June 26: Mount Equinox

At just over 3,800 feet, Mount Equinox is the highest mountain in the Taconic range in southwestern Vermont. From Manchester Center, there's an private toll road to the top (owned by Carthusian monks) which offers some spectacular views of the Taconics, the Green Mountains, and the valley between them. And the occasional wildlife sighting.

 

Matters of scale:

driving down the mountain

we slow for a crossing vole.

 

 

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June 6: Reunion

I'm at my Middlebury College reunion this weekend, in verdant, summery Vermont, tucked in the Champlain Valley between the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks.

 

The only thing unchanged

after 25 years--

this mountain view.

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November 18: Camels Hump

Driving south from Burlington on I-89 this frosty morning, Camels Hump, the second highest peak in the Green Mountains, rose misty blue before me. This familiar peak is so distinctive, and it was so beautiful, that I almost swerved off the road every time it came into view.
 
Misty blue peaks--
so clear, my memories
of hiking there.

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November 20: White Mountains

Drove home to Maine today via scenic Route 2, which winds across northern Vermont and New Hampshire. One of the highlights of the trip is traveling above the Mount Washington valley with breathtaking views across shorn farm fields to a full profile of the Presidentials. Although the sky was gloomy with clouds, the peaks were in full view. As I watched crows gleaning in a field, I wondered what they thought about a part of the landscape that was probably higher than they would willingly fly.

Mount Washington's peak
revealed, conversing with clouds.
Crows lie low below.

January 4: Snowy Peaks

It's amazing how lofty and remote the familiar Camden Hills can become with the addition of a few inches of snow. Although Mount Megunticook is the third highest peak on the Atlantic seaboard, that's not saying much. It's just over 1,300 feet in elevation, behind Cadillac and another Acadia mountain, and just ahead of Ragged and Bald, also in the Camden Hills. Most of the Atlantic coast is just that: coast. As in, sea level. Camden isn't called "where the mountains meet the sea" for nothing--most of the coast doesn't have such a lucky and scenic conjunction of geography.

But after the past weekend's storm, the snow-covered Megunticook ridgeline looks positively alpine. Perhaps it's because the frosting of snow accentuates the craggy appearance of the mountain's open, rocky ledges and spiky summit evergreens. Or perhaps it's that the old landslide scar from several decades ago is highlighted by the whiteness, looking now like a fresh avalanche chute. Whatever the reason, when the sun hit the ridge this afternoon, I caught my breath. There was a mountain! Remote, inaccessible, lofty... and beautiful.

Snow-covered ridgeline--
is that really where we walked
in last summer's heat?

November 21: Mountains

The classic Japanese woodblock artist Hiroshige created a series of prints called "One Hundred Views of Edo," in which Mount Fuji is a near-constant presence--sometimes prominent, sometimes in the distant background. There aren't many direct comparisons to be made between Burlington and Tokyo, I realize. But in fact, the mountains that surround this small city in Vermont are just as much a constant presence as Fuji is for Tokyo. Of course, Fuji is a bit more dramatic, being a very high conic volcano apparently rising from the plains. (I've never seen it in person.) But I still thrill to recognize the various mountains visible here--less singular than Fuji, but no less distinct in their effect on those who live near them and who see them on a regular basis.

From the crest of the hill in the middle of the University of Vermont campus, you look west across glowering Lake Champlain to be confronted by the jagged wall of the Adirondacks. To the north rises Vermont's highest peak, Mount Mansfield. To the south, the distinctively shaped bare peak of Camel's Hump juts up from among surrounding hills. When I was in college, I climbed both these mountains several times, and once snowshoed up Mount Marcy, the highest of the Adirondacks. Mountain tops are such meaningful places, places of power that summon their strength from the surrounding landscape below and constant contact with the clouds. They literally touch the heavens. To live in a city with the visual touchstone of a distinctive mountain (or two or more) allows you, in a sense, to tap into that power for yourself, as well as the beauty. I think of the excitement I've heard in the voices of friends in rainy Seattle when the weather's clear and "the mountain is out"--Mount Rainier is visible!

Mist rising from peaks,
mountains protect this city,
commune with the gods.