By Carol Thompson
When I was halfway through my junior year at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst the headlights of my future were on high-beam, and I was having second thoughts about what I wanted to be when I grew up. One beautiful spring morning in May of 1972, my immediate plans included attending my sister’s college graduation in Henniker, New Hampshire, and suddenly, visions of a road trip popped into my mind. I informed my housemates I was heading north to visit my friend Paula, who had just moved from Boston with a plan to help Carol Lippincott at her newly-purchased country store.
After cramming my clothes into a big, army surplus duffel bag and walking to the corner of the two roads that would take me out of town, I stuck out my thumb and within minutes a rusty, dusty Volkswagen mini-bus filled with scraggly, barefooted, longhaired hippies in tie-died T-shirts stopped to pick me up. When they slid the side door open a cloud of marijuana smoke escaped and surrounded me like a soft glove. By mid-afternoon we pulled into the driveway of “The Red House” on Route 100 in Warren, Vermont.
Two weeks later I tried to leave the Mad River Valley for the first time. I was scheduled to hop on a Greyhound bus and go to my sister’s graduation and Paula offered to drive me to Montpelier, 30 minutes away. At about noon we were ready for liftoff, and I threw my duffel into the back seat of Herbie, her red VW bug, and settled into the passenger seat. We left Warren Village, Waitsfield and Moretown behind, passing farm fields with their blankets of yellow dandelions, watching bluebirds zigging and zagging along the fence lines grabbing unidentified flying insects to feed their hungry hatchlings. Red-tailed hawks, looking for mice, swooped low over the freshly-tilled furrows of fertile black earth incubating the almost ready to sprout seed corn that would grow into 10-inch-high stalks with long ears of sweet yellow corn ripening in the fall.
The air was thick with pollen and the Mad River was running full tilt after a previous night of explosive thunder, lightning, and torrential rain. Wild purple and white lilacs waved at us from hedges alongside the road – evidence of abandoned farmhouses long-dead from wood rot and carpenter ants before collapsing decades ago. Daffodils appeared in droves, waking the memories of old foundations, nodding their orange-bonneted heads to a steady stream of passers-by.
How could I leave this place? Where on earth would I ever be able to find so many sweet scents, hear the high-pitched tweeee of the spring peepers, and soak up the hopes and dreams of a rich dark soil so full of earthworms? How could my eyes settle for less than a sky transforming with innumerable shades of blues, dotted with puffy white clouds looking like hump-backed whales, piggy backing on and on until they floated and disappeared over the high peaks of our mountain range, still dotted with leftover remnants of winter’s white? Would I miss the sight of a cornflower blue heaven turning a streaky pink-purple-black before making room for a full moon, the far-off belt of Orion and the Milky Way?
We had only been on the road for about 20 minutes before I looked at Paula and she looked at me. I said, “Turn around,” and without skipping a beat that little red VW bug pulled a “uey,” leaving a spray of gravel on a freshly-plowed field and we headed back to the Red House, back to home.
Thompson lives in Waitsfield and has tried to leave The Valley seven times since 1972. She is packing up home again, headed to Maryland to be close to her grandchildren.
