Burlington--the biggest little city in Vermont

Most weekends, Aaron has to coax me away from my home base to get out and see new places. I am what they would call in North Carolina a home skillet. I am happy most Saturdays hitting garage sales and making homemade pasta. He, on the other hand, feels as if he hasn’t had a weekend unless he has gone somewhere, and Burlington—the largest city in Vermont—was on his short list of day trips. I remember meeting a woman shortly after I moved here who described Burlington as a “real city” with lots of people, restaurants and shopping and “woo hoo” events … whatever that means. (She was also the same woman who told me that she had spotted a bear in my driveway just a day after we moved in). Anyway, her description of Burlington made snicker to myself, since I knew the city only had 10,000 more inhabitants than Claremont, CA, where we lived previously—a small suburb of Los Angeles that I certainly would not call a “real city”. Nevertheless, that Sunday we made the one-and-a-half hour’s drive to see it.

I can honestly say that outside of the Black Forest in Germany or a few treks through the countryside of Austria, I have never seen any landscape more intoxicatingly beautiful than the drive up Highway 89 from White River Junction to Burlington. (OK, there is still the French countryside.) It is not just the densely packed trees and rolling hills beneath a pristine blue sky (we got lucky that day with weather). But it is also the white church steeples, patches of farmland and red or yellow barns that dot the way, reminding you that people do actually live here. It is not just a backdrop for a Disney movie. And then there are the signs for Moose or Bear Crossing along the way that seem almost planted, like some local joke. And they always make me laugh, especially as I hang out the window with my digital camera trying to snap a picture of one to use as my new Facebook photo so when people pull up my profile, they will see a yellow diamond-shaped sign warning of Moose. Only, these signs are real and serve important purposes, the first of which is literally to be careful not to hit a moose. Apparently they don’t scare as easily as deer and come with a much higher center of gravity and body mass, which puts the odds in their favor—even if you are in a Hummer. A little something Aaron learned during his first day of orientation at the hospital. I have since seen one of these creatures—stuffed and on display at the local Montshire Science Museum--and they are quite impressive. So, as much as Aaron has been bugging me to make moose chili a la Sarah Palin, I don’t think I could after seeing one up close and personal.) But I believe these signs are also here to remind me that, here, nature still reigns supreme.

Signs or no signs (well, partly because there are so few signs except those that alert you to animal life or the next exit), the drive is simply spectacular … the way the highway snakes through a series of connecting valleys, the whole drive gives you the feeling that you are somehow protected from the rest of the world—encapsulated and safe—from crime, graffiti, neon signs and billboards. I have yet to see a McDonald’s outside of White River Junction. As we drove, I suddenly understood what my husband meant when he called this God’s country. Because if you don’t question the existence of God while traveling up Highway 89, then there is only one possibility—you are blind. I can hardly wait to see the drive again in all its colorful glory during the peak of Autumn.

As you approach Burlington, it begins to look like many other suburbs of America, if not cleaner, greener and less crowded. I spotted a Michael’s craft store and a few of my former haunts, but we kept driving into the heart of the city. It is simply adorable full of many old buildings independent coffee shops and restaurants, art galleries and something I don’t see everyday …. French Canadians. They simply dress better than we do, and it was nice to see women with a stitch or two of make-up, bold sunglasses and fashion other than that which one dons while kayaking. (In Norwich where I now live, I feel like a tart if I leave the house in lipgloss). But here, I caught a whiff of the Europe I love.

We had something planned to satisfy everyone in the family, starting with lunch and a drink followed by a ferry boat and cross Lake Champlain to touch base briefly in New York. I wasn’t too keen on being in New York, since anytime you nearly get hit in a crosswalk in Vermont, you can be sure the license plates are from one of two places: Massachusetts or New York. I am fine staying on this side of Lake Champlain, thank you very much. And besides, the ferry trip turned out to be too long with a toddler so we opted for a shorter, scenic cruise. I wish I could tell you more about the lake’s history, except that Isaac was in rare form that day, and the guard railings were a bit too precarious for my taste—and in my state—I am hyper-vigilant to anything that might harm my family. All I can say is the lake is immense, has a beautiful shoreline (if that is what you call it) and several tree-laden islands with walls of red rock peering through. Apparently Lake Champlain played a significant role in many of our countries early wars, but I was too busy chasing Isaac around the boat and moving between the decks so no one person had to "enjoy" his behavior for any length of time. I was beat. I couldn’t wait to disembark, and I almost cried as we passed a martini and oyster bar on the way back to the car knowing I couldn't drop in for either of them.

