It's mud season in Vermont. The mighty winter snow has begun to wither and die, succumbing to the rising heat of the springtime sun. The snow melt combines with the thawing earth to turn much of the state into mush. This includes many of the back roads which are not paved. One look at the cars -- some of which look like they've just competed in an off-road race -- and you'll know why they call it "mud season."

It's a time of mixed feelings for the people here. They're relieved that spring's flooding streams mean that winter's flood of tourists is going home and they get the state back to themselves. On the other hand, most people make their living from the same tourists who clutter and crowd their state during ski season and they have to hope they've made enough money from them to last until the snows begin again next year.

It's also a time when the "migrants" -- the people who have come up here to work in or around the ski resorts for the winter -- say goodbye to each other and drift off in different directions. People like my friend Karla.

Karla

Karla describes herself as "addicted" to skiing. Says she gets cravings for it during the summer, which I would have to think would be a little harder to satisfy in July than, say, a yen for Ring Dings. Especially since Ring Dings are not a seasonal fruit. She came to Vermont after leaving her job as an assignment editor at WFSB with the express desire to move into a ski house, get a mindless and menial job and ski her ass off.

This is my second visit to Vermont. My first trip was also included my first attempt at skiing. I managed not to injure myself too seriously -- my knees only hurt when I tried to move laterally -- but I still skied like a drunk tries to walk. There's a lot of stumbling involved.

Getting to Karla's place in Bondville from Hartford is easy. North up interstate 91 through Massachusetts and into Vermont. Take the second exit. At the end of the exit, turn left. Go down that road until the end. At the stoplight there, turn left onto Route 30. That stoplight is significant: it's the only one you see on the whole trip.

That's not to say Vermont is a backward bumpkin kind of place. But comedian Jeff Foxworthy had it right when he said, "You don't have to be a Southerner to be a redneck." In fact, one of his famous "you might be a redneck if..." lines goes, "you might be a redneck if directions to your house include the phrase 'when you leave the paved road'". Directions to Karla's house do.

Route 30 is two lane road that winds around and through the mountains as it follows alongside the West River. You drive through towns with names like "Harmonyville" and "Newfane" although the only way you can tell you're in a town is the sign along the side of the road telling you you're in a town and maybe a church or a couple of shops that are close enough together to give you the idea that this is the central gathering place for folks in the area. Mostly what you see are trees. Trees, the mountains and the river. The river's water is shallow enough and clear enough that you can see the bottom. Every few miles there is a bridge over the river. You've seen "The Bridges of Madison County"? The bridges of Windham County look much the same. Many of them are closed so that people don't try to drive their cars across them. They don't look as if they were designed for automobile traffic and probably sit there now just to demonstrate the area's rustic charm.

About 30 miles up Route 30 is Karla's street, Cole Pond Road. There's no milestone to tell you you've reached it, you have to be looking for it. This is where the dirt road part of the trip starts. During mud season there are ruts and potholes and the road surface is slick enough that if you aren't careful you can lose control of your car and it won't stop until the trees at the bottom of the embankment to the side of the road catch it. The roughly two mile ride can seem to take roughly two hours. But I get there.

The next morning it's time to ski. I ride with Karla to Stratton Mountain, where she works and, because of that, I’ll get to ski for free. Karla drives too fast. She told me she was thinking about buying a helmet for skiing (a "brain bucket" in skiers' parlance). She should buy one for driving. Riding with Karla around the mountain roads of Vermont with their ups and downs and sharp turns is like riding a roller coaster. You feel like you're going to be torn out of your seat and thrown off the track but on a roller coaster you know you're pretty well bolted into the seat. In Karla's car you don't have the assurance that you won't be thrown off the ride.

Since Karla is running late for work, she decides that I'm going to help her. So there I am at 7:30 on a Monday morning at Stratton Mountain, Vermont, cleaning tables. I notice that on the bottle of cleaning spray it says, "Don't Drink", an indication, I guess, of the intelligence of the people normally using it. I don't feel too dopey cleaning tables in a place I don't even belong in until a man with a Stratton logoed sweater comes into the room, looks at me funny, says, "Hi," and walks away. A genuine Stratton employee wondering who this impostor is cleaning their tables. Now I feel dopey.

