Stowe, Vermont; Weeks 2-3 ...

Worcester Range Stowe, Vermont

July 29-August 9, 2025

I have been enjoying being here in Stowe a great deal. It is a small window of time and experience, having been here about three weeks, but based on my stay so far, I could live here for several months, maybe just not in the winter. 😊 The area has many attractions. I am not talking just about attractions in the sense of physically go see this or that. There are those kinds of things, such as Von Trapp Lodge and Resort, Stowe Mountain, and Smuggler’s Notch. There is a quaint downtown area with restaurants, brew pubs, galleries, and arts and music events. As crowded as it becomes, it has an easy feeling, and parking is simple. But the “attractions” I am talking about have to do with sensations of comfort, peaceful energy, and engagement with the environment.

I will use bike riding as a carrier for this. On the practical side, there are good roads with minimal traffic. Technically, roads in the valley are a mix of flat to small hill terrain, a nice variety in terms of facilitating a good workout. If one wants bigger, longer hills, they can be found.

There is great scenery in terms of landscape. Stowe sits in a large valley between Mount Mansfield and the Green Mountains (peaks of 4,000+ feet elevation) on the west and the Worcester Range (peaks 3,000+ feet elevation) on the east. Cycling provides numerous great views of these mountain ranges. This type of horizon is inspiring to me as I ride along. The mountains are good for sunrise-sunset, moonrise-moonset, too, while out taking walks.

Thistle, a farm, and Mount Mansfield Range

Another striking pleasure is the presence of so much open space, farmland, beautiful green fields, acres of corn and other crops. These fields are accompanied by barns and farmhouses, a diversity of structures, mostly older, rustically adorning the landscape. Between the mountains and the open space, I often stop riding and take photos of what I am experiencing and enjoying.

Another thing to mention is one that has great impact. Wildflowers are abundant, growing along the side of the road, petals of various colors and shades of yellows, whites, purples, blues, oranges, and reds. I can ride admiring the flowers for miles. There is also the significant greenery involved. Flowers stand out against this canvas of multiple shades of green permeating the entire area. There are more plants with no flowers on them, by far, and they dominate the landscape.

This leads me to the topic of dandelions. There is a tallish plant with yellow flowers that borders much of Randolph Road. They remind me of the dandelions I am familiar with that grow on the lawns all over the northeast. Dandelions are remarkably beautiful. I think the tall plants with flowers similar to dandelions might be called Thistles.

I have gone downtown twice. Downtown is only about half a mile long, a busy place. It houses a variety of restaurants, brew pubs, distilleries, churches, real estate offices, general stores, ice cream shops, municipal buildings, and more.

My favorite place so far is Bear Pond Book Store. When you first enter, there is a section with calendars, journals, and cards. Cards are nice to browse. Creators put a lot of energy into the art involved in making a card. They can impart an uplifted attitude and create good feeling and smiles.

We do not send enough cards to each other. I used to be good at it. Then for some reason, perhaps related to the internet, I slowed down and nearly stopped. I have a box of unwritten, unsent cards. Letter writing and cards, where have you gone. I have very few addresses of people to send cards. Maybe it is time to revisit this phenomena of sending cards.

Bear Pond also has a good selection of books. Initially it looks like a small shop. It is narrow, but I learned it is long. There are a number of sections, as one moves front to back, each one populated with top books of that topic or genre. But I did not buy a book. I wanted to buy one. I had a copy of Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari, in my hands, looking over the table of contents. But I have several books with me now. I could not read all the books I have with me on this trip if I read all day every day. In my apartment, I have an Earth Science textbook, an Anthropology textbook, a history of Native Americans titled 1491, and a copy of Mel Robbin’s Let Them. There are more books in the van. 1491 describes life in all of the Americas before Columbus arrived, South America, Central America, and North America.

