Letter from Vermont

What happens after foliage season is unceremoniously called “stick season.”  The leaves have dropped, and the moment the last crimson maple leaf touches the ground, the last crimson taillights of our out-of-state guests may be seen leaving the Green Mountain State.  Vermont is very quiet, and we are alone with ourselves now.  We have come around to the aphorism that Vermont is pretty eleven months of the year; November is the odd man out.

Even the archaism that Vermonters love to talk about, “mud season” in the last part of winter and first part of spring, is actually quite beautiful with the new green of the grass that is the color that Life would choose to be if it had to become a single color.  Wildflowers abound, traces of snow linger stubbornly on north-facing exposures, and the earth awakens again to life at the call of spring.  Is there mud in mud season?  Of course there is, but “mud season” itself is less and less significant now that most roads are paved.  You can still get stuck on back roads, to be sure, but it is not the treacherous hassle it was in days of yore.

What is stick season like, then?  Stick season is gray.  If Ireland has forty shades of green, then Vermont in November has forty shades of gray.  Bleak skies, north winds, and plenty of precipitation of various sorts as winter gathers the strength to show warm Indian summer days who is really boss.  The leaves have dropped from the trees and turned brown on the forest floor, and no snowy white carpet has yet been laid to cover them.

November does have its highlights.  One of them for this year found us in the local newspaper two weeks in a row, courtesy of our ubiquitous news editor.  What could have been so momentous?  Some other time, perhaps.