Local Shows and Locals…

Paintings labeled and ready to be dropped off this past Friday for the upcoming Mud Season Exhibit. One of my two very favorite local exhibits at Artistree Community Arts Center. ( https://artistreevt.org/mud-season-exhibit-2025 ) Local artists fill the gallery walls with their individual interpretations of the significance of mud season. I understood my first Vermont art sale at Artistree many years ago and have taught a few classes there as well. A village gem. A special place…

10 a.m. and it is already busy. Art classes, a pottery studio in full swing, and the employees that make the magic happen, busy. Early March and children playing in the yard. Temps don’t phase the locals. The weather isn’t an issue with the right apparel. Voices of children running and playing filled the blustery air. A mom guided two small children to their car parked just next to mine. I popped open the SUV gate exposing the two large paintings I was delivering to the gallery. A young voice excitedly exclaimed “paintings”, and the mom happily acknowledged her observation. I began to unload the pieces with mud underfoot and found myself grumbling about being a petite person lugging large paintings…

The gallery was currently hosting “Studio Fever” where paper is stretched over all the crisp white walls. Canvas drop cloths cover the original wooden floor. The walls displayed the expressions of any number of people or groups who have stopped by to paint the “whatever they want” on welcoming walls.  Freeing and fun. Isn’t that the beauty of art I thought to myself? I slowly rotated my view to take in each creative moment…

Happy to see the gallery directors as I set down my submissions. Conversation was easy. Chatter flowed so comfortably that I nearly forgot why I was there. We talked cryptically and in an abridged fashion as we tried to cover it all in just moments. Politics especially. Yet there is always room for a giggle. I smiled on my way to the car not noticing anything but the joy of community…

My car complained on the climb back up my drive. Involuntarily moving in a direction, I was not initiating yet my response had been practiced before. A fishtail it was not but instead a smooth glide side to side. The sound of mud under my snow tires spat and pinged. The initial softening of gravel is a mud season foreshadowing event. Vermont’s fifth season…

The expansion and contraction of the local earth as the March temps play with the earth’s response. Snow melts, the earth warms and mud results. Already there has been chit chat about how this mud season will play out. “Well, nature has already provided some predictions” was the assessment of a fellow patient I had met at a recent doctors’ appt. She was assured it will be a controlled and manageable melting of the many feet of snow we have currently. The weather and the particulars of a rural life make for good and friendly comradery.

The driveway firmed overnight as temps in the low 20’s greeted us this morning. Snow is again in the forecast for tonight. Seasonal whiplash. We have had a proper Vermont winter and spring is teasing us…

Out the door early this Sunday morning to take our daughter’s Brittany Spaniel for a “release of energy” stroll. She has been visiting us for just over a week with no end date in site. We reached the bottom of our drive and saw our neighbor from across the street out feeding her newly shorn sheep. We spoke across the yard while she held her dog. Casey, now a senior citizen herself is small but gives off a vibe often not well received by her “four-legged friends.”  The sheep once puffs of wool are now not much larger than our little gal at the end of the leash. We enjoyed the small talk of friendly neighbors…

A peaceful and steady pace was maintained as my husband Jon, and I walked behind Casey up the street and onto a Class IV Road. Frozen ruts just a tire’s width wide and a half a foot deep striped the country road. Each Blundstone’s footstep was carefully placed and navigated. Crushed stone had been dropped in sections to ease passage at some of the more critical junctures.

A gray pick-up truck approached, slowly and rolled to a stop. Dust from the hardened dirt billowed up. A familiar face of one of our contractors appeared as the passenger window slid down. His 6-year-old daughter in the back seat. Smiling. Small talk. Easy conversation. We spoke of winter, grammar school and hunting season. He had a good one. Suddenly and generously, he handed us a package of Venison jerky. Proud he was and grateful we were that he shared something special with us…

A river otter scurried along the snowy banks of a stream to our left as we continued with our walk. While I have always struggled a bit with understanding where home was, I sure felt I had a better sense of it …

“The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers & cities; but to know someone who thinks & feels with us, & who, though distant, is close to us in spirit, this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden.”
― Goethe