Highlands and Lowlands

There is still quite a considerable amount of snow in the mountains (the Adirondacks we see to the west will have snow right through the end of spring) but there is no more snow in the fields, only in the woods.  Last weekend we could watch the ice as disappearing from the pond.  The wind did it, as much as the sun.  Saturday, windy and sunny, was a good day for dealing with the rest of the sap.  Here in the valley another gallon of syrup got produced after endless boiling.  Mostly Chris’ production this time, with help from Lesley.  While Ken prepared for another trip to Boston on Sunday for his weekly Monday “mindfulness” seminar at Beth Israel, I went skiing at the Middlebury Snow Bowl with Lesley and Audrey and Chris’ mom, here for the weekend.  It felt surreal, skiing, and with good snow, while the fields here look ready for planting.  It felt surreal, too, being in the mountains for the first time since we moved here, knowing that afterward we were just minutes from home.  Home!

Home! With the final version of the porch-to-be sketched in.

The earth can shift here as much as elsewhere.  Not with the literal earthquake, but the shift that humans make.  We live next to my daughter and family, and Ken’s son and family live about fifteen or so miles east and at a much higher altitude.  (Their growing season is about two weeks shorter than ours in the valley.)  We learned late Saturday that they are in the process of divorce.  It’s good that we’re living here because I think we may be of some use.

Last week the game warden came by to check on the dead bear.  I’d half expected someone sort of cranky, grey-haired, don’t know why, but he was anything but. (Also stunningly good-looking.)  We led him to the dead bear and he poked around and lifted the whole thing up–the “body” consisted of the skin alone, except for the paws and the intact head.  Which was weird.  What was that doing in our creek?  Who would have put it there, of all places?  Slightly upstream was a tag saying “Maine Big Game” along with another tag giving a name and hunting license number.  The bear, he said, was an adolescent, probably only a year old.  Not ripe for hunting.  He was very interested in the tag, and we felt sure he would follow it up. 

Spencer, Ken’s grandson, asked for the skull.  He’s only 14, but he’s a dedicated hunter.  Last fall he shot a deer on Vermont’s “youth hunting day” and he and his dad treated the skull so it could be mounted.  He  wants to do the same thing with the bear head.  So we gave him the whole (not-yet-

Spencer and his deer in fall 2010

putrid) thing in a big plastic bag.  The game warden said the best thing to do is to leave it outdoors covered by some kind of wire mesh so as to let the insects do the cleaning up for you.