Cabin Fever! or, My Vermonty Valentine

When we left for Vermont everything was brown, and had been brown.

The trees were brown, and bare. The mud was brown, the grass was brown, the sky and air seemed to have taken on a brown hue. Even the pine trees were turning brown!

We set off after work on a Friday on a last-minute, desperate attempt to escape the dreary brown sameness that winter in Kentucky had come to be.

I drove. Seth drove. I drove.

I watched familiar, snow covered mountains take shape in the morning light. Seth slept as we passed our own personal well-loved landmarks - our Road to Vermont. "World's Best Breakfast!" - we've never passed while it was breakfast-time, but the parking lot was stuffed so I kept on. We wound around and thru and into, until finally, with exhilaration I pulled into a parking spot in Montpelier.

Happy Velentine's Day, Montpelier!

We took stock of our breakfast options and decided on the Coffee Corner, Montpelier's favorite diner. While we waited for our food I noticed that they had the coffee mugs stacked under a heat lamp - the kind you'd normally keep a prime rib under - and I loved them more. I felt my head and my heart shifting back into alignment.

After breakfast it was the moment we'd been waiting an entire winter for: we got to go skiing! We'd decided cross-country/back-country skiing was the least mentally exhausting variety, and therefore well suited to the the sort of day that's never really begun, because the prior day never really ended. We jumped back into the car and turned the heat on full blast in an attempt to heat every nook and cranny, and made our way to Irish Hill at Berlin Pond, our former go-to hiking, skiing and dirt biking destination. Irish Hill is what Vermonters classify as an "Ancient Road" which stays on maps and is open for public enjoyment, but which is not actually a road that one might be interested in driving their car on. It is flanked by a hand-built New Englandy stone wall, and you'll find the ruined foundations of an old farmhouse and barn. You'll also find trails heading off in every direction, and a crystal clear spring running through it. The woods are old, the history thick. Seth loves it, I love it.

We left the car on while we changed into our ski clothes (heat still blasting). There was one other car in the small parking lot and I fervently hoped that no one would come back to it while we were changing!

"Should I wear this vest under my coat, or just a base layer?" I asked Seth. Normally I would never consider wearing more than a base layer and a soft, light jacket for cross-country skiing, and here I was with a down jacket and thinking of adding another layer!
"Normally I wouldn't wear this coat cross-country skiing, but its all I brought and the Kentucky winter has weakened my defense," he responded, echoing my thoughts exactly.

We made our decisions and hopped out, just as two dogs came bounding down the trail followed by their human.

"Hey, how's it goin'?" Seth called.

"HEY GUYS!!!!!!!!!" we heard called back.

Our brains jerked to attention, and there was Cliff, one of Seth's long time co-workers in Vermont. We caught up for a bit and then Cliff said "You guys sure picked a cold weekend for a visit!"

"We were to hot in Kentucky!" I joked, "but now we're not used to the cold and we have to bundle up..."
I was obviously trying to excuse my choice to don an obviously down jacket for anything other than lift riding and downhill skiing.
"Well four degrees is cold even in Vermont, but the good thing is your face will be numb in a few minutes and then you won't even notice," Cliff responded.

I smiled, and my smile stretched across the skin on my face like it only can when it is actually cold outside.

We headed off, into the woods, across the creek and up the hill. We paused. "Last time we went this way we ended up skiing down a rocky creek bed." I mentioned.
"Yep!" Seth smiled. He turned and kept on.

"Is it really only four degree?!" I called...

I've not often had a problem keeping my teeth warm while I ski. It was presented as a major challenge when I realized I would have to stop smiling in order to let my teeth warm up. While I was pondering the pros and cons of cold teeth and a smile Seth fell backwards while he tried to make it up a particularly steep section of the hill, and sank just slightly into the powdery snow so that it looked like he had found the most luxuriously splendid feather bed. His smile was so massive that it made my teeth cold just to look at him, and I pressed my lips into a thin smile to keep from laughing.

I felt my soul bubbling within me as though we'd been separated for months.

After we found ourselves in the woods we headed back to Montpelier for a quick lunch and a visit to Three-Penny Taproom, the best bar in the world (arguably). I had an "Edward," one of Montpelier's favorite beers by the Vermont brewery Hill Farmstead, the best brewery in the world (literally). We sank into our bar stools and exhaled.

