Adventures/Misadventures, Part II

So...yesterday started off beautifully---literally. The weather was still sweltering, but there was a breeze blowing, unlike the previous two days. I was at Emily Dickinson's house shortly after they opened so that I could take the self-guided tour of the grounds. Now I adored botany in high school, but I am something close to Queen of Doom to anything I try to grow. I knew ED was into both botany and gardening, so I was curious to see how she worked both the science and the art of flowers into her world. Also, as she limited herself little by little, how was it that she continued to experience the complex and ever-changing life of both flora and fauna that are at the heart of her poetry?

When she was a little girl, she first became interested in flowers as a hobby when she would press them. When she was a bit older, it became the fashion for girls to exchange and collect pressed flowers. As a teenager, she studied botany and became fascinated with the field, including it in her one year of college study. (Sidebar: According to Jeanne, our fabulous docent on Thursday, she may have left after one year because a "profession of faith" was a required part of the curriculum at Mt. Holyoke, and she was very uncomfortable with that; for all her seeming to be a shrinking violet, she was more of a steel magnolia and would not be told what to believe about God. She references that idea in a number of her poems that I recall, but in more, she talks about God as though he were a close personal friend.) Anyway, I have to think that part of her fascination with the study could also be the language of nomenclature: not only is Latin at the heart of much of the English language she was so gifted with, but it also goes to interesting backstories, such as a species' name that came from the person who discovered it.

Miss Emily's mother was a master gardener, a skill she passed on to both her daughters. Both Emily and Lavinia loved it so much that their father built a small conservatory for them behind the house, close by the screened porch that is there now. This allowed year-round growth of some things, especially like the bulbs she would force. While they had servants who would have tended the vegetable garden, the three women also kept an ornamental flower garden with a great variety of perienniels and a few annual flowers. (I wish I could share the pictures I took in the modern-day version with you now, but the laptop I've borrowed is a bit of a dinosaur and isn't configured for SD cards, as near as I can tell. Although I know you'd really have to be dedicated to come back in a couple of weeks to check, the pics I took this day were pretty good.) They also seemed to enjoy sharing their work, using the flowers in little bouquets for friends and family and decoratively in the house, unlike the landscaped homes of today where the purpose is to show off the house well.

One last note on this: Emily had as her bedroom not only the prime spot for growing things year-round (south and west exposure), but the best view of town. Main Street ran right in front of the house, and she could see up the hill to the very center of the town common that her brother helped establish. As she expressed, she really didn't need to go to the world; it came to her.

I learned such a wealth of information from Starr and Jeanne, and I took away an important rule I swear to live by: when you have read and studied and think you know everything about some author that you love, then you really have to get down to it and get studying. I thought I knew a lot about Miss Emily, although much has been rumored, and I try to account for that. I can only truly know what her poetry tells me. The rest is up for interpretation, and she'll have to be the last word on whatever it is we want to know.

I left Amherst that afternoon (was that really just yesterday?), heading northeast into Vermont to a site I had discovered less than a week before I left, but was very excited about, a trail near Middlebury that led to a cabin where Robert Frost spent his summers the last 20-odd years of his life. I had vowed that I would stick to a schedule so that I could get everything done, and things were going great, so far ahead of time that I allowed myself a quick stop in Deerfield, MA, at the official Yankee Candle store where their factory is. Then on I went, zipping into the Green Mountains in my rented SUV, so much newer and nicer than my own. We flew up the interstate, exiting at the spot I had chosen to get the quickest access to the trailhead. It would take us through about 60 miles of two-lane, but that was more than OK with me. I thought that would just give me a little time to see the mountains in a similar way to Frost.

(Note to English-teacher friends: radical shift in tone ahead. Put away your pens.)

Well! First, I will put a disclaimer on here: I have no trouble admitting when I have made a mistake. I didn't, so far as we know. Yet. But having grown up in an area with the old reliable midwestern grid system of streets, I have no patience with the kind that just change name or number and one has no idea of when or how this has happened. It defies everything I know as reasonable and sane. Also, I refuse to rely on GPS because I come from a family of map-readers, as in we like maps so much we read them for enjoyment and memories. Well, Vermont has no such worries or enjoyments, I must assume. Because after I got off that interstate, all bets were off. I might have needed to take that turn, or maybe not. This resulted in a fair amount of backtracking, never more than a few blocks, but time-consuming nevertheless.

I was well into the mountains, but the roads mostly followed narrow valleys where the towns were only a few blocks wide, and maybe a few more blocks long, regardless of how large they appeared on the map. No matter to me. Until, after four or five towns, I realized I hadn't seen a living soul in any of those towns. I guess that's why it didn't dawn on me to try stopping at any of those quaint little places that easily had been there since Frost's last years and probably longer. Eventually, yes, I did see two or three people outside houses, but by then I was spooked and I kept on moving. I didn't move quickly, you understand, because the road was ferociously warbled, I assumed from the rough winters. But I should have never made note of that, because there came the inevitable road construction, miles of it. Then came an ominous orange warning: Pavement ends! Dear readers, I am not easily daunted, but for a minute there I saw myself poised in terror, lifeless green valleys behind me, nothingness before, with Rod Serling's voice starting his opening narrative. And it was, by the way, getting a bit on toward darkness.

Obviously, I made it. There was gravel, and a lot of it. I have not driven on gravel roads for that length of time since the Alaskan Highway in 1983 (not strictly true, but I have my poetic license if you need to see it). So of course I eventually reached the trail to check it out for today's hike as planned. And I would have gone back there this morning, I swear.....if it had not been closed for repairs from a torrential storm in 2008 (that's what the sign said!) AND because some college kids vandalized it this spring.

In high dudgeon, I drove on to Middlebury to find a room, but I was so digusted with everything that I decided I was going to go on to Burlington for the night and start out fresh on the interstate this morning, getting quickly down to New Hampshire. That was an excellent plan, except for more wrong turns and backtracking, trying to find a motel room that wasn't priced double of what it should be, and finally, the piece de resistance: arriving in the dark, in the rain, in an SUV that has everything located pretty much opposite of where it is in mine.

Today could only be better, and the Frost place at Franconia, where I got some excellent pictures today despite the clouds and threats of rain from the tropical humidity. I enjoyed chatting with Sue, the office manager (and acting docent), who let me take all the pictures I wanted. Although there weren't many objects in the house that belonged to him or his family, there were some original copies of his books and a bed that had been in use when the family was there. I especially loved the display of old farm tools in the barn and the accompanying handout quiz of what their names and uses were. I KNOW I can get my farm kids to listen to some poetry if they get introduced with something they'll enjoy like that, especially if it's a competition.

Let's hope there will never, ever be another blog as long as this one. Remember, it counts as two sinced I owed one from last night! I don't regret the experience, because if you're going to be a great literary adventurer, you're going to have some misadventures along the way. Thanks for reading!