I have done several different bike rides here. One was a loop that included climbing over Smuggler’s Notch, approaching it from Jeffersonville. Another was a ride into Stowe and     around the local area, passing near the Von Trapp Resort. The most frequent ride has been on Randolph Road, riding out and back to Morrisville, which is a ten mile, roundtrip loop. I do 3-5 loops depending on how I feel.

I see many more people riding bicycles here than I do in Danbury. I occasionally catch up to someone, and when I do, I try to start up a conversation. This week I met a guy from D.C who has a condo here. He bought it twenty years ago, and his family spends a couple of months here in the summer and a month in the winter. It is a twelve hour drive from D.C to Stowe.

He had a brand new bike. It was the first time he had taken it out for a ride. He was quite excited about it, though he said the gearing was a little confusing and it was going to take time to adjust to. When “ten-speeds” started to show up in the US, back in the 1960s, they had two chainrings on the front of the drivetrain and five gears on the rear, 2 X 5 = 10. That was consistent for years. Some bikes had “triples” on the front, so they were fifteen speeds. And over time, the rear sprockets increased to accommodate several more gears, anywhere from six to ten or eleven. Many bikes these days come with single chainrings on the front and a wider range of gears on the cassette. It takes some getting used to, but I have not ventured yet in that direction.

Another time, I met a woman who lives about a mile from the farmhouse. She commented on how nice it was to get out and ride after taking off a week. She said she had been on a boat, out on Lake Champlain, for the past six days. She is a marine biologist. She also goes down to Antarctica for a month at a time, doing research and giving presentations on the environment and the organisms that live there, penguins in particular. It sounded like she loved being out on boats and doing her work, yet it made getting good hiking and riding somewhat of a conflicting challenge. She can get some exercise on a boat but not like when you are simply on land.

After my rides, I am ready for a shower, a meal, listening to some music, and doing some reading. Or playing my bongos or flute! I do take an occasional nap. I am up daily between 5-6AM. I go to bed between 9-10PM. Some days, a nap is great.

Returning back to the topic of farmland and vegetation, as I have mentioned before, the farmhouse is surrounded by cornfields. The corn has grown multiple feet in the time I have been here. It looks to be as high as ten feet generally, though oddly enough to me, the rows closer to the road seem to be shorter. I wonder why that is. The tassels along the tops appeared about a week ago. Another woman I rode with told me that after the tassels come out, the corn is ready to eat in three weeks. It will be interesting to see if these fields are harvested while I am here.

I drove up to Glover one day to visit with a friend from years ago, Dorothy. We grew up in Mill Ridge, a Danbury neighborhood, and we went to St, Joseph’s Grammar School together. She is a year younger than me. Her brother Richie was in my class.

Tom and Dorothy

 Glover is about an hour’s drive from Stowe, going northeast. Most of it was paved, with the last four miles a good dirt road. She and her husband have a “camp” there on a pond. When she first told me she was at camp, I envisioned some kind of camp where kids came for the day and there were a bunch of activities. I learned that in this case, camp is a type of residence. It would be similar to saying “cabin” or something like that. Her place was a nice, three season, two story place with a big, grassy yard.  It was idyllic.

I had not seen Dorothy in nearly fifty years. We had lunch and spent time reminiscing, laughing, and generally having a good time. After lunch we took a walk down to the pond and watched geese swimming across the surface. It was so fun catching up. There seems to be bond created in youth, created by the simple acts of spending time together, not necessarily anything in particular that we might have talked about those many years ago. Games in the backyard. Go-carts we built and raced down the hill. Camping out, overnights watching the stars. Nothing philosophical, it was simply a friendly time and space.

I have met up twice with another friend, Cindy, who lives in Montpelier, about thirty minutes away. We originally met last September at Mather Campground in Grand Canyon. She was on a six-month, cross country camping trip. She came up to the farmhouse a few days after I arrived in Stowe. I drove down to see her another day in Montpelier, and  we met at the state capitol building. She gave me a nice tour through the beautiful building with its impressive architecture. After that, we did a hike in Hubbard Park up to a rock tower that was built by the Civilian Conservation Corp in the early 1930s. Then we walked downtown, stopping for iced tea at the North Branch Café.

