Living in Place

Spring Came Late is an excerpt from my not-yet-published novel Elegy for a Girl, a heartbreaking love story between Mary Grace “Girl” Knight and her father, Harlan, whose hill-farm is bisected by construction of the new interstate highway in 1958. Spring is arriving slowly and late this year, as it often does in Vermont. The […]

As Vermont’s ski areas morphed into Destination Resorts, I gave up downhill skiing for cross-country; as cross-country skiing developed around groomed trails at Nordic ski centers, I stepped out of the tracks and went backcountry skiing. The Green Mountain National Forest is just twenty-five miles from my home. Despite the sunshine and the late March […]

Vermont is a place of many seasons, and one of my favorites is Sugaring, when maple sap is harvested and boiled down to syrup. Sugaring season falls somewhere between winter and mud season – another of Vermont’s many seasons, and another precursor to Vermont’s long, slow, spring. Sugaring season occurs when the daytime temperature rise […]

In the deep of winter, my husband carries the amaryllis bulbs up from the basement. They arrive upstairs looking like nothing more than pots of dirt. Just as it seems as if winter will never end, it also looks as if the bulbs will never sprout. They appear dead; that new life might emerge from […]

New England is famous for its weather, and this winter, we’re having plenty of it – so much, in fact, that we’ve had to shovel the roof. A few years ago, we had to replace the original roof on our house. It was of cedar shakes, which shed shingles but not snow. We replaced it […]