I feel a boring post coming on. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Anna was a wonderful guest. I’m so relaxed around her. We do stuff like, while driving along, fake-laugh at the top of our lungs, and then experiment with what happens when we laugh in high notes and when we laugh in a bass voice. Here’s Anna cleaning out her pocketbook. And here’s what happened when she tried to drain the pasta. I guess I should’ve given her the colander.
Now Anna knows why I talk the way I do, because she’s hearing all these other northeasterners say stuff in the same accent. I’ve regressed to a full-blown, proud “aaahh-ringe” since I’ve been back in the phonetic region of my birth.
I dragged Anna to class with me. She was a good sport, as always. I wanted to show her off, and show off my classmates to her, so she’d be able to picture me on this long, strange trip.
It’s hunting season here. Twice in the last two days on the dirt road by my house, I’ve encountered a camouflage-clad guy with a rifle clasped to his chest. He really wanted to shoot something. I swear he squinted into my car to see if I might be an in-season ungulate. I wonder if he would have shot at me if I’d been kicking my way through the leaves down to the stream behind my barn, holding antlers on my head, or gobbling.
I promised Anna a brief visit to the Kipling house (Naha-something, I think). It’s private so you can’t get close.
One night two of my barnmates invited Anna and me over for a girls’ night at Charity’s. It was a blast. We ate as we talked about miscarriages and Vermont Country Store vibrators and raising kids and all kinds of things. The last picture is the sweet Dinah the Rhodesian Ridgeback.
A couple nights later I invited some of my classmates over for a little gathering to welcome Anna. [Middle photo by Lauren. I don’t remember who took the first one.]
Dena has a problem with her sleeves. Here’s a picture of everyone leaving to go watch the international fashion show on campus. I didn’t want them to leave. I was having fun.
Here are some of my classmates strutting their stuff: Joseph from Nambia was exposing a lot of leg and shoulder, Sue the Korean ballerina did some beautiful moves, and my Kiswahili teacher came out in full Masai regalia, complete with toothpick for cleaning teeth after a llama-meat feast.
And then there was Hilal from Oman looking traditional, Natalia from Mongolia Siberia [thanks, Dena; I wasn’t paying attention] doing some fancy modeling moves, and Linhong with a stray shiny boy who stole the show.
Banana seemed really to love the whole affair.
The next day I’d promised Anna I’d take a day off of work and go with her on a hike we were interested in to Quechee Gorge, a little shy of two hours north of here. It was pouring rain, but we went anyway.
By the time we got from the visitor center to the trailhead we were pretty well soaked, but we had to go on, because the description from the Federal Writer’s Project’ 1937 American Guide Series lured us. According to Vermont: A Guide to the Green Mountain State:
“The winding road continues through pleasantly wooded country to one of the outstanding natural spectacles of the State. The highway bridge here, on the side of the former railroad bridge, once the highest one in the East, is 165 feet above the Ottauquechee River which, dwarfed to a turbulent thread, flows below at the bottom of the jagged gorge which it has cut from sheer rock in the course of the ages. Mosses and an occasional wind-sown tree grow on the sides of the canyon, but they merely emphasize the fact that here is a landscape which nature in an extravagant and Gothic mood endowed with a grim majesty that neither growing things nor the power of man can soften or subdue.”
One final shot of Anna before we went to get dry:
Here’s news from the world beyond my own: a recent photo of Bulwinkle, a photo Lulu cruelly sent to me, and KT’s giant bunny:
The problem is… it shows my breasts.
Where’s the gorge??
Psst… Natalia’s from Siberia.
You’re awfully cute, you know. So is Anna.
The Quecheeeee Gorge does indeed have a certain… grim majesty. Don’t you even TRY and subdue it. (Will you take me there if it’s even remotely not-freezing outside? (I laugh acerbically.))
MY SPIDEY! I’m so ‘cited.
Re. your breasts. They’re lacking a certain something, but it’s nothing that a little oil paint or plastic surgery — or tattoos! — can’t remedy. Thanks for the correction on Natalia. I KNEW that but my fingers didn’t obey my brain. I’ll go fix it. Although I was close, cuz she’s right across the border from Mongolia. But still…
Quechee Gorge: Take 91 N to 89 N. One exit later is Highway 4, on which you go left. A few miles later, just before you cross the gorge, there’s a visitor center to your left. Below it is a trailhead. It’s a very short hike downhill. If you follow the gorge uphill you get to a dam and something else I’ve forgotten about. Down the road a few miles is Woodstock, VT. There’s a farm museum near there, which might be interesting, and the Simon Pearce Glass factory, which someone said was also worth a visit.
Re. your breasts. They’re lacking a certain something, but it’s nothing that a little oil paint or plastic surgery — or tattoos! — can’t remedy. Thanks for the correction on Natalia. I KNEW that but my fingers didn’t obey my brain. I’ll go fix it. Although I was close, cuz she’s right across the border from Mongolia. But still…
Quechee Gorge: Take 91 N to 89 N. One exit later is Highway 4, on which you go left. A few miles later, just before you cross the gorge, there’s a visitor center to your left. Below it is a trailhead. It’s a very short hike downhill. If you follow the gorge uphill you get to a dam and something else I’ve forgotten about. Down the road a few miles is Woodstock, VT. There’s a farm museum near there, which might be interesting, and the Simon Pearce Glass factory, which someone said was also worth a visit.
Yes Lulu, I’ll take you there… if you visit in a season other than midwinter!
Hey, I made Ink! Or pixels, I guess. You know, while you are in that neck of the woods of America, you need to visit “Ben’s Mill,” which I think is in Vermont. Google it, that is an order. Captain Devlito Marko.