Tom and Cindy

 On Monday nights in Morrisville, a small town about six miles north of the farmhouse, there is a West African Drum & Dance class in the River Arts Building. I learned about this from a poster on the community board at Bear Pond Books. It says bring your own drums or use some that would be available. Coincidently, my bongo drums arrived here the day before I saw the poster. The instructor is Chimie, an energetic, friendly guy from Guinea with a great deal of experience. He plays some sounds on his drum, and those present follow his lead. There were about ten people attending, and right from the start it was a fun, energetic experience. We played drums for about forty-five minutes, then switched to dance. Again, Chimie led the way.

The dancing is a prescribed set of moves everyone does, something like you can see in this video: West African Dance- Sinte. I stayed with playing drums as one of three people who did the music for the dancing. It was a fantastic new experience for me, a great deal of fun, and I am looking forward to the coming Monday to do it again! (I don’t think dancing is a good idea for me due to my recent problems with my Achilles tendon. I think the movement would aggravate it.)

I have also done a couple walks on the Stowe Recreation Path. It begins downtown and runs 5.3 miles adjacent to Mountain Road, up towards Stowe Mountain Resort. Most of the trail passes through pastoral environments of fields and woods along a stream. It has a nice sidewalk mural painted right at the beginning.

I went into town early Friday evening to see and hear some music. Stowe has a Friday Art & Music event on Fridays throughout the summer. There are a number of creative entities, artists and their art and their businesses. It was a jovial, happy setting. The musician was David Karl Roberts. He is a singer-songwriter, blending guitar and harmonica in original songs. He plays mostly in Vermont, some in Maine. It was nice to hear some live music.

It was not very crowded along the street, and only a handful of people were listening to David. When I arrived I browsed the tents housing each artist’s work, and I talked with a couple of the artists about what they created and how they arrived at this point in time, relative to their displays. After that I found a seat on a picnic table, chilling out and listening to the music.

A woman sat down on the other side of the table. I initiated a conversation, learning she has been living in Stowe for twenty-five years, moving up from Long Island somewhere not far from Jones Beach. It turns out she was downtown to pick up take-out food and just wanted to hear the music while she waited. We talked about cycling and hiking, she pointing out some places to hike and, if I wanted to make the drive to Smuggler’s Notch, one place to swim with the hot weather forecast, Sterling Pond.

After she left, three others approached me asking if the seats were available. They had take-out food in their hands and were looking for a place to eat it! They were three generations of woman, Mom, daughter, and granddaughter. The granddaughter, around age four, had her face painted at one of the art vendor tents, by a woman I had talked with earlier. The little girl’s grandmother had moved to Stowe forty years ago from the New Milford area.

I left the picnic table and the three happy diners. As I walked across the lawn, a women told me she liked my t-shirt. It is the purple t-shirt that my friend Heather made for me with the words “Enjoy Being” on the front. She was sitting cross-legged on a stone wall separating the lawn from the street. In talking with her, I learned she had just come into town three hours earlier, from Chicago, and was here to immerse herself in Nature, particularly by doing hikes in the mountains. She seemed quite happy to be here.

Due to my Achilles issue, I have not been doing any strenuous hikes in the mountains. I’m still walking about five miles every day. Most of my walks are on the road where the farmhouse is located. It borders pastures and corn fields with views of both mountain ranges, Worcester and Mansfield. Some days I turn onto Moss Glen Falls Road and head to  a large waterfall about half mile down a dirt road.

On tonight’s walk, I saw there was a different set of cows in the pasture. Previously I had only seen six adults of various colors. Tonight, there were eight juveniles, all black and white and hanging out close together, walking slowly in unison as they grazed.