Here is where it gets interesting. I was just explaining to Aaron how I was reading Chris Bohjalian’s novel, The Double Bind, which I chose because, like most everything I buy these days, it was written in Vermont and about Vermont (well, partly). It is a thriller about a young social worker, who, after a brutal attack on a rural bike path outside Burlington, dedicates her time to two things: her photography and her homeless clients. In particular she becomes obsessed with the life of a schizophrenic man who dies and leaves behind a stash of mysterious photos. Her obsession grows as she becomes convinced that a relative of the man (whom she believes is a real-life descendent of Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby) is trying to take the photos away from her before she can put them in an exhibit to earn money for the shelter—ultimately causing the reader to question just who the schizophrenic really is. I won't spoil the rest because I know you are all going out to buy the book.

So, as we approached the parking garage on our way back home, I spotted a young woman, well-groomed and fashionably dressed in a black logo T-shirt, funky spectacles and wide-legged pants, pacing the sidewalk in front of the parking garage. Her hair looked freshly cut and styled … she could have been an up-and-coming hair stylist from an avant garde salon. She looked distressed as if she had just lost something important or had been mugged. As we got closer, she approached us and went straight for Isaac's stroller, leaned in and said to my husband, "He's not your baby, he's mine." She was very clearly about to reach in and take him. My husband got between them and asked her to back away (that would be the edited version of what he really said). I was stunned. At first I thought it was some strange way of paying us a compliment ... that Isaac was so cute she was going to steal him, but when she turned to me pointing a finger in my face and told me how much she wanted bad things to happen to me, I realized that there was something really wrong with her. She yelled a few more things about Jesus and fiery deaths, but did not follow us into the garage. We were both so rattled, that we didn't speak for several minutes until Isaac fell asleep in his car seat. I couldn't believe that I had just been reading about schizophrenia, Burlington, young women and paranoia only to be faced with it in the very town in which the novel took place. And after what I had just gone through ... having someone claim my baby was not mine was a bit too much to take. And I thought about the advice my neighbor gave me the morning she saw a bear in my driveway. “As long as you never get between the bear and her cub, you will be alright.” And once my initial shock and fear wore off, I remembered that this poor girl was someone’s baby too.

Maybe next time I go to Burlington, I will have more … or less … interesting things to tell about the town itself.

Flow

Ever since we decided to make the move to the Dartmouth area for the year, my life has seemed to be governed by what I can only describe as flow (my friend, Jane, if she reads this, will be proud). Flow is hard to pin down and define, but to me, it seems to happen when you open yourself up to all the possibilities of your future by simply paying attention to clues that present themselves and then following them where they lead you. Kind of the way the Scooby Doo gang would always seem to find a tiny fortune-cookie size slip of paper on the ground and declare, "Look! A clue!" Only, real life clues are never that blatant. In essence, flow creates the music and rythm to which my life wants to dance as opposed to what I normally do ... grab the dials of the radio and fiddle with them until I get just the right song with just the right clarity and volume only to find the song is half over by the time I fix it and have to start the process over again. But for now at least, the coincidences and almost predestined events that have unfolded lately can only be described as eerie--thankfully most of the time it's eerie in a good way. I will be writing more about them through the year.

It started right before we were to fly to Boston when I learned that I had placental problems and probably should have been on bedrest. For sure, I should not be on a plane. I didn't know what to do, because quite frankly, I didn't feel that California was the place to be with its overcrowded waiting rooms when I had this incredible medical center and even better insurance waiting for me across the country. So, I called a trusted friend who is expert in psomatic psychology, and please don't ask me to define it as all I know is that it is a sort of therapy that doesn't require you to talk about your mother or cause you to feel worse before you feel better. He asked me to close my eyes and think about where my body wanted to be. (I know ... only in California.) I was facing East and I saw myself in an incredibly bright cheery room with an expert, but loving, medical staff fawning over me.

"Then, that's where you need to be," he said. It was less than a month later that I found myself in a large, cheerful hospital room with the most incredible medical staff on the planet helping me through one of the most painful moments of my life. I was where I needed to be and it was exactly as I pictured it--even if the reason I was there was not what I had hoped for.

All because of a train trestle

The cross-country move was stressful enough. So you can imagine my dismay at arriving in New Hampshire, tired and pregnant with complications, to find that the house we chose to rent (site unseen) was a disaster. Yes, we should have known better, but we were worried that we wouldn't find anything. It isn't cheap to stay at a hotel with a 2 year old and an oversized labrador retriever for a few nights let alone the weeks it might take to land a house.

It wasn't just the pet-stained carpets or dog hair all over the curtains. The house was dark, damp and had a creepy basement. And it turns out that Grantham, NH, was an even smaller speck on the map than we thought ... and much farther away from the other specks on the map that dotted the route into Lebanon, NH, where Aaron was to begin work. It would have taken about a month to get rid of the cobwebs and another month to find a grocery store nearby. I couldn't imagine myself in the dead of a New Hampshire winter--eight months pregnant and most likely on bedrest--being stuck in this brown and beige box in the wilderness. Scenes from Stephen King's The Shining were flashing before my eyes.