Soon it's time to ski. Like I said, I was fortunate that I had only mildly hurt myself the first time I tried it. I hope I haven't come back to finish the job. At 9:45 my lesson starts. Holly is my instructor. She's 40 years old, married with children, and teaches ski lessons so her family gets free season passes. Her money making business is the gardening business she runs during the summer. As I follow her down one of the beginner trails, I wonder how much fun it can be for such an experienced skier to be making wide turns at almost no speed down a nearly flat trail with an uncoordinated geek like me.

See John Ski

One way is to make the uncoordinated geek ski a lot faster than he should and watch what happens. I’m making a lot of progress but I still wouldn't describe what I’m doing as "skiing" as much as simply "trying not to crash." And at times I’m not even doing that very well. All I’ve done so far is improve to the point that I can go fast enough that when I do wreck, I can really hurt myself. I tell Holly that I’m being reminded of my second semester of college calculus. "I was going along O.K. and then one day I just didn't get it," I say. "No. You're doing great," she insists. Once, after nearly doing an impersonation of the "Agony of Defeat" guy from ABC's Wide World of Sports while trying to dodge a beer can embedded in the snow, Holly tells me, "That's good. It means you were watching the course."

Still, I finish the day with all my bones in roughly the same place they were when I started, I impress Karla with how much improvement I have made in such little time and there are moments -- brief ones, yes, but moments nonetheless -- in which I actually know what I’m doing. So it comes as a shock and disappointment to the entire skiing world that such a promising career on the slopes will be cut short when I announce my retirement from the sport of skiing at the end of the day. OK, so only Karla is shocked and no one is disappointed but as someone who once broke his leg when he caught his foot in a sidewalk crack while riding his skateboard (the skateboard kept going forward with me on it, leaving my foot behind and breaking both my tibia and fibula), I figure it’s best to quit while I’m ahead.

There are other things to see in Vermont besides the mountains. Riding with Karla that afternoon, we pass two men sitting by a big pile of chopped wood. Karla decides to stop and take their picture. It was just two old country fellows in their red plaid flannel shirts, chewin' the fat while takin' a break from choppin' some wood.

"Two Old Country Fellows"

They don't mind at all if Karla takes their picture as they sit and talk. The wood is Bob's (last names aren't important in Vermont, they aren't used much). He’s chopping up firewood for his house across the street. Next to the house is Bob's water mill -- it says so right on it: "Bob's Watermill." He says a lot of people take pictures of his water mill but not many take pictures of him. The mill powers a grindstone that he uses to sharpen tools. He's 80 and has lived in Vermont since he was three, working as a carpenter and jack-of-all trades most of that time (You have to be careful when you type "jack-of-all trades", because if you make a typo and get "jack-OFF-all trades" instead, you're talking about an entirely different occupation). I don't catch Bob's friend's name. It must be because I’m not listening because people are quick to tell you their names here.

Later we go to what looks like is a one room schoolhouse, which it might have been once, that now serves as the local library. As soon as Karla tells the librarian she wants to get a card, the librarian introduces herself and her associate "Ina". The only thing she wants to know about Karla was, "Do you live out of state?" A lot of books loaned to out-of-staters apparently leave the state with them and never come back.

In search of books we can take out of Vermont, we stop at a local bookstore. We don't learn anyone's name but I do see some of those audio "books on tape." I notice one called, "Raising a Thinking Child." My thought is that the first thing it should tell you is that if you want your child to think, make him actually read the books himself instead of listening to them from tapes.

Monday night we go to a bar called "The Red Fox." It's open mic night. It turns out to be "empty mic" night since no one offers to give the guitar player vocal accompaniment though I do play along on the bongos for two songs. It must be open bongo night, too, it just doesn't say so on the sign. Not that anyone notices. There are only about nine people in the place and Karla knows six of them. It's mud season. There aren't many tourists out during the week.

On the way home from The Red Fox it starts to rain. This upsets Karla. It is the spring rains which wash the winter snows away as though each raindrop is a tiny dagger working to kill the great frosty giant that carries an entire industry on its back. More important for people like Karla, the snow is a big white blanket under which they can hide from real life for awhile, a place in which career or personal problems are forgotten and life's biggest concern is that day's skiing conditions. But as the ground beneath the snow becomes more visible, so does the realization that the life the migrants escaped to come here must be faced again. Karla has to say goodbye to the people she shared this winter with in temporary haven just as winter must say goodbye when the snow dies.

It's spring time. Time for life to begin again.

Take care,

jmcq

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