By Elizabeth Ricketson:
Temps rising to nearly 50 degrees on a mid-December day in Vermont. A curious damp warmth struck me as I made my way out the door for a midday walk. A reprieve from the cold or a warning sign? I feared the latter . . .
How easily the changeable atmosphere had impacted my environment. Down the softening gravel drive, with patches of glistening ice crystals quickly dispersing into trickles of water. While snow still blanketed the landscape and the dormant grasses quite well hidden, the surplus was lessening. Animal tracks imprinted in the inches of white across the front of rolling hills. Coyotes had yipped and howled only hours earlier, yet I turned over and slept under the comfort of what is now the familiar.
The reality of a tentative winter under deceptive skies blew in on an East Barnard wind. I zipped my jacket up around my neck. Shivering slightly, I understood that leaving my gloves at home might have been a mistake, yet I kept heading toward the street.
Remembering to look up to take in my surroundings, I thought about how my rescue dog, Cub, loved to bask under the warmth of the winter sun while lying on the snow perched high on the land just near my house. Regally, as if to look over his kingdom. I smiled to myself while also holding back tears . . .
Quiet and stillness guided me down the drive to the road. I thought about staying on the pavement, but there was no adventure in that, so the B Road it was. Sliding in my mud-stained Blundstone’s as the smooth umber earth sank and slid under my feet. Shifting my steps in a fashion to work with the changeable surface as opposed to fighting it. I embraced the uncertain footing instead of fighting it.
A large dump truck hauled a disproportionately longer trailer. Passing me with a surprising confidence as the road seemed to travel up with deepening ruts. I paused to let him take on the environment as mud flew under spinning wheels as the trailer slammed and banged off into the distance.
Rocks and gravel moved with a springtime ease under foot. The sun highlighting snow on a neighboring hilltop. A small brook with snow-covered boulders rambled parallel to the road. The water, while shallow, had appropriately darkened. A few more feet up the road, I heard the truck returning with the same aggressive determination. The truck now bounced with a defeated hostility.
Again, I waited off to the side of the road and provided a gloveless wave. He passed me, and I was unaware if my gesture had been returned or not. Conditions were indeed too rugged even for a local, I thought to myself.
After a mile or so more, I turned back to return to my studio and my work. Preoccupied with thoughts of what I had yet hoped to accomplish on this quickly dwindling day, I quickened my pace over the last half mile.
Just where the gravel road meets pavement, I spied the truck. A large piece of machinery had been loaded on the lengthy wooden-planked trailer. “Nice day” was sarcastically shouted across the remote road in my direction. A cool blue sky overhead with unseasonably warm temps was indeed a nice day by most standards. However, I understood his frustration of travel and the interruption to his work.
"Are we in April?" I responded lightheartedly. The fifth Vermont season, affectionately known as mud season. He grumped an inaudible response as I kept walking while he adjusted the hearty chains securing the equipment.
“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” —Marcel Proust
A graduate of Providence College with a BA in English, Elizabeth Ricketson has always had a love of literature and the fine arts. In the 1990s, she studied figure drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design, spending years dedicated to understanding human form, movement, and anatomy. Elizabeth’s essays focus on life experiences and life in Vermont. Essays available for consideration.
Website: elizabethricketson.net
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