So, while my son napped in the car (and I cried), Aaron drove us around looking for a real estate agency so we could find another place to live. At this point he realized that losing a few thousand dollars in security deposits and rents was cheaper than dealing with an unhappy wife for one year. So, we had made it back to Hanover where we thought we would have the most luck finding an agency and before we knew it, crossed the Ledyard Bridge into Vermont. We landed at a RE/MAX office in Norwich, Vermont whose agent just happened to put us in touch with a woman back in Hanover who just happened to find a listing for a rental house back in Vermont that ... yes ... took dogs ... but ... no ... didn't have pet-stained carpet. We were there!

The view from this small house, just a short distance up a wooded, hill is amazing. From the kitchen and living room is an unobstructed view of the Connecticut River and one can watch--depending upon the time of day--everything from motor boats to canoes and kayaks to the Dartmouth Crew team pass by. The opposite bank is New Hampshire, a virtual mirror image of the Vermont side, and it is sparingly speckled with quaint, but impressive houses sporting private piers and boat docks. Route 5, the road that runs in front of the house along the river, is quite busy, especially in Summer. It carries locals to and from town as well as vacationers who are traveling up the state and probably choose it for its scenic value the same way visitors to California take Highway 1 as opposed to faster, but less interesting interior routes when driving up the coast. What's more, the house was really well built, complete with wood floors, a "winter garden" and newly tiled bathrooms. I remarked how fun it was that we would have a woodshed too, thinking that we could jokingly threaten to send misbehaving children (or husbands) to it for a little behavior modification. Apparently it wasn't all that funny since woodsheds really do get used to store wood in the winter. A little fact I forgot since I still had California brain and had only been in Vermont in the summer.

I wanted to take the place on the spot, but we did the usual walk-through and made small talk with the landlord. We learned that the house had been built for the ex-wife of a local farmer who, upon divorcing the woman, parsed up some land and built this home just for her. The landlord bought the property from the farmer once the ex-wife passed away. I thought, how appropriate! It seems this little house might just have been built to passify disgruntled women. I am certain that Aaron could have managed to make it work at the Grantham house, creepy basement and all, to save our much needed three thousand dollars!

And then, Isaac chimed in. I didn't understand him at first, but noticed that he was pointing to something outside the living room window. "A Choo Choo Bridge!" he shouted. And there it was ... an old, red train trestle, just like some in the Thomas the Tank Engine videos we had been watching ad nauseum during his Choo Choo Train phase (which has not yet passed, by the way). It is literally smack dab in front of our house above a leg of the river that spills under Route 5 and forms a large pond just up the road from the house. That sealed it for me. Isaac would have his very own Choo Choo bridge.

But as my mother always says with her brand of German optimism (an oxymoron, I know), "The zing you vorry about zuh most usually never happenz." And, well, she was right. It was just a couple of weeks later that our new baby boy passed away in the womb and I realized that I wouldn't have to be stuck in Grantham on dirty carpet and painfully pregnant. Instead, I would grieving the loss of my son, Jason, which was far worse than anything I could have imagined happening to me in the wilderness of New Hampshire. And while I am not over it, or sure that I will get over it, I thank God that we accidentally crossed the river into Vermont that day and happened upon this little house on the Connecticut River because there is no place I would rather be right now. And while Isaac doesn't know that he almost had a little brother, he does know that everyday ... three times a day ... a Choo Choo train ... one of his favorite things in life ... passes by his house. And the look on his face everytime it happens is healing.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Aaron took him for a ride on the Green Mountain Railway, an old fashioned train that only operates in the summer for tourists and local parents with train-obsessed toddlers. One of the first moments of true joy I experienced since my loss was running outside to wave to my husband and son as they passed by our house on that train. I will never forget the image of Isaac's Thomas the Train hat waving out the window to me as the train crossed our trestle and I watched from the deck of our new home.

Fresh off the Farm

Among the things in life that make me go weak in the news is a good Farmer's market. From the moment I exit my car, basket on arm and a wad of cash in my pocket, my heart starts racing and I can hardly get to the first stand fast enough--usually leaving my husband and son on a cloud of dust. But there is one downside to farmer's markets, which is having to be there in the middle of a perfectly good Saturday when I would rather be doing something else ... like, say ... canoeing. And, I like to shop when the mood strikes, or right before I am about to prepare meals for the day while the recipe is fresh in my mind. (This speaks more to may lack of organizational skills, really, then my penchant for fresh food. But either way, it works.) The good news is that I have found some of the most incredible spots to buy local food that I really don't need to get to the farmer's market.

Route 5, heading south out of Norwich, VT, has many of my new favorites, starting with the King Arthur Flour store and school. I am not much of a baker, namely because I don't eat a lot of bread or sweets, but also because I don't like to fuss with kitchen timers (which has made me incredibly adept at dissembling smoke detectors). So, a lot of what King Arthur has simply doesn't apply to me. However, they carry some of the best cooking odds and ends that you simply can't find at most places, like a stunning variety of sea salts and organic spices and any type of flour you can imagine--including a premixed blend of Semolina and all-purpose for perfect pasta. Plus, almost everything you buy comes with a recipe attached, and their selection of dish towels, serving ware and tools rivals any "box" store, including Bed, Bath and Beyond (Do they even have one in Vermont? Don't know.) My mother-in-law just bought me the best paring knife ever at King Arthur's by and I will soon be choosing new wooden spoons frome their French-made collection.

Right next door (how convenient is that) is my current favorite place on the planet: Killdeer Farm Stand. I know the name isn't all that appetizing, but don't worry, a Killdeer is simply a type of bird that comes to nest at their farm every year ... hence the tribute. I pass this farm several times a day going to and from my house, and it is simply picturesque. It comprises a giant lemon-yellow house that sits atop a hill overlooking their crops and what I can only imagine is an enviable view of the Connecticut River. I admit, much of what they have growing I don't recognize from the road, but I love the idea of buying something that took life so close to home. Among their best picks are the "native" corn (which I often never manage to get into the boiling water before eating it), green garlic (if you have never had it, you must), organic blueberries and lettuce. I also found the perfect potato there, which I turned into a latke drizzled with truffle oil. There are two freezers full of all natural, local meats, and, of course, there are cheeses, eggs, organic milks, yogurts and creams, herbs, and even bread from King Arthur's--all in a space just twice the size of my kitchen. And as much as I hate bumperstickers, I couldn't wait to plant one of their stickers on the back window of my car. If they'd have me, I'd move in ... or sweep the floors for free.

Farther down Route 5 in Wilder is Blood's Seafood and Catering. Although not much to look at inside, they have been voted the Upper Valley's best caterer a ridiculously large number of times (I know this because they proudly announce it on their prerecorded greeting when you call them to order your food). They are a lobster specialist and feature a tank about the size of 3 pool tables lined side by side filled with the creatures organized by size. Last night we ordered our first 3-pounder, which was much too big for the plate, and our cheap tools hardly made a dent in it. My husband had to get out a hammer and stand up while he worked at extracting the meat. While, impressive, I prefer the smaller guys and just tried my first soft-shell loster weighing in at 1.25 pounds. They steam them perfectly each time. While their general sea food selection is limited, they do carry some fish, and in the Spring (which I can hardly wait for) they have fresh Shad roe, which I sill put in my spicy tomato sauce and serve over the pasta I make with King Arthur flour. From now, I am buying their frozen roe, which still does the trick.

Speaking of seafood, in the opposite direction on Route 5 in Fairlee (about 15 miles north of my house) is a woman-owned fish market and restaurant called Holy Mackerel. From the outside, it looks like anyone's grandmother's house ... a cute little structure with a porch and flower boxes. It can be confusing when you first walk in because she also sells home-knitted goods such as socks, sweaters and hats. But in the back is where they sell their fish. I have lived on both coasts and seen some stunning seafood, but I can honestly say that their selection ... although small ... is as good if not better than anything I have seen. Their tuna is so pristine that it could be featured on a Food Network spot. Thanks to them, I was able to try Cohogs for the first time, which are similar to large clams and very tasty.

Of course, there are also the staple stores for everything else I can't get at these smaller venues, such as the Co-op that features locally made products first, and Dan and Whit's, our Norwich general store (a place that deserves entirely its own post ... more later).

So, if you can get your hands on some Vermont bleu cheese, here is a salad recipe that I adapted from one I enjoyed at Zin's Bistro at the Hanover Inn across from Dartmouth. It is very much like the original. Enjoy!

Salad:
--6 cups baby arugula (yes, it should be the baby variety or it will overpower the dressing)
--1 Gala apple (or other firm, crisp, red apple), cut into matcsticks.
--Chopped sugar-glazed peanuts or pecans (I usually just melt some butter and raw sugar in a pan and toss the nuts in the mixture to coat them, then let them cool before chopping them up. Don't be afraid to "accidentally" let some of the carmelized sugar pieces get mixed in with the lettuce.
--Crumbled bleu cheese (medium soft variety)

Dressing:
--4 Tblsp fresh lemon juice
--2 Tblsp organic extra-virgin olive oil
--2 Tblsp honey
--2 tsp French mustard (JUST regular, NOT dijon)
--salt and pepper to taste.