I walked down the rural road, south of Irasburg and north of Albany, north of Craftsbury, in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom – or the NEK, as many call it (pronounced like “neck”). This stretch of the road happened to be paved, with faded double yellow lines, slightly rotten with potholes and loose gravel. But most of the road down through Craftsbury is unpaved and, because of a recent thaw, fully mudded. Roads like this during a thaw, and later in March during mud season, are slicker than ice, and scarier. You don’t stop for fear of getting stuck. Your vehicles slides into pre-made ruts, like an inverse railroad, and you just barrel through it, white knuckled.

The pastures flanking the eastern edge of the road rise for a half a mile toward the surrounding forest. A few farms with their barns and houses perch in succession along the hillside, popping above the horizon. Sometimes the adjoining pasture drops down on the western side of the road. A network of fencing follows its agrarian logic this way and that, up, down, back and forth, zigzag. Fence posts pierce the old snow, which lays like white fondant over the land, made so by the recent spell of rain, thaw, freeze. You can tell by the way the light glistens over the smooth crust. You can tell by stepping onto and into it. To walk on this particular state of snow – if you weigh more than 75 pounds – is to crack the caramelized shell of a crème brûlée, breaking through to the soft under-snow up to the knee.

Without fail, Vermont roads beget roadside apple trees, some more tasty, or crabby, than others. On this day in February, a gnarled wild apple tree still holds onto a few dozen of its fruit. The brown burgundy orbs, leathery like shrunken heads, dangle from hard branches. I imagine the deer nibbling the frozen apple mush inside, feeling the intoxicating effect of the fermented stuff, followed by the unsteady steps they take toward their evening beds in the nearby woods. Deer paths are predictable, habitual; they’re reliable wayfinders. In winter especially, you can follow these surefooted trails to get... somewhere. I see deer tracks follow the road behind a line of spruce trees planted as a wind break, then disappear at the pavement, then appear again on the other side heading downhill. Crossing paths this morning.

The sun has found a break in the cloud cover, and I’m lingering in the road to capture its solar power. The air temperature has bested the freezing mark, so the sun and air conspire to fool me into a premature spring-like sensation. That feeling when your exposed skin sort of melts away in a rare state of equilibrium, when inside and outside the body register no difference and you don’t want anything other than this moment in this place. But thirteen seconds later the clouds cancel the sun and a wind screams down the field to electrify a shiver down my spine.

I look up and see a terrible, awesome wretch of a tree. It looks ancient and alive. I immediately animate this tree in my imagination, personify it as “grandfather” –

There’s a significant memory to relate here. As a boy, on a camping trip in New Mexico with my dad, in another rural place, we picked up a middle-aged man who needed a ride home. He squeezed into the front seat of my dad’s orange VW bug. When we arrived at his home, he invited us in. He shared stories and iced tea with us on his back concrete patio. I don’t remember much of what he and my dad talked about. Somehow, I know, we learned that he was a Native American. I think he might have said he was a Christian, which would have interested my dad. He pointed to a large willow tree in the backyard and told us that his grandfather’s spirit resided there.

– with symmetrical branches extending outward like raised hands in greeting, or warning. A gaping cavity forms its mouth in the lower third, calling out in a hoarse whisper. Scars and limbs propose other anthropomorphic features in this character: gashes are eyes; a twisted knob a chin; a burl makes a forehead; bare branches become bony fingers and a tuft of hair. Or perhaps the improbable hole in the center of the tree is where the heart should have been, long ago torn away. Half dead. I’m too ignorant of tree identification to know anything more about the tree. I’m too ignorant of the spirit world to hear what this tree might have to say to me. I photograph it, walk on, look back again, as I turn up the driveway and return to the comfortable renovated farmhouse we’ve rented for the weekend.

Best,

Jeremy