Water, sun, snow
I paddled to Vermont today. A perfect, mild sunny autumn day.
Lake Champlain was blissfully empty and so warm that as I crossed from Westport to the east side I kept peeling off layers.
From the far shore, looking back, I could see the crowns of distant peaks white with November snow.
The North Country can be a challenging, frustrating place to live.
But having lived all over the world, I can say with some authority that there's no landscape more beautiful, more generous.
About the time I pack the kayak away for true winter, it'll be time to dust off the backcountry skis and the snowshoes.
Sweet.
posted by Brian Mann @ 11/29/2009 05:28:00 PM
4 Comments
4 Comments:
"there's no landscape more beautiful, more generous"
Precisely. None more "generous;" no truer words ever spoken!
Thanks, Brian.
I envy Brian, he's out there with mother nature being propelled along by his own clean, green and quiet muscle power.
With my messed up neck, back and shoulders, paddling a canoe in a swimming pool would be a "back-breaking" chore, let alone paddling across Lake Champlain!
The only way I can get out in a canoe nowadays is for me to play "Royalty" sitting in the middle and letting others do the paddling.
PS. Brian, I spent 3 years living in sunny Sicily and 3 years in bonnie Scotland. The Sicilians and Scots, to a person, feel the same way about their own native climes, and for good reason.
However, seeing Whiteface in the distance while quietly crossing Lake Champlain, does rival in beauty and generosity what I have seen elsewhere on this beautiful and generous planet.
Would you take me with you next time? I'd try not to act to royal.
What a poetic tribute to the North Country. Being born in upstate NY and moving to California before I was 10, I longed ceaselessly to return. Coming back at 21 to this beautiful part of the world is a decision I've never regretted. It's important to remember that this beauty is such a blessing, a gift. Many have left these parts but surely they hold a special place in their hearts for this craggy, hardscrabble land where such tranquility can be found. Discovered in such late fall days but also in those crisp, cold, days when the sun filters through the trees and bathes the snow crunching underfoot. I'm off to dig out the snowshoes so I'll be ready....
Digging the paddle into the wet, feeling its resistance to my will
but still, I go gliding along, guiding the stroke
towards my goal of the distant shore.
As I near the touch of land, I glance back, over my shoulder, and glimpse the western sun, backlighting the majestic sun-capped skyscrapers that our mother has made.
And the hairs raise on my neck.
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