ROAD TRIP
"A writer doesn't have to be the smartest person in the room, only the most observant." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

This weekend, my mother and I took a trip to Vermont and northern New York* (yes, there is a part of NY that's even more north than us). I wanted to go to Vermont because I love the state. I'd probably move there if I didn't like my hometown so much. Vermont is sort of old-fashioned and traditional yet moderately progressive. VT is largely rural and community-orientated without being backward or insular. It clings to its identity without being chauvinistic. When you cross the state line, there's a sense that in many ways, things really are different there.

Our first stop, on the way, was a general store. I LOVE general stores. Maybe some day, I'll write an article for a general-interest magazine about general stores. I am attracted to them partly them because you never know what you're going to find, although excellent pastries are usually a good bet. But mainly I love general stores because they are so incredibly reflective of their region and community. The one I was in had a dozen different varieties of maple products. There was fresh milk. The cheese on sale came from the famous Vermont creamery Cabot. There was stuff from the local teddy bear factory. General stores are a marker that exemplifies place. If you went into the same general store I was in, there'd be no doubt that you were in Addison County, Vermont. Although we live in a world of increasing standardization, corporatization and strip malls, it remains unlikely you could go to a megamarket in San Diego or Miami and find maple barbecue sauce. That's what's great about general stores: the act as a barrier, however tiny, against mass homogenization.

I'm also a newspaper junkie. When I travel, I always make a point to pick up the local newspaper of, not only where I'm going, but of any places I happen to stop on the way. I find it fascinating to learn about what issues people in other parts of the state/country are worried about. Not so much on how they feel about national issues; CNN is fine for that. But what sorts of local issues are driving the regional agenda. What local issues people are passionnate about. What regional newspapers consider worthy of their column inches. It's part of the variety that makes this such a diverse country. [Some time later, I hope to have a review of the Vermont press of the last few days, based on the papers I picked up]

On Saturday, we went to the fascinating Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, VT (not far from Burlington). According to its website the museum is one of the nation's most eclectic museums of art, Americana, architecture, and artifacts. Thirty-nine galleries and exhibition structures display over 150,000 objects spanning four centuries. Outstanding collections of folk art, decorative arts, tools, toys, textiles, and transportation vehicles are exhibited in tandem with paintings by artists such as Monet, Manet, Cassatt, Degas, Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Cole, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, and many others. The museum's 25 19th-century structures include a covered bridge, a round barn, a lighthouse, and a 220-foot restored steamboat that is a National Historic Landmark. We spent over three hours wandering the grounds of the museum and still didn't see all of it.

On Sunday, we visited the breathtaking Ausable Chasm on the Ausable River, near Keesville, NY (not far from Plattsburgh). It was a quite magnificient place. Water carved the stunning Ausable Chasm. Water carved the Grand Canyon. It's amazing to ponder, as my mother pointed out, the power of that resource.

In between, we took a ferry across Lake Champlain from Vermont into New York. It afforded a beautiful view of the lake as well as both the Green and Adirondack Mountain ranges. There was one transcendent moment on the ferry. One time, I was looking down at the water and I noticed something from where I was standing. Whenever the waves crashed into the side of the boat and rebounded back outward, it created a little, brief, rainbow in the water. At first I saw it and thought it was an optical illusion related to my shades or just a freak one-off thing. But then I kept noticing it, then I took my sunglasses off and it kept happening. It was really amazing to behold. As a friend of mine sort of put it, "It's like nature's way of saying 'Hey Brian, thanks for taking the time to notice. These rainbows is your reward.'"



*-Note: whenever I say New York in my entries, New York State is implied. I will explicitly say New York City or NYC if I'm referring to that municipality.