Living in Place

It’s clear Andrew Marvell never grew cucumbers in Vermont: the 17th-century metaphysical poet wrote, My vegetable love should grow/Vaster than empires and more slow.* We hedged our bets with the cucumbers last spring by planting extra seeds on account of the cold. They germinated better than expected, and I was too softhearted to thin them properly. […]

Vermont in the summer: this season that’s so sweaty and so brief. We’re now in the thick of it: steamy days so humid you could squeeze water out of the air if only the weather didn’t drain all the gumption to do anything right out of you. Nevertheless, there’s so much to be done. The […]

The last time I hiked Mt. Equinox I’d just finished the first draft of my first novel, and I’d known Tim for less than a week. Last Sunday, we hiked it again, for the second time in thirty-one years. Three decades later, and everything is changed. The trail isn’t what I remembered. In fact, I’m […]

It was early Saturday morning. “I’m going to yoga,” I said. “Won’t you help me finish the wood?” Tim said. “I need a good work out,” I said. The Saturday class is the hardest of the week. “I’ll give you a good workout,” Tim said. I stayed and worked out with wood. He’d been working […]