Summer in New England

New England holds many fond memories for me, some of my earliest, in fact. I’m not sure how old I was when my folks started taking summer vacations in Vermont, but I know they had ended by the time I was 9, replaced, for me, by summer months spent in sleep-away camp. Good memories as well, but not quite as good as Vermont.

In my child’s mind we “spent the summer” in Vermont. The reality I came to find out as an adult is that we rented a cabin for two weeks. But when you’re a young child, two weeks can feel like an entire summer, when days are long, spent on the beach and in the water or roaming the woods.

 

I did a lot of these things. I remember fishing with my father, “Uncle” George and his son Jimmy. I remember scavenging for driftwood and shells with my grandfather. I remember trails through the woods from one cabin to another with our friends’ dog Skipper, the dalmatian, keeping an ever watchful eye. My love of dogs was born in these summers; never had I known a truer companion or better side kick.

New England kept a hold on me. I went to college in Boston, and lived in Vermont as an adult for a brief period, in an old farmhouse that I dearly loved. The imprint of farm landscapes, Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks in the distance, church suppers and country auctions have made an indelible mark on who I am.

I’ve returned many times – for the Brimfield Antiques Markets, Fenway Park and the Red Sox, antiques shows in New Hampshire and treasure hunting in Maine. Now there are new family memories being made in Vermont, since our next generation has fallen in love with it as well and now calls it home. 

My heart is glad to return, ironically for those few weeks in summer that began it all. And if we’ve timed our trip to allow for a visit to the Brimfield Antiques Markets, well, let’s just say we planned well. A visit there with more friends made over the years. No one could ask for a better journey.