A chilly afternoon warmed with laughter while bushwhacking on snowshoes, today Susan, Denise and John Davis, and I ventured into Rosslyn’s westernmost woods to trailblaze a new loop through a maturing pine forest located between Library Brook, the Essex Firehouse, and Essex Farm.
Library Brook (Photo: Geo Davis)
Long anticipated, this remote route will extend and diversify our existing trail system through the Library Brook drainage and into an older tree stand with a drier understory and a tranquil atmosphere. So close to the heart of downtown Essex, this peaceful place feels like a secret oasis.
Library Brook Ice Crystals (Photo: Geo Davis)
Two anticipated stream crossings offer meditative glimpses of meandering Library Brook that promise to be just as breathtaking in winter as summer. Lush with wildlife, this riparian corridor will likely permit plenty of intriguing wildlife photography in years to come.
Tree Hugging Bushwhacker (Photo: Geo Davis)
Higher ground along the western flank of Rosslyn’s backland includes some dramatic pine trees including the handsome specimen being embraced in the photo above by our friend and affectionate wildlife steward, John Davis. Lots of love in these woods!
I’m hoping to fine tune today’s preliminary foray over the next couple of weeks while the ground is still frozen and snow covered. By spring the loop should be finalized, and we can begin to prioritize the stream crossings. I look forward to updating you soon.
What if? Wondering what life would be like living full-time in the Champlain Valley…
Within minutes we were tripping over each other, drunk with excitement, imagining one whimsical “What if…” scenario after another. No filter, no caution. Our reveries flitted from one idyllic snapshot to another.
“What if I finally sat down and finished my novel?” After dawdling self indulgently for a dozen years – writing, rewriting, discarding, rewriting, shuffling, reinventing – my novel had evolved from failed poetry collection to short story collection to novel to a tangle of interconnecting narratives that loosely paralleled my life since graduating from college. Too much evolution. Too little focus. But what if I made time to sit down and knock it out? Reboot. Start over. Find the story. Write it down. Move on.
“What if you weren’t sitting in front of your computer all day? Every day?” Susan asked, returning to a common theme. “What if you went outside and played with Tasha? Took her swimming or hiking or skiing every day?”
“What if all three of us went swimming or hiking or skiing every day? What if Tasha and I went jogging along Lakeshore Road instead of the East River?”
We could waterski and windsurf for half the year instead of just two or three months, starting in May with drysuits and finishing in the end of October. We could sail the Hobie Cat more instead of letting it collect spider webs on the Rock Harbor beach. I could fly fish the Boquet and Ausable Rivers in the afternoon while Tasha snoozed on the bank. We could join Essex Farm, the local CSA, supporting a local startup while eating healthy, locally grown and raised food. I could grow a vegetable garden, an herb garden, an orchard. Susan could work for an architecture firm in Burlington and volunteer at the animal shelter. We could buy season passes to Whiteface and downhill ski several days a week. We could cross country ski and snowshoe and bike and rollerblade and kayak and canoe and hike, and maybe I would start rock climbing again. And how much more smoothly the Lapine House renovation would be if we were on-site every day answering questions, catching mistakes before it was too late.
“I could interview candidates for Hamilton!” Susan said. She had recently become an alumni trustee for her alma mater, and her already high enthusiasm had skyrocketed. She had become a walking-talking billboard for the college. “You know how much more valuable it would be to interview candidates up here? There are tons of alumni interviewers in Manhattan, but in Westport? In Essex? In Elizabethtown?”
Suspended in lukewarm bathwater, our collective brainstorm leap frogging forward, it all started to make a strange sort of sense, to seem almost logical.
The good folks at Cooking Up a Story featured this farm stand video about North Country summer living, and I couldn’t resist contacting them to find out where the farm stand is located. They responded quickly:
They are in Alburgh, VT – which is in the northwest corner of the state – nestled against NY and Canada, along Route 2. Drive up and check them out sometime. Really nice people!
Close enough for a visit, but not swing-by-and-grab-some-sweet-corn close. Too bad! Nevertheless, it’s an inspirational story. We used to have a similar farm stand near us in Essex, New York that was run by the Sayward family for many, many years, but it closed up a few summers ago. I still miss it!
Farm-to-Table, a North Country summer tradition (Source: Rosslyn Redux)
We’ve belonged to two CSAs since moving full-time to Essex, Essex Farm and Full and By Farm, and we grow a large vegetable garden and a gradually expanding orchard (with quite a few different types of fruit). So I’m not complaining, but I do love the experience of visiting a neighborhood farm stand. It’s nice to meet the growers, hear their stories, learn new ways to prepare the fresh produce.
