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VERMONT DREAMING

She looked to be on the elderly side of middle-aged, broad faced, plain brown hair pulled back. It was last spring, late April or early May. As we left the Essex Junction Amtrak station in my taxi heading west towards the lake, I thought, this woman looks like an Andrew Wyeth model, but from the Midwest.

Passing the Fort and St. Michael's College, we chatted easily and I quickly surmised that Anna was just that - a lifetime Okie on her first trip east of the Mississippi. She expressed a keen interest in seeing the Green Mountains "close up." I offered my taxi and myself as, respectively, tour bus and tour guide, and Anna heartily accepted. Pick up time was set for noon the following day. I told her to plan for a three-hour tour. Unlike the ill fated Minnow on “Gilligan's Island,” I told her my tours come with a no shipwreck guarantee. She laughed and told me I was a "great kidder".

Heading for bed that night, I eagerly anticipated the next day's trip. About once a month, more in the foliage season, I catch a tour like this. It's good money, it breaks up the monotony of the in town grind, and I'm not so Vermont jaded that I don't appreciate getting into the hills, trees and fields for a few hours. As an added incentive, not that I needed it, the Notch had just opened up, and springtime in Stowe just kills me.

I figured I'd give her the standard loop: covered bridge in Jeff, up over the Notch, Trapp Family Lodge, and maybe finish up at my favorite tourist trap, the Cold Hollow Cider Mill. But as I was to find out, there was nothing standard about Anna's life. This trip, moreover, represented nothing less then the crowning fulfillment of her life's journey.

The next day was glorious. The sky was Aqua Velva, the sun warm and lemony, with just the slightest tickle of a breeze. Anna was waiting at the front of the hotel, and jumped right into the seat next to me. She was wearing a frock and beaming.

We rolled down Route 15, me the consummate tour guide. All that was missing was one of those handheld microphones. "Yup, this is Jericho, home of the improbable Snowflake Bentley." What I didn't know, I made up, and Anna ate up every hokey detail. As we cruised onto the Pleasant Valley Road through Underhill, I finally shut up and asked her about her life. Her plainspoken sincerity hit me in the heart.

Her dad's farm failed during the dust bowls of the 30’s, she told me, and the family was left destitute. It was just as chronicled by John Steinbeck or Woody Guthrie except Anna's family didn't leave for California but stayed on in Oklahoma as itinerant farm workers. By age eight or nine, she was pitching in.

Packing strawberries one lonely summer day, she slipped a note with her name and address into the bottom of a container, a "message in a bottle". Later that summer she received a letter from one Georgia Littlefield, a 10 year-old Nebraska schoolgirl, and, yes, she would "love" to be her pen pal. It would be "swell".

From this unlikeliest of beginnings arose a lifelong friendship of the utmost intimacy. Anna and Georgia shared each other's lives from the teen years into adulthood. On rare occasions there were visits, but mostly they communicated through letters, and, later, by telephone. And one thing they shared was an enchantment with Vermont.

They both subscribed to Vermont Life and would read every article religiously. Every so often National Geographic would do a feature on maple syruping, ice fishing or skiing, and they would clip the pictures scrapbook style. I asked Anna how two born and bred Midwestern farm girls came to hear about Vermont, let alone develop an utter enthrallment with this most Yankee of northeastern states.

"I can't honestly recall," she replied. "From my earliest childhood, I would imagine a land of tall hills, white snow and deep green forests. I didn't take long before Georgia - bless her heart - was sharing the same dream."

At the long covered bridge just outside of Jeffersonville village, Anna handed me her camera and had me shoot any number of pictures of her waving, throwing pebbles into the stream below, and, in her own demure way, generally vamping it up. Getting into the spirit of the occasion, I told her she looked better than Meryl Streep in The Bridges of Madison County. She blushed, said she had seen the movie, but just knew that Vermont's covered bridges would outclass anything that Clint Eastwood could come up with. Now she knew she was right.

As we passed the Smuggler's Notch ski lifts and began the sharp ascent through the Notch itself, Anna was visibly transported. She looked like a kid on her first visit to an old-fashioned candy store. A few pockets of snow still dotted the cliff side. Here and there roadside waterfalls gushed cool, clear water through crevices that looked like laugh lines on the faces of kindly old men.

