End of season

With the exception of a few slow moving oaks, obviously in denial about this whole seasonal business and perhaps intent upon having a few leaves left for Christmas, it's beginning to feel a lot like winter. Cold nose on the way to the bus; cardigan and coat required; and nightly moaning about the fact that the hot water bottle is in storage and that the heating isn't working! Our flat is all floorboards up/plaster down so here are some more rural delights. Some of those mushrooms would've made for deluxe fairy condos.

A river runs through it...

When I was a very little girl my Grandad took me fly fishing. He had taught me to cast using a piece of bean cane (I couldn't be trusted with a precious split cane rod) in his garden. I remember trying to be interested but waving a stick backwards and forwards while he counted metronome-style proved a bit trying for my 5 or 6 year old sensibilities. Days later, we took one rod (I still couldn't be trusted) and headed to the river with family in tow to watch him fish for real. 

He unhurriedly assembled the rod, cast and lo - a trout sprang, almost instantly, out of yonder river. I was impressed. Grandad doesn't hang around, I cried. 

The trout got wily and there weren't any more fish that day. 

And so it was when we went to the Great North Woods of Maine to battle landlocked salmon and brook trout with the great Rick Estes. 

Up at dawn for pancakes and bacon under the watchful eyes of generations of stuffed bucks. Ungainly fittings for waders (B looked really good, I really didn't). Bumpy drives along foggy tracks, past dewy cobwebs. And then ... 20 minutes in, just as I was beginning to hear my Grandad's counting and recall the mutinous urges of my littler self ... my first fish. A beautiful landlocked salmon caught at Little Boy Falls, a pool in which Eisenhower fished in 1955. 

In the log house that night, an old timer with a lot of whiskers told me, "that was an iconic first fish, young lady". I like everything about that sentence. Grandad, on his big river bank in the sky, just might have done a little smile.

But once that salmon had been caught and popped back, not another fish showed up all day. We just had to make do with the draw-joppingly beautiful world of A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT and Bosebuck Mountain. 

On 18 November 2007

I woke up for the first time as a married lady ...

xx

Happy Halloweeeeeen!

Vermont, Vermost

We took in six states in our whistle stop tour around New England. They were all wonderful in their own - surprisingly different - ways. But it was Vermont that blew our socks off. Just three weeks after Hurricane Irene had done her worst and Vermont was back on its feet, albeit a bit battered and muddy*, and ridiculously, charmingly concerned that 2 English travelers should enjoy their time in the Green Mountain State. We really, really did.

I couldn't recommend it more highly. Maple syrup and pumpkins; farmhouse breakfasts at tables groaning with food and surrounded by madly mixed crowds; red barns and dappled cows; leaves that actually take your breath away; perfect graveyards and countless covered bridges; Millie the Dog riding shot-gun on my lap; Beth at Liberty Hill Farm; smiling pigs and territorial alpacas; the best road signs and the kindest people. Oh, and the best darn "antique mall" you ever saw. A little bit of heaven.

* Unlike others, we didn't get into disaster tourism/photography but suffice to say that some people's homes and businesses took an unbearable battering when Irene hit. We thought it kinder to photograph whole covered bridges and happy dogs rather than ogling at the sad remains of historic landmarks. Poor Vermont.