This weekend we traveled some roads oft-taken (Interstate 89 and highways 100 & 108), and also discovered some new old haunts. Vermont promised to be in “peak color” following several weeks of abruptly crisp fall air and months of summer rain. As we do every Saturday from May to October, we began the weekend at the Burlington Farmer’s Market. As always, I had 2 broccoli samosas for lunch, and Matea had a veggie samosa and a Folk Foods “Bennie” bagel sandwich. We walked over to Mirabelle’s afterward to share a snack while we waited for the Flynn box office to open. We bought tickets to our perennial favorites in live theater, Winter Tales and A Christmas Carol. We’ll get tickets to The Nutcracker and an off-Broadway production of Annie when they go on sale later this month.
By the time we left the box office, a light rain and nasty cloud cover were again threatening our plans for viewing Vermont’s own seasonal spectacular, Foliage on the Mount. But after another hour or better, the clouds began to move out to the east. From the top floor of our house, I could see blue skies over the Adirondacks. So we hopped in the car and made our first new discovery of the weekend: Lake Iroquois. Unbeknownst to us, this beautiful lake is a mere 6 miles from our home. The sun shone fully for the first time in the day, and we took a group photo with the lovely red and yellow hues surrounding the lake. We saw a blue heron basking in the sun at water’s edge and a golden retriever joyfully bathing itself in a large mud puddle.
We then proceeded down I-89 to Stowe, where, we discovered, all the peepers in the state were undoubtedly also converging. After moving through Waterbury at a snail’s pace, we by-passed Stowe and a long line of crawling traffic and headed on our own to Lake Mansfield. The lake itself was, honestly, unimpressive, but the drive along the Little River, with surprise cascades and roadside waterfalls, was a great hit. There at the base of Mount Mansfield, we were also surrounded by lovely late yellows and oranges. Afterwards we rejoined the mob of visitors on Rt. 108. We noted license tags from all over the U.S. and felt a spot of pride as Vermonters, as if every towering maple were our own.
As we continued over the notch and through Jeffersonville and Underhill, the colors were dazzling as promised, though many of the early reds had faded in the higher elevations. As we drew closer to home, though, the colors became much brighter and more vibrant. In Essex Junction, every fifth tree seemed set afire. I would venture to say that the spits and flashes of color on our most familiar streets, close to home, were more appreciated than the grand vistas of color, range after range, we had seen elsewhere. (Matea had described a predominantly yellow and green mountainside in Underhill as resembling “bad broccoli.”) At some point, maybe, the dazzle of large-scale color began to suffer diminishing returns. But Lake Iroquois, where we spent only a brief moment, had been superb. The individual maples along West Street in Essex Junction were unparalleled.
We had spent the day focusing on the summit only to discover that, right now, the grass is sublimely green right here in the valley.
4 years ago
