VERMONT MAGAZINE Winter 2021 | Page 27

“ I moved to Vermont twenty-five years ago for the most impractical of reasons , love at first sight . Driving in the early morning through a small town in the southern part of the state , I caught a glimpse of a stream running through the backyard of an old clapboard cape . Suddenly I was back in my childhood , in a time before the creeks in my hometown were culverted and the yards subdivided . The Vermont I saw from a car window looked like my memory of home , and I was hooked .

After I settled in Vermont , I learned that the seasons here are another reminder of the memories of childhood--or maybe of our collective American ideal of how seasons should look . Summer is green fields and blue skies , autumn is goldenrod and red maples , winter is blue and violet shadows on expanses of white , white snow — and winter , as it turns to spring , is also mud .”

- Susan Abbott

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