Our own skies were grey temporarily and as always, I took pictures, but for the time being I’ll continue posting the more cheerful images from a recent drive to Vermont.
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It’s hard to have eyes everywhere at once. I nearly missed the deer.
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Vermont is easily one of my favourite states.
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Not that I’ve visited them all, but I have been to 28.
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The USA is of course not the largest country, but its impressive size was emphasised to me a very long time ago. After coming to the States I was unable to travel for 6 years, so when I got my airline travel benefits in 1970, I took a long trip with a friend, stopping first in Hong Kong.
We flew to San Francisco and then caught a flight via Honolulu. Because of construction on the runway there, the aircraft could not take on a full fuel load, necessitating a stop on very tiny Wake Island. It was rather a novel experience, akin to landing on an aircraft carrier, I felt.
At any rate, we got off the aeroplane to be greeted by US officials. After 17 hours of actual flight, never mind two layovers, we were still in US territory.
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It is unsurprising in a country so large, that the states should feel quite different. While the people are all Americans, there are bound to be regional variances as well as local customs. The land itself has enormous contrasts across the continent.
All of those components are bound to affect the way a visitor feels about a place.
Certainly, when I first went to Seattle, I was affected by the proximity of the Pacific Ocean and the mountains that I love so much, but after a time the magic wore off, then I thought of it as just where I lived.
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After 18 years, for a number of reasons I decided to move back to New York, though not to Long Island where I had spent 36 years, choosing instead a small town Upstate that I did not know except from what I’d read on someone’s blog. I had no real expectations of how I would feel. The decision to move had come totally out of left field. I’d seized a hold of it as if it was some sort of life preserver and clung to it in the face of a great deal of opposition.
Because of all the stress over finances, not to mention the physical effort of packing up a large house and arranging transport for 13 cats, I didn’t really have time to think about feelings which was probably just as well.
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So I was more than a little surprised, that early Saturday morning at the end of September in 2018, to find myself feeling that I’d come home. Home wasn’t a concept I ever really identified with, other that it being where I lived currently.
Our flight had landed at JFK where I’d worked for 31 years, but I certainly didn’t call that home and in the years I’d been gone it had changed radically, so my feelings were nothing to do with it. I think I was reacting to being back on the east coast, although I had never consciously missed being here.
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What is more surprising is the subtle shift I feel every time I cross the state line into Vermont, which is mere miles from where we live.
In Vermont I always feel just a little bit more calm, more settled, safer, for no reason I can identify. Is it the terrain? The hills appeal to me very much. It is a very pretty state, but so too is New York.
Maybe it’s that I have the impression Vermonters care more for their properties?
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Other places have affected me deeply as well, most particularly Tibet, which I wrote about recently. Setting foot across that border was probably the thrill of my lifetime. I became intoxicated by the experience of being there and rode on a high for weeks after my return.
There were other places I’d been keen to visit and I was never disappointed, but Tibet was really special. We went into an old monastery one day. It was constructed of wood with a low-beamed ceiling. The monks were chanting and incense swirled through shafts of light that penetrated the dark chamber. Consciously, it was totally alien, yet I had the strangest sensation of familiarity.
Deja-vu, perhaps. I often have such reminders, or whatever they are, but that day in the monastery was something different. It wasn’t a momentary flash. It was more a feeling of having been gone for a long time and coming back where I belonged.
The sound, the smell. The peace.
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Life treats us to endless inexplicable surprises. If you’re an over-thinker, like me, you mull them over and file them somewhere in a remote part of your brain where they remain until the next time a similar experience occurs. Then, when you have enough, you make deductions based on nothing more than what you would quite like it all to mean.
There are no answers for me, just feelings that keep me comfortable.
If that makes sense.
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The photo of the deer crossing the small road reminds me a lot of the country roads around Beetley. I think you might find many similarities with New England if you ever came here. Except for the hills, as we don’t have any to speak of.
Best wishes, Pete.
Thank you, Carolyn, for sharing the interesting memories of your travels and your beautiful feelings while in Tibet. As always, I love your photographic additions, especially the road crossing deer, the trees and landscapes.
Joanna
I, too, find that crossing from Vermont into any adjacent state or province marks a startling change. I have always found that fascinating.
Those photos of Vermont roads are quite something! In terms of upkeep of property upstate NY v. Vermont I expect that has to do with wealth, second homes, employment opportunities etc.
Yes, no doubt.
May those feelings that bring you comfort continue and grow!
I like the dirt road with the trees on both sides – it almost looks like the trees want to give a hug to the people passing through. It’s great that you have such peaceful feelings when you think of your time in Tibet … I think that’s more or less how I feel about Namibia.