|
|
|
|||||||
|
Middlebury, VT By Nancy and Richard Woodworth The great poet Robert Frost spent the last 23 summers of his life in the mountains outside Middlebury. Little wonder. This gently rugged area enlivened by a college town is mountain country, Frost country, an area of rambling white houses, red barns and green fields – the essence of Vermont, if you will. The poet who adopted New England and made it his own also adopted the Middlebury area. The small cabin where he slept is not open to the public, but there's a nearby interpretive trail where you can get a taste of his enduring poetry and the sights that inspired him. The Middlebury College library houses many of his first editions. The founder of the town's Vermont Book Shop knew the poet well and the store stocks many of his works. And the college's Bread Loaf mountain campus carries on his tradition with its annual summer writers' conference. Middlebury is, for us, the epitome of the New England college town. The campus of the "college on the hill" on the west side of town is unusually picturesque, its newer gray limestone buildings complementing the older ones dating back to the college's founding in 1800. One of us first saw the campus on a snowy April day in the 1950s and decided then and there that this was to be the college for him. In summer, when the regular college is not in session, its famed Summer Language Schools turn the area into a rural United Nations as graduate students chat in almost every language except English. The college gives the town its solid heritage and vibrant character. ("The strength of the hills is His also" are the words etched above the portals of the striking college chapel in which Robert Frost lectured to turnaway student audiences every few years.) And a returning alumnus is struck by a new dynamic – an array of restaurants and shops that is remarkable for a town its size (8,000). Except for eight annoying new traffic lights along Route 7, Middlebury somehow remains a tranquil college town. To the east are East Middlebury and Ripton, quiet mountain hamlets, Middlebury's bucolic Bread Loaf campus and the college's impressive Snow Bowl ski area. To the west lies the Champlain Valley, a surprisingly vast and undeveloped expanse sidling up to Lake Champlain. To the north are Vergennes, which claims to be the nation's smallest city, the mountain community of Bristol and sylvan Charlotte, where mountains and lake meld in a wondrous panorama. The vistas of water and mountains are stunning, thanks to the Green Mountains on the east, the Adirondacks to the west and Lake Champlain shimmering in the middle. This is an area of charming contrasts, one where lake
and mountains, simplicity and sophistication, co-exist in peace. Wood Pond Press E-mail feedback to: Home
page |
Full destination index | |
||||