We stopped at one of the many pullovers near the peak so Anna could wander a little and take some photos. I glanced at her face as I walked nearby. It was as if she was imprinting this wondrous vista for all time, storing it forevermore in her mind's eye.

On the Stowe side heading towards the Trapp place, Anna spoke more of her friend Georgia. They had both married in their twenties. Georgia had two children, now both middle-aged themselves. She herself was childless. They both were widowed relatively young, in their fifties. Though she spoke in no specifics, I read between the lines that neither she nor her friend had any money to speak of.

Always, through the years, they planned their trip to Vermont, just the two of them. "But one thing leads to another," she said, "and you know how it is. A few years ago Georgia developed a serious heart problem. Now she couldn't possibly make the journey."

I looked over and could see the pain on her face.

"But you know," she continued, quickly perking up, "Georgia practically forced me to go on this trip. Do you believe it, age 74, never traveled a whit, and now here I am, seeing Vermont for the both of us."

The panorama from the Trapp Family Lodge is simultaneously vast and intimate. If there's a beating heart to the Green Mountains, I think it's here in these rolling alpine fields. Just one look, and there's no doubt why Maria plopped her intrepid family right down at this spot. At the Lodge's terrific gift shop, Anna bought a comically large number of postcards mostly black and white reproductions of early Vermont scenes.

“Georgia will just eat these up," she said.

Down Route 100 into Waterbury Center, and the Cold Hollow Cider Mill was surprisingly quiet, even for this late, mud-season weekday. The place is run by a direct descendant of Vermont's first governor, and that's just one of the store's charming aspects. It's the opposite of slick, just stacks upon rows of gorgeous Vermont-made crafts and foods in no discernable order.

We bought a few cider donuts and two cups of fresh cider, and stepped outside to relax on a wooden bench under a maple tree.

I glanced over and Anna was glowing. I imagined this was the demeanor of a practicing Muslim who has finally made it to Mecca, or a devout Jew praying for the first time at the Western Wall. Her eyes were at once a million miles away and almost jarringly present. She was 74 years old, wearing a shapeless dress of some unrecognizable flower motif, and all I can say is, she looked beautiful.

She turned and looked at me straight on. "Vermont is everything I always imagined," she said. "Never will I forget this day."

On the way back to Burlington, we spoke little. Camel's Hump is a palpable presence along the stretch from Waterbury to Burlington. On that afternoon it felt like a mammoth and friendly great-uncle watching over us. Donning my tour guide's hat for a final time, I told Anna that "Camel's Hump" is a fine descriptive name for this peak, but the hikers' had a nickname which I felt more truly captured the spirit of the mountain - “The Crouching Lion”.

As with just about every aspect of this magical day, Anna found this perfect. "The Crouching Lion", she said, "is just about the cat's pajamas."

Back at the hotel, it was hard for me to say goodbye. Anna couldn't have been more gracious. She gave me a nice tip and had the bellhop take a few photos of the two of us standing alongside the taxi. She assured me she would keep my card for "the next time", and warmly shook my hand. We both knew there would be no next time. It was bittersweet.

It's been quite a few months since my time with Anna. Spring has long since blossomed into full-blown summer, and already the opening notes of the autumn symphony have been struck. Before you know it, the leafers will be arriving by the busload.

Who can begrudge the tourists their infatuation with the blazing glory of fall foliage? For some, however, the attraction to Vermont goes far deeper.

Now looking back, I see that Anna taught me a soul lesson, a lesson in gratitude. Just as we often take for granted the loved ones most close to us, I forget the everyday blessing of life in Vermont. Why do I, and not Anna, get to call the Green Mountains my home? These are matters of fate and spirit I wouldn't even pretend to fathom. But of one thing I have no doubt: if where we get to live was determined by pure, unaffected desire, Anna would settled here long ago.

I can close my eyes and picture one Oklahoma-born farm girl. There's light in her eyes, and the wind is blowing through her soft brown hair. She's spending all her days whispering and laughing with her best friend, running through the fields of the Crouching Lion.