Pie

Who knew raspberries came in so many colors? I adore Lauren's rustic pie crusts, even more beautiful when baked. I couldn't have known when I took this photo that a month later, the worst piece of pie I ever tasted would be the best I ever had.

Whole Earth

I loved how the "Whole Earth Catalog" held the possibility of so many things to be made, and all the things needed to make them. Things made of straw or metal or wood or yarn. It held the secrets of how to use medicinal plants or build a house out of tires and mud. You could learn to renovate an old bus and make it your home, and there was even an address to write away to, to order an old bus.

Looking at the catalog more than thirty years later, I noticed that the hippies that looked so old to me then looked so young to me now.

It brought to mind an image of my parents in our kitchen dividing a large bucket of molasses into canning jars, when they ran a co-op out of our home. I saw individual paper bags of oats and nuts, and how other long haired parents with little kids like me came by to pick them up.

I saw my mom and her friends wearing overalls and braids, and my dad and his friends with long hair and beards. I remembered how I never had a meal that wasn't made at home, how I carried my lunch to school in a basket, and how I once landed a pitchfork on my toe when I was digging in the garden that filled our back yard.

I remembered too, how it suddenly, unexpectedly, unknowingly, began to change. Somewhere around the time my parents went to see the movie "Saturday Night Fever," and I started wearing a Bee Gees belt buckle.

Looking closely, now, at the "Whole Earth Catalog," I noticed how dads were just young guys with long hair trying to do their best, and moms were moms at a time where women were caught in a cross fire of change. How they were trying to be moms and dads while also trying to grow corn, can tomatoes, make chutney, stack wood, build dulcimers, bake bread, sew quilts, knit sweaters, fix their own cars, make their own gifts, and work to pay for it all.

How could it not fall apart?

Images don't decay, they pass through time unhindered -Lynda Barry

Foote Street Farmstand

Sun tea, blue glass. My friend Lauren ran a beautiful farm stand for a few years, before moving on to other projects, and if you got to experience it in that time, you were lucky. I loved sitting on a wooden stool in the sun on cool summer mornings with hot chocolate and a homemade muffin. Lauren's cooking and sense of beauty is what is right with the world.

In this time where I'm under so much stress from trying to help people who are sick from being under so much stress, it's what I long for. Time to cook, and time to grow things to cook, it's a sign of wellness that I hold as a baseline, something I'm working to return to.

Recently, on a trip to Taos, I came across a "Whole Earth Catalog" from 1975 at a used book store. I was flooded with memories of long afternoons curled up next to the wood stove on our old blanket covered couch, lost in that catalog. There were only addresses to write away to for information, there were not even phone numbers. I remember the deep intrigue I felt as a kid, seeing those addresses from far away and mysterious places like Iowa, Alabama, and Northern California.

In these days of instant information, clicking and getting, and phones without cords, it's hard to imagine how we had the patience to wait for what we wanted. Yet, back in the days when we had to wait, it felt like there was more time.

Family Circus

I found these lanterns near the Middlebury Falls, behind the Marbleworks. Their shape reminds me of a story Lynda Barry once told about "Family Circus," that circular shaped comic that's been in the top corner of the newspaper forever.

When she was little, before she could even read, Lynda loved to lay on top of the newspaper and "read" the comics. She would look at the pictures and imagine what was going on, and her favorite comic of all was "Family Circus." It was soothing and complete in its shape, and the family seemed whole and happy. Her own family was troubled and broken, and in gazing at the circle she would feel herself stepping through, away from the chaos and safe with this peaceful and ideal family.

Her favorites were the ones that showed the black dotted trail of Jeffy, who was her age at the time, as he wandered through his neighborhood. She wanted to see all that he saw and loved to pretend she was wandering with him.

As she grew older, feeling lost and like a misfit, she was drawn to doing drawings of her own. Though her own work is dark and real, making you both laugh and cry at once, she continued to secretly love "Family Circus," even when it was no longer cool to do so. At Evergreen State College, her best friend, Matt Groenig, published one of her comics in the school newspaper while she was away on vacation. From there, her comics ran in alternative newspapers for almost thirty years.

