CELEBRATE THE SEASON:
Talking Turkey
by Mary Lou Healy

Eleventh-Month Secrets
by Haydn S. Pearson

Pico Mountain
Killington's Seventh Heaven

First Tracks at Stratton Mountain

IN THE FARMHOUSE KITCHEN:
Savory Side Dishes
For Your Thanksgiving Feast

VERMONT VERSES
Remains
by Wayne Kelley

EVERYTHING WOOD HEAT:
What's Wrong with My Woodstove?
by Daryle Thomas

VERMONT BY HAND:
Painting With Wood
by Kirt Zimmer

DO IT YOURSELF CRAFTS:
Make A Gift Basket
Just in Time for the Holidays

INTO THE OUTDOORS:
Hunting: The Last Opening Day
by Mike Williams

Hunting Records and Information
Including Deer and Moose Hunting Season

Roadside Visions
by Heather Behrens

A Prickly Subject
by Heather Behrens

VERMONT WEATHERVANE BOOK NEWS:
Spanning Time: Vermont's Covered Bridges

Perfumes, Splashes & Colognes
Guide to making fragrances at home

GET OUT AND ABOUT:
Vermont Country Calendar
Statewide Calendar of Events

Blue Ribbon Events
Detailed information on selected Vermont events

EXPLORE OUR OTHER SEASONS:
FALL
WINTER
SPRING
SUMMER

If you didn't pass through Rural, Vermont to get to this site you may want to make a small detour.

It's worth the trip!

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Eleventh-Month Secrets

by Haydn S. Pearson

GONE now is the foliage from the maples and birches, the elms and willows; gone are the leaves from the thick-growing alders along the meadow brook and from the cherries, sumacs, and high-bush blueberries that have half concealed old stone walls.

The goldenrod and wild asters are grayed and flattened by black frosts and pelting rains. In the pasture swamps the tall ranks of coarse-bladed grasses are bending low over the black pools and mossy hummocks.

The orioles' nests swing like gray mittens from the pendulant branches of the elms, and the robins' mud-caked homes are half broken in the branches of the apple trees behind the barn. Down by the brook one can see the nests of warblers and the vireos.

Along the stone walls one can mow see piles of earth where the woodchucks dug their dens last spring. Along the meadow brooks are the runways of the muskrats.

A path leads from the big pool where the deer come to drink to their winter yard in the spruce woods.

Above the rocky pasture the old sugar maples stand gaunt and rugged. Here and there among the branches are the tumbled leafy nests of the gray squirrels. From the slender branches of a white birch a big gray conical hornets' nest moves back and forth in the breeze.

On a bright, cloudless, late November day there's a peculiar quality of light. Hills across the valley seem close and distinct. The river winds like a gleaming silver thread between the brown meadows. The houses across the fields and in the village seem very near. Bare trees stand against the sky like detailed etchings.

November is a revealing month - a month of disclosures before the snow comes to cover autumn's brown and tattered quilt.

-from Countryman's Year