Author’s Note: This is part two of a series about the Dye family’s Vermont adventures. 
We drove up the highway from New Jersey and always arrived in Killington late. After winding up a dark mountain road, we crossed Roaring Brook (before the bridge was built), rounded a bend, and climbed to the start of the steepest hill. Dad took a deep breath, hit the gas pedal, and started down the driveway. The engine roared as I started up a 1 mph straight uphill. The loaded station wagon was very low, especially with the huge beam at the top, and the bottom scraped rocks as it bounced up the driveway (steeper than the Catwalk, the steepest ski run I’ve skied). I dragged it.
Getting food, water, tools, building materials, sleeping bags, pillows, furniture, clothing, etc. out of the car in the dark was difficult in itself. By that time we were all refreshed and ready for bed.
First, we cleared a space in the woods for the tent we slept in our first year in Vermont. I slept on the ground and felt the tree roots under my sleeping bag and pillow. I wiggled it until it was in the correct position. I was a child. As long as it didn’t rain, I could sleep anywhere and looked forward to being together under the tall trees, the dancing leaves, and the twinkling stars…
Storing essentials outdoors overnight was a challenge we didn’t anticipate. The raccoon outsmarted us week after week, expertly prying open our outdoor cupboards. We closed the door tightly with twine, but to no avail. And yet they came in. When his brother Jack arrived from UNH, he came up with a solution to locks and locks that raccoons couldn’t open.
Dad was looking forward to the man’s arrival with a fortune-telling rod in his hand. He invited me along and explained the natural science of descending branches seeking water when a source is near. I watched as Vermont grabbed a Y-shaped branch and quickly looked down. It moved slowly, like an arrow on a whiz board. We blew up some dynamite and dug pretty far down to set up a well where the divining stick guy said.
The dynamite carved out a small pond where the tadpoles grew into happy frogs. However, they did not get the necessary water from there, so they dug a second place even deeper. Dad complained about the cost of digging 350 feet. (Later, we found out that our best water source was the spring under the house.)
Our black lab star loved getting wet so we enjoyed the small pond. As I went in, she swam in too and took a few paddles across the river. She loved chasing the frogs that would jump off her edge and onto her head.
Star, a dedicated lab, wanted to help. As we cut saplings and branches and carried them up the ridge, Star would run down and put them in her mouth, then drag them back to us.
Every weekend, new experiences awaited us: from cutting down trees, bushes and bushes to clearing land to build ski lodges. It was Dad’s lifelong dream, but Mom’s surprise. (I guess they never talked about it until my father announced he had bought land in Vermont.) It was his idea of heaven, but my mother’s nightmare of hell. -The idea was to fetch spring water from Route 100 and sleep in the forest. We set up a cot in a tent, the days are cold, the nights are freezing, we cook outdoors on a Coleman camp stove, and compete with other creatures for food…
It was not the kind of life our rather learned mother (descendant of a French king) had expected. I heard her aunt (from a farm in Illinois) say, “Margaret always needed the best seat in the buggy.”
But my mother rose above the odds to roll up her sleeves and do what the pioneering spirit, which is also in her genes, required. Mom’s grandfather grew up on a plantation, left South Carolina after the Civil War to mine gold, and later became the foreman of a gold mine in the Black Hills. Mom’s mother grew up in Spearfish Canyon, South Dakota, with her five siblings. As pioneers, they survived with limited supplies but with a wealth of experience. Family history repeats itself. Like my mom’s grandparents, my mom and dad staked their claim, but in Vermont, it was our land.
For several years we had a one-person cottage on a path in the forest. When my mom started working as a travel agent, we decorated it with her travel posters. The Sears Roebuck catalog has been added for added effect. For wimps like me, a roll of toilet paper was an added bonus. My father cut a half moon on the door, but I left it open because the weather was nice. The view from our villa was second to none, with Pico and Killington silhouetted against the sky. Lanterns and flashlights illuminated the path in the darkness. I was the only kid I knew who had a barn that was still in use.
Dad then built a fun two-seater chair between two tree trunks outside. I took a bucket of lime powder and sprinkled it over the hole in the ground. The day it broke, my mom and I were sitting on it and it fell off. My father and a male friend from home shouted, “Can you help me?” My mom and I laughed so hard that I could barely scream, “No!” At night or in cold weather, when I heard the sounds of creatures howling and stomping through the forest, I switched to the old-fashioned “honey pot”. to be continued…
Margaret Jill Dye is an artist and writer living in Killington and Florida.
Written by Margaret Jill Dye
A half-moon cutout artwork was pasted on the outdoor door of the author’s house in the forest.