As an adult, she was invited to a convention for cartoonists. She was surprised to think of herself as a cartoonist, but she went. She loved meeting all the artists she'd heard of for years, but when she was introduced to Jeff Keane, who has been drawing "Family Circus" since his father Bil, its creator, died, she burst into tears. She described it as snot spouting everywhere, shaking, gutteral sobbing tears. Embarrassed, she stepped away to pull herself together. When she returned though, and tried to shake his hand, it happened again.

She couldn't understand it, it felt like a deep rumbling from within. She went to the restroom to pull herself together. "Why on earth am I crying?" she asked when she looked in the mirror. What she saw looking back was the tearful face of the little girl who, years ago, unsafe in her own home, felt safe in a drawing.

Jeff Keane was Jeffy, and when she met him, all those years of survival, all that she'd held inside came pouring out, because she realized she really did step through the circle. And the way she got there was by doing a drawing of her own.

Middlebury Falls

When I first heard of occupational therapy, and had my first thoughts that maybe it was a job I could do, I shadowed an OT at a nursing home in Middlebury to see what it was like. The only patient we saw that morning was 95 years old. She was laying in bed, and refused therapy as soon as the OT entered the room. Despite attempts both firm and kind, the patient shouted "I'M 95 YEARS OLD, I'VE WORKED TWO JOBS ALL MY LIFE, THIS IS MY CHANCE TO REST!!"

When I left the nursing home that day, I walked quickly away. I walked and walked, bought a green tea and kept walking. Drinking green leaves, walking over green grass, feeling wind and light, stopping only to watch the Otter Creek crash and churn over the rocks at Middlebury Falls. That hour in the nursing home pushed me fiercely into life.

The Vision

That is why, when I found myself back in my old favorite spot in my original library, when my heart and hand led me back to Deer Valley Girl, when I closed my eyes to open up to a page and the page I opened up to was this one, it mattered.

Glass Ceiling

I could not have known, two Springs ago, that the darkness where I found myself, held the seed from which this road trip would later be born. Unexpected shifts in professions and love, perspectives and surroundings, left me feeling shattered. I did my best to maneuver around the shards of broken glass, each with its own sharp and shimmering edge.

Sometimes I navigated the unknown with relative grace, staying in the pain until it moved into joy again. Other times I could trust that everything happens for a reason. But on one particular morning, on one particular day, I'd absolutely had it. I woke up in a rage, my heart filled with fire. I was so tired of navigating all the challenges.

I tried in many ways to muscle through the day, but the fury increased with each attempt to appease it, until, finally, I collapsed, crying "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?!"

I took myself for a walk along the Rio Grande, in hope that it would dispel some energy. I found myself ranting as I walked, flailing my arms in anger. But everyone and everything I tried to throw the anger at, the people I loved, God, and myself, really weren't to blame. Without something for my anger to hit, it started to melt away.

Sensing a shift in my heart, I began to slow down in surrender, until I came to a full stop on a bridge. Resting my chin on the rail, I watched the river run beneath me. As I stood there, I felt my head fill with pressure. I closed my eyes and let this pressure/anger/sadness rise out the top of my head and flow down the river. And from this flow, I felt the very distinct sensation of antlers growing out of my head and filling the entire sky.

The antlers appeared as if made of light, like the impression you see when you look at an object, then look away. I felt a deep sense of peace from this sensation rising from my head. A few minutes later, the antlers dissipated into the early evening sky.

As I walked away from the bridge in quiet awe, I remembered the kachina I'd fallen in love with, later learning that its horns symbolize the attainment of highest spiritual enlightenment.

Moments later, a tiny scrap of paper on the ground, a few feet ahead of me, caught my eye. I picked it up, and when I turned it over I was stunned to see it was a Jägermeister label, perfectly torn around an image of the antlers I had just seen and felt.

Later that night, I found myself at a Buddhist temple, and there on the altar next to Buddha, was a golden deer. When I got home, I googled, and came across this:

In the Story of Saint Hubertus, on Good Friday morning, when the faithful were crowding the churches, Hubertus, sallied forth to the chase. As he was pursuing a magnificent stag the animal turned and, as the pious legend narrates, he was astounded at perceiving a crucifix standing between its antlers, which occasioned the change of heart that let him to saintly life.

Deer Valley Girl

Any kid who grew up with The Bixby will remember the white marble boy with the horn, and wondering why he was sitting naked in the middle of the room like that. They would remember the way the heat sang from the metal radiators, overly hot, while the rest of the room stayed cold, and how the pale men and women in the paintings on the wall seemed so serious.

I thought the Bixby would be the perfect place to write on a July afternoon, to catch up on this blog that is so hard to catch up on. I couldn't have known it would be Children's Hour, that it would be loud and hot and miserable.

I sat, forcing myself to write from the grip of my Yankee work ethic for as long as I could, until I suddenly stormed out. Fuming and frustrated, I stormed past the white marble boy, the stained glass ceiling, down the stairs with the green-brown rail. Where, in the middle of the sidewalk, just as suddenly, I stopped.

"Go back," I heard a voice say, quietly from inside.

Loosening the grasp of the need to get things done, I turned around, in order to let things happen.

I followed myself back up the stairs, past the singing, clapping Children's Hour, around the corner, and down on my knees. An unwinding of muscle memory brought me back to my favorite spot, a place I hadn't been for thirty-five years. My arm remembered the Lois Lenski books I had loved there and, reaching up, found there was only one left, Deer Valley Girl. I opened up to the back of the book and found my old number, hand written in pencil by the librarian, with the due date stamped, 1978.

It was Lois Lenski that first showed me there was a world outside the world I knew. Then came Tintin, with National Geographic, wrapped in brown paper, sprinkled throughout.

The Bixby

"The Bixby" is the library I grew up with. It's perched on a hill, with a stained glass dome ceiling, ionic columns, and rails with green-brown patina. I often left The Bixby with a stack of books so high I could rest my chin on them. Stunning and small, it's my original library, the one I would compare all other libraries to.

There are certain things about growing up in Vermont where you think life is like that. That libraries and churches are beautiful and old, that tomatoes and corn come straight from the ground, that silence is full and good, and lipstick a bit suspect.

That seasons are distinct and fierce and on fire with ice or wildflowers, that if you work hard enough and wait long enough sweetness can come from trees, and that when you only get three channels on your TV and there's nothing on, you turn it off.

It was through books that I first discovered that life was not necessarily like that. That it could also be a myriad of other possible things. That some people grew up with a yard made of pavement, a house made of mud, or a TV that never turned off.

Like the wooden angel that fell to me to symbolize real angels, books were the door made of paper I could feel in my hands, opening up to worlds I hadn't thought to think of.

Rainbow Sprinkles

My favorite creemee is still the one with rainbow sprinkles, because I really haven't changed much since the time I was 6 years old. I keep thinking that I should grow up one of these days, but then I keep telling myself I will get to it later.

Creemee

A creemee is not a soft serve, but it is like a soft serve. In fact, any other person from any other place would say it's a soft serve, but a Vermonter knows the difference. It is denser, creamier, and just plain happier than soft serve, because it springs up in unexpected places, sold from roadside stands, in between snows.

Vermont

The problem with taking a break from writing, when you were on a writing roll, is the feeling that when you return you should have something interesting to say. And that feeling makes it so you can't write at all. So I will simply say...

I'm back.

A blueberry lemonade, early summer evening, at a restaurant called The Village Porch. Cows graze as the sun begins to set on a field near where I grew up. Yes, the light is really like that.

What is a creemee, you ask?

Though I've now lived the majority of my life in other places, when I go to Vermont, I call it going home.