We stopped by Hunger Mountain Co-op, Montpelier's local food co-op, to stock up on a few essentials: Broke Stock Farm Maple Syrup, Lincoln Peak Marquette Wine, Maine Brewing Company's Mean Old Tom, and some Vermont Coffee Company Dark Roast. We grabbed two Stewart's Sourdough Rolls for the road, and headed up to Burlington, and to Hannah and Craig's house where we were most graciously being put up for the busy Valentine's Day President's Day weekend.

To be honest, I'm surprised we didn't fall into bed with exhaustion, but we stayed up long enough for a great visit. While Seth and Hannah left to pick up dinner, Craig and I checked the weather for the next day. The high was 0 degrees, and a windchill advisory was in effect for gusts of 35 mph, (which would feel like -45 degrees, the warning warned.) Exposed skin would succumb to Frost Bite in 15 minutes.

"Hmmm," I thought, "there is nothing that's going to stop me from skiing tomorrow." [Ahem - sidenote here - if anyone was ever even remotely curious why Seth and I are perfect for each other, you should have your answer here.] Seth and I consulted for a while in the morning. We had planned on skiing the Teardrop Trail, a back-country trail that goes up into the Nebraska Notch in the Mt. Mansfield/Stowe area. The trail was built in the 30s and is one of Seth's favorites. It is well designed to be protected and hold snow, a perfect ski through the Green Mountains. I've never skied it before and was really excited to go, but Seth said that while he thought it was well protected from the wind, the speed we'd pick up just skiing down it would create enough windchill to be dangerous. We decided to stick to a cross-country style adventure and keep our noses intact.

I put all of my warmest clothes on and we jumped back in the car. We had decided to head to Stowe, and ski on some trails we used to mountain bike on. We'd seen ski markers on the trail when we'd been there before, and we thought it would be fun to see it in the winter.

This time we really bundled up. We put our goggles on over our hats to keep our eyes from freezing, and added face masks to protect our beautiful faces (and my naked teeth). Every inch of skin was covered, except for a narrow slit between my goggles and face mask.

After two minutes of skiing I could hardly breath. I could feel the airways in my nose constricting as I breathed in frozen air, and my fleece face mask was too thick to get enough oxygen through. (Bad design, obviously.) I yanked it down to my chin, and immediately the condensation on my face froze, slightly. I smiled. It was difficult, but I couldn't help it.

The forests in Vermont are glorious. They are deep and dark and silent, with giant pine trees and very little underbrush. The sun slants in and everything sparkles. My first instinct is to get lost in them so I never have to leave. We glided around through the still, frigid woods. There was no wind here, and soon we found that we were WAY overdressed and had started sweating. (HA!) We stopped for a photo op at an old lift chair bolted to a tree. Normally this is a fine viewpoint, but today we could only see white in the distance.

We needed to keep going, though. Since we'd started sweating we needed to keep working to stay warm. We made our way around the trail system all too quickly, and soon we turned around to head back to the car. I guess it was just as well, because I'd begun to feel ice crystals forming in my eye lashes. On the way back though, something amazing happened. We ran into other people. There was a faint glimmer of remembrance in my soul. The memory of not being quite so out of the ordinary for loving, and embracing the cold and the beautiful, sparkling snow.

After we got back to the car I declared that we obviously deserved hot chocolate, so we stopped at a gas station and helped ourselves. Luckily, Stowe is fancy-pants and it turned out we deserved hot chocolate and fresh apple fritter donuts.

We left Stowe and drove up, around and about to Fairfax, where we'd invited ourselves to dinner at Robin and Thom's. The drive was beautiful, as always. The dinner was delicious - as always. It was so wonderful to see our Vermont family again.

The next morning it was time to tuck our souls into a snowdrift and head home. As we neared the Vermont/New York border I determined I'd better stop for coffee before we left the Green-Mountain-Coffee-At-Every-Gas-Station State,  and stopped at a little country market. While I was filling my recyclable Green Mountain Coffee to-go cup, I heard the bells on the door jingle.
"Morn'n' Hal"
"Morn'n' Vern, how's Mel?"

My trip was complete.