Vermont Touchstones

The Baroness and I are going for the mixed bag of travel adventures this time around…. from the Sacramento airport to Boston for a cameo visit, and on to Vermont before crossing to France.

We visited our friend Paul who moved from the Bay Area back to the countryside surrounding Hanover, New Hampshire, which is home to Dartmouth College; it is now Paul’s fulltime focus and GPS setting. Thomas Wolf said you can’t go home again but Paul is trying to prove him wrong.

Paul loves the lifestyle of small town New England living where he is on a first name basis with the postmistress, the UPS driver, and the bartender at the Norwich Inn. The town general store is a rabbit warren of nooks, backrooms, and hidden passages that extend forever. You would not want to be a truckman at a fire in this place.

When Paul is not traveling as a tour guide he can be seen manning the information booth on the Dartmouth Green, this is the center of campus life.

Rural Vermont is an endlessly green and beautiful environment; frequent rain and humidity have their advantages. Country lanes meander through the hilly countryside revealing ageless villages of white churches, clapboard homes, and people with serious gardens. There is a unified look of architectural cohesion and reassuring uniformity.

But don’t be fooled by the tranquil setting. There are still the disagreements over whether Dartmouth is a university or a college, and the annual town meetings to decide if tax revenue will allow them to buy a new snow plow.

Touchstones can be the bedrock of our lives; they reconnect us to our real selves and to our histories. Dartmouth is this man’s touchstone.