Quechee

The summer after our first year of college, I started going into new places, wondering if I could live there. Of course I could live in Vermont, in the small ski town of your childhood. We ate at Simon Pearce, accepted the small miracle of the corner table on the crowded porch. The brown rocks in the river, twenty feet below us, the lemon circles in our ice water. I remember going into the glass foundry under the restaurant, watching the artisans blow molten lumps into vases, tumblers, and I thought I could learn a skill, live in a small town. We went into the factory store after lunch, the clearance room where we sifted through all the beautiful things with their slight flaws. I bought a pair of mugs with their saucers, thought I could start to collect things, start churning out a life.

If I remember correctly, we went over to Woodstock after that, spent the rest of the day walking around, going into stores, pointing out the best porches, best gardens or window-shapes. I bought two old hats, one a cream beret that I've given away since, the other light-blue with a thin, curling feather. We got ice cream and ate it under the bridge. It was getting late at that point, and I remember it was a little too cold so close to the water. I remember realizing that I was running out of things to tell you, that the sun was going and that I was ready to go home, back across the state line.

Back to New England this summer, so soon. Back to the mountains, back to the coast. The first time I'll be home for summer in three years. Somehow, strangely, I'm returning the same as I left, or nearly: notions, but no plans, only a cup and a hat to my name.

Fiesole

Thought about quitting. Not going to.

Fiesole. The high sun and how happy I was that my mother had come to Italy. The bus up into the hills above Florence. I bought our tickets at the kiosk, not knowing whether to admit to her that I usually rode without paying. I found her a seat, and stood behind her, back braced against the window. The ochre walls of the houses lining the switchback road up to the town. The olive leaves, their silver undersides.

They have a small museum there, a collection of strange bits pulled from the knoll behind the building. Etruscan, Roman, unidentifiable. A female bust with a broken nose. A stone comb, the teeth carved to look like antlers. A basket. A breastplate. A black figure oinochoe. In the grass behind the building, Roman ruins lie on Etruscan ruins, another frigidarium, another amphitheater. I climbed into the Etruscan temple while my mother strolled around the exterior walls. It was a temple inside a temple, nested into itself. Midday, and in the quiet air, I heard clearly every sound inside the roofless cella. A quick rustling, the small green lizards that I was frightening, their quick retreats back into their crevices and cracks.

I've always loved the Etruscans, mysterious people with no origins we know of and wonderful funerary practices. On the lids of their sarcophagi, they carve effigies of the interred, always shown living and happy, eating or speaking. Couples are carved together, sometimes sitting up and gesturing to the viewer, sometimes lying down and quite unaware of other people. It's beautiful, it's love in a narrow bed. It's a good way to be buried, I think.

They were onto something, the Etruscans. They wanted to be remembered at their best, their liveliest, their most in love. Even now, their ruins refuse melancholy, populated with the bright whips of basking lizards, my bare knees, curious feet. On the other side of the exterior wall, my mother runs her beautiful hand over the rough old stone.

north

Don't forget! how you love the north and its brutal beauty. How its beauty is sharpened by its brutality. Don't forget the dipper tilted on its side, tacked to the sky by the lodestar. Don't forget the world swathed in snow. Don't forget how the frigid weather compels an interior life. Don't forget the poetry this entails. Don't forget the extended meaning of the interaction forced across the snowscape. Don't forget the harsh glittering world, don't forget the glittering world.

at Lake of the Clouds

We were talking about alarm clocks and what to do when someone forgets to deactivate their alarm. We discussed methods for coping when you are not ready to get out of bed. I decided to share my noise-blocking technique.

My family and I were hiking in the White Mountains, along the Appalachian Trail, and we stayed overnight at the AMC hut at Lake of the Clouds. These huts are great. They give you a bunk and a blanket for sleeping, they feed you dinner and breakfast. This one is just below the Washington summit, and has a beautiful view. We ate barley stew and settled in to sleep in a room with fifteen other people. Then this guy started to snore.

It wasn't normal snoring, either. It was loud. It was also irregular. My uncle was in the bunk below me, and I heard him grumbling. Eventually, I saw him stick his hiking stick out and poke the guy in the foot. Tentatively at first, but the guy's reaction was to give a rumbling, deafening snort, so my uncle jabbed him harder. To no avail. After a lot of twisting and turning, I figured out that if I jam my head into the pillow and the heel of my hand into my open ear, I could block most of the noise, so I fell asleep in this position.

The next morning, I woke up, looked around, saw the grey flannel lump of the guy still snoring. Then I saw the empty bunks where my family should have been. They were seriously nowhere. They had left me on top of a mountain. It took me a good five minutes to collect myself, to stop panicking. When I walked out into the dining room, there they were: asleep on the floor and the dining room tables.

Don't forget: if some guy in your hut is snoring, jam one side of your head into your pillow, and jam the heel of your hand into your open ear. This way, you can sleep in your cozy bunk, instead of on the dirty floor of a mountain hut. I think this will also work for situations in which someone's alarm clock is going off.