Empty Chair

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio

Wind Cloud

Mt. Mansfield has it's own weather.

And now there are the new snow guns at the ski area, adding a human element, creating new weather of our own.

The wind plus the sub-zero cold make this season pretty real.

There is lot of talk just now about the 'polar vortex.'

We just call it winter.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio

Dog Does National

The ski area is closed. We need to hike up the mountain on our climbing skins. I worry Dex won't be able to take the National down on this warm spring day, but I am wrong. The dog runs through the soft snow and then slides on his back and stops, rolls over, takes a mouthful of snow, content. It is a great day, me and my dog having the mountain to ourselves.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio

The Day The Stone Hut Almost Came Down

On the top of Our Mountain, Mt. Mansfield, there sits an old stone hut.  You can rent it for the night through the winter, which can be an adventure.  It is now very sought after and a prized ticket to win the lottery and gain a night in the hut.  It’s not always been so.

This is a story about the day the state almost tore the Stone Hut down.  But first some background.

The Stone Hut, perched on the top of Mt. Mansfield, was built in 1936 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Many of the same men who cut some of Stowe’s first ski trails also built the hut, which served as a shelter for the workers, hikers and skiers. At some point in its long history the hut became the property of the state’s department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. 

The State conducts a lottery each fall and lucky winners are assigned a night during winter to sleep in the rustic cabin.  The resort allows ‘Stone Hutters’ to ride up a ski lift at the end of the day to reach the hut.  If stone hutters miss the lift it’s walk or give it up.  Once on the summit of the mountain hutters are on their own.

A wood stove heats the cabin and, although the state provides firewood, campers are responsible for everything else, from kindling to cooking.  Once the lifts shut down and the top stations locked up, staying in the Stone Hut is truly winter camping.  And in the hut, with the darkness, the inevitable smoke filling the room, the heat from sweaty bodies contrasted to the cold stone walls, it is as close to medieval we will ever come.

For many years the allure of such rustic camping on the top of a mountain, being able to greet the dawn on Mansfield in silence and peace, just wasn’t that popular.  And that brings us to today’s story.

Sitting some weeks ago in the ski patrol hut, on a day before the good snows came, sitting and drinking coffee rather than skiing in the rain, another patroller, Brian Lindner, and I started talking about the Stone Hut.  I think I noticed there was smoke coming out of the chimney or said something about people being in the hut earlier than usual.  Brian didn’t respond directly.  He said ‘I can tell you a story about the day the state told me to tear that hut down.’ 

Two summers in the early Seventies Brian worked as a Straw Boss running summer crews of the Youth Conservation Corps.  What could be better?  Young, strong and enthusiastic people working all summer improving the trail system, building shelters and otherwise making themselves useful.

This nice summer’s day long ago Brian was sent with a crew to Mansfield to do some trail work.  As he was heading out one of his bosses said ‘and tear down that stone hut up there.’  It seems the department was sick of the responsibility of caring for the hut.  At the time no one really used it anymore; to those running the program it was a nuisance.  But the order didn’t sit well with Brian. Brian grew up with Mansfield and the Hut as backdrop; his father ran the hut in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

He did take his crew out.  They worked their way up the mountain.  Idealistic kids, fit as rain, made their way up the steep slopes of Mansfield.  When they got to the top they stopped for a break in the shadow of the hut.

While the crew munched on their snacks and drank their water, Brian told them the order from Montpelier.  We can imagine some of the group looking up, stopping as they chewed their PB&J’s, others carrying on, not really hearing or caring.

Brian said something to the effect, before we tear it down, maybe they’d all like to know a bit of its history.  A few of the crew likely nodded.  A story beats work.  Young men and women leaning back against the rocks, faces into the sun, arms behind heads, feet crossed; A story beats work.

Brian probably told them about Charlie Lord and the otherhardscrabble ski pioneers who built the original trails.  How they worked to carve paths down the steep chaos of our mountain.  How they had a vision for making turns down steep slopes on long wooden skis.  How hard it must have been – compared to cutting a hiking trail – to cut the Bruce or the Nose Dive Curves or old S-53.  How on one summer’s day, someone sitting right where they were sitting, might have decided it was a good idea to build a stone hut.  And they just did it.  They didn’t study it, or fundraise for it, or contract it out.  They stopped what they were doing and built a camp hut, stone by stone, on the top of the State’s highest mountain.  And it wasn’t even for them.  It was for us.

Brian doesn’t really remember who, but one of the crew stood up and said, ‘no!’ I’m not going to tear it down!’  The others joined in.

This was the early 1970’s, so getting students to protest was about as hard as asking them to drink beer.  On the other hand, Brian struck a nerve. These kids were builders and creators.  They would appreciate, after a summer trying to move probably more than one large chunk of Mansfield granite off a trail, the incredible effort and difficulty required to build the hut.  It would not be in their nature to want to tear it down.

And so they didn’t.

Brian asked if they were refusing.  They said yes.  They stood there for a minute.  Brian said ‘okay.’  That was that. The crew picked up their tools and got back to productive trail work.  The next day, when Brian reported in, no one asked about the Stone Hut.  Brian didn’t volunteer a word.  It never came up again.

A good day’s work, the day the crew wouldn’t tear down the smoke filled hut on the top of Mansfield.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2013 David Rocchio

The Food Season VI: Some Meals Are Snapshots

Many nights of meals are snapshots rather than portraits.

Vermont, New Year’s Eve, a long time ago.  Maybe 1997.  Ignazio and Tina and their young daughter joined us and other good friends and family for a late night meal. Before coming to visit Ignazio went mushrooming in the woods near Siena and brought his foraged, dried mushrooms to America.  We decided to use them for our New Year’s Eve dinner.  We used the coffee grinder to turn them into a fine dust.  Ignazio made the sauce and the pasta; I cooked the sides and a roast beef stuffed with garlic, parsley, old bread, onion and cilantro.  We were all excited about a sauce made of foraged mushrooms from Italy.

While we cooked, our guests all hung around the kitchen.  Ignazio told about a neighbor near the old farmhouse near Siena, a woman who knew the woods around her home as well as she knew her two children.  The children, a young boy and girl were sweet and polite.  The boy funny, the girl serious.  The mother was a masterly cook and wonderful neighbor.  One day the mother went hunting for mushrooms near her home, the same place Ignazio told us he found the mushrooms for our New Year’s Sauce.  This was a thing the mother did often and had done for years, learning the skill from her mother before her. 

That night, when her children were home from school and had done their chores, when the husband was home from work, everyone finally sat down for dinner.  The mushrooms looked so much like the good ones, the sauce tasted the same, but the mushrooms were not the good ones.  They were poison.  The children died.  Both of the parents were violently ill and recovered, but not really. 

We all stopped talking.  Our celebration ground to dust just like the mushrooms.  After a minute Ignazio broke the silence.  ‘It is okay,’ he said.  ‘We test the mushrooms.’  He told us how he and Fabio and another friend, his best man at his wedding, Antonio, got together before he left Italy and made a meal just like our New Year’s dinner.  ‘The mushrooms are okay,’ he said.  The conversations ramped back up and we left the sad tale behind us.

And then we ate.  My little Sicilian brother-in-law was drunk.  The conversation rolled like surf onto a beach.  The food was good; the pasta sauce was shockingly good.  Deep into the meal, Ignazio started banging on his wine glass with his fork.  I thought he was going to break the glass.  We all stopped and looked his way. 

“I kidding!” he said in his highest