hidden by years of dead leaves, that[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – If you happen to live long enough, there comes a time in life that, facing an uncertain, but certainly fairly short, future, you may find yourself wondering what you’ve been waiting for. There are still mountains you haven’t climbed, and now you’re no longer able to climb[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Whenever I take the ferry to the New York shore from Charlotte, I try to sit on the forward-facing bench on the upper level of the boat. Ahead of us rise the Adirondacks, one of the oldest ranges in North America. Most of the highest peaks are[Read More…]

EAST HARDWICK – On the penultimate weekend before the election, Bea showed up in the yard right around dark, having started from Nahant after her last Friday meeting. We were both ready for supper; so I fed Kiki, and we went out for Mexican and a beer. It was to[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Sometimes, when the stars align fortuitously, everything turns out fine: your car stops burning oil, your wife’s Raynaud’s quits bothering her, and your kid moves his drum set to the garage. Other times, when the alignment is bad, everything goes to smash. That was the case with[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – During the high summer the sun swings far enough north to flood the back porch with heat and light, especially in the afternoon at the hour for preprandials. But around Labor Day it retreats behind the northwest corner of the house, and it’s possible to sit out[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – It doesn’t seem possible it was that long ago, but it was. Seventy-four years now; my first autumn in New England. When you’re new to a place, you register everything completely, and with fresh eyes and ears. I had the incredibly good fortune to have been sent[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Of all the cultural commentary that floods in here daily on the internet, this little story is one of my favorites. A man standing in a checkout line in a supermarket is talking in a foreign language with someone on his cell phone. The woman standing behind[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Bridget, the young Irish woman who lives in my dashboard, led us unerringly across the glacier-striated grain of New England for almost five hours and popped us out onto Main Street in Rockland, Me., directly across from our favorite local seafood shack. Almost beside it, Front Street[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – “But ’tis strange; and oftentimes to win us to our harm, the instruments of darkness tell us truths, win us with honest trifles, to betray’s in deepest consequence.” The instruments of darkness, eh? It’s hard to believe in this scientific age, but lots of folks think them external (Satan, Beelzebub,[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – In the Adirondacks, the summer folks used to arrive by train, along with all their luggage for the summer. Their chauffeurs, who’d driven the family cars up from New York or New Haven, met them at the station to ferry them to their cottages (the men of[Read More…]

EAST MONTPELIER – Syracuse, N.Y. in the mid-1950s; a steamy Friday mid-afternoon in July. I had just climbed up for a water break from the manhole I was digging beneath the pavement when a little brown man approached: brown suit, brown shirt and tie, tobacco-brown teeth and fingers. “Hey, Whitey!”[Read More…]