Aside from 6 1/2 years in SoCal, I have lived somewhere in the northeast US for most of my life. I love the change of seasons. I love snow (I'm sorry all of you snow-haters). I love the spring - however long it happens to last each year. I love the fall, with the cool, crisp air and the changing leaves. I even love the prototypical New England summer days (although I don't like the seemingly increasingly present hot and muggy days, but even with those I love the thunderstorms that often usher them away).
I hate March. The air is often not just cold, but raw! Most of the remaining snow is grey and dingy. When the sun comes out, so does the beginning of the mud on trails in the woods. It's 31 days long!!! For years, I have said that any sane person should either be able to hibernate through March (and since I only sleep about 5 hours per night on average, that seems pretty unlikely) or be somewhere else. So this year, I decided to be somewhere else.
I left my house on March 1st, albeit only to drive about 45 minutes to another NH house where I was picking someone up. Together, we left NH for central VT for the weekend, then he went home, and some cousins joined me for the rest of the week. Granted, VT is unsurprisingly similar in climate to NH. But I had a week of vacation from 2023 still remaining at my favorite central VT site, so decided to start there. And, because it's not my house, I knew that I didn't have to do any weather-related work while I was there (like shoveling the driveway). And if it was cold and raw, we could just sit in front of the fire.
If you are a regular reader of this blog, I have spoken about this resort before. In fact, there is a post here in the blog just a couple of posts back about my October trip there. So you know the drill: walk/hike, cook, talk, jigsaw puzzle, Burlington, relax!
It was actually a kind of grey and windy week, with some rain. But there was some time to get outside without getting wet. The company was great, and aside from some personal stress going on, we had a really nice time.
On one of the few times we managed to get outside into the woods and along the Mad River, we came across several trees like this. Or completely separated. A lot of hard work here!
This is mostly what we saw when we did get out: bare trees backed by cloudy skies. But you know, there is still something peaceful about these views.
My cousins and I all left on Friday morning even though we could have stayed until Saturday. They had to get home, and I had to hit the road to Warrington, PA. I was going to a weekend-long course: Foundation for Shamanic Studies Basic Workshop. I have been feeling drawn to Shamanism for some time, and while at this point I don't necessarily plan to do a lot of formal classes, I did think this one would be helpful. Plus, it's a pre-requisite for other FSS courses in case I want to try another one in the future.
I won't be posting pictures, or likely anything much, about the workshop, but I will be back when there are more pictures to show you!
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