Green Mountain Glory

The divinities of travel have ever frowned upon our burgeoning family with all the implacable schadenfreude of a bitter, fickle fate. Our lately concluded trip to Vermont, however, was a smashing success, their fury notwithstanding.

That we got lost could be so naturally expected that it need hardly be recited. But the wondrous dimensions to which our electronically-generated directions (furnished via Microsoft Travel via Vermont Vacation.com) sent us astray was really breathtaking. We piled into the Bull on Thursday afternoon, with Justin showing something less of alacrity than Lia would have liked. Our destination was a cozy cabin nestled in the still-snowy hills of the bustling megalopolis of Brookfield, Vermont.

The drive itself was splendid. At the sight of the fabled green mountains of Vermont—or rather at the sight of urban, ungainly New Haven in her rear-view mirror—Lia’s entire being was convulsed with wave upon wave of joyful liberation. As dusk fell over the surrounding hills we were suffused with the tranquil serenity of genuine vacationers.

But then we left the freeway. Undaunted by our tenebrous and sylvan surroundings, we scrupulously followed the directions Lia had dutifully printed off before our departure. We were almost immediately lost. And not lost in a general, run-of-the-mill Collings-family-adventures sort of way, but lost in good earnest and upon unmarked roads of mire and sludge where upstanding Ford Tauruses of ancient vintage resolutely fear to tread. The Bull was in a bad way as we sloshed and veered and thundered our way down cataracts of mud. Lia prayed with all the fervor of a Nephi; Justin murmured with all the fluency of Nephi’s elder brothers.

A kindly local citizen (young, pudgy, and goateed like all kindly local citizens one encounters in the raging middle of nowhere) gave us directions, which would have been helpful indeed if any of the roads were labeled. As they were not, we only got “loster and loster,” as Eli helpfully supplied in paraphrase of Alice in Wonderland.

At length, Justin hurled a mighty imprecation that encompassed all venues of electronic directions, the internet itself, and the venerable former vice president who invented it. He and Lia then agreed to turn around, head back toward the point where they exited the freeway, and try following the directions given on our cabin’s company brochure. This plan worked famously, though it too involved barreling through the bog for 2.5 miles in our beleaguered Bull. But at length we arrived at the cabin.

And what a world of wonders we found there! Central heating! A television with satellite capabilities (we of course sought out BYUTV forthwith and never varied therefrom)! Random carvings of random Indians (ours was the “Indian Cabin”)! A loft the ladder to which gave Julia and Eli endless opportunities to place their lives in danger!

We were thrilled. “A new house! A new house!” Julia chanted, vastly overestimating the duration of our stay, but pleasing her parents with her enthusiasm all the same. We took a few moments to appreciate the crystal clarity of the starlit night, then all piled onto the couch together where Justin delivered an extempore lesson about the Book of Abraham. Relieved when he finally finished, Julia and Eli hopped eagerly into bed.

Into the same bed, actually. The girls shared a futon, which we walled around with protective pillows. They loved lying next to each other: the first night it took them twenty minutes or so to fall asleep, which time they spent alternately tickling one another and giggling out of the sheer joy and novelty of being in a cabin and of sharing “a crib.” On Friday night, Eli nearly wormed and wriggled Julia out of the bed altogether. When Lia got up in the morning she saw Eli sprawled luxuriously over the middle of the bed with Julia precariously clinging to a narrow edge. But when she woke up Saturday morning a penitent Eli called out warmly, “I love you, Julia!” As do we all.

Friday morning we waited in vain for our hosts to deliver the breakfast rolls promised on their website (it turns out the hostess was out of town and the host unwilling or unable to fill her office). So Lia made breakfast herself—eggs and hash browns and other sumptuous fare that made the rest of the family glad of our hosts’ dereliction. With our matutinal rituals duly performed, we mounted the Bull once more and set off for Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont and the birthplace of the Prophet Joseph Smith.

This was the unqualified highlight of the trip, a sacred experience that moved us to the core. Our tour guide was an affable and inspired senior missionary named Elder McKinnon (who turns out to hail from Justin’s home stake in Provo), who regaled us with the tale of the Smith family’s early history and then movingly told the story of Junius Wells, an intrepid and ingenious miracle maker who moved heaven and earth to erect upon the site a 38 ½-foot granite monument for the centennial of the Prophet’s birth—one foot for every year the Prophet lived. We had known of this monument, the tallest single shaft of granite in the world, before, but hadn’t known that Brother Wells was inspired by the Prophet’s famous self-characterization: “I am like a huge, rough stone rolling down from a high mountain; … knocking off a corner here and a corner there. Thus I will become a smooth and polished shaft in the quiver of the Almighty.” Brother Wells’ monument is indeed such a polished shaft, and Joseph such a quiver.

We walked reverently around the monument amid the falling rain of a Vermont April, touched to the quick by its stirring inscription: “Sacred to the memory of the Prophet Joseph Smith,” and by the narrative on its reverse with its concluding prediction that the faithful who rally to the cause the Prophet began under the direction of the Almighty will “call his name blessed, forever and ever.” This experience was worth all the navigational miscues and automotive mudbaths it took to get us there.

From Sharon/South Royalton we visited the Sugarbush Farm/Maple factory. We had, predictably, some trouble getting there, but we made it in the end. It was a bit of a disappointment. By the time we arrived it was raining with some intensity. We tried to tour the farm which was, to all appearances, a soggy marsh. There was apparently not much to see. We went inside the farmhouse to test-taste a variety of cheeses and syrups, all of which were quite good. Eli was far more interested in the fat black dog that sat lazily on the floor, drooling prodigiously. The people were all very sweet, and we paid a pretty penny to take home very modest quantities of syrup and cheese. Most galling, we paid $6.50 for a tiny container of maple butter, only to find the identical product—not produced at Sugarbush after all—for $5.50 at a shop in town. But the butter is terrific anyway; and the syrup and cheese to die for.

We made our way through the rain and mud back to our cabin where we had delicious chicken enchiladas, prepared by the inestimable Lia, for dinner. Justin and Lia then watched “The Best Two Years” on BYU TV while the girls ran wild (i.e. went up and down the ladder leading to the loft over the vociferous objections of their anxious parents). Lia had brought along her guitar and even got to play it a little. We all went to bed tired, but very happy.

Saturday morning the sun had returned, just in time to wish us well on our return to New Haven. Lia made a breakfast of scrumptious scones while Justin and the girls watched “Strawberry Shortcake.” This breakfast, seasoned as it was with our newly-purchased maple butter, could have sold for a million dollars. After breakfast, Lia packed our bags while Justin did the dishes and the girls watched “Horseland” (a rather maudlin episode about the death of a cartoon teenie-boppers aged cat, rendered more bizarre by the occasional interpositions of a narrating dog with an affected accent and a voice of faux sonority—what has become of Saturday morning cartoons?). We then piled into the Bull, triumphant in all its recent combats, and drove peacefully home. Lia was even glad to see New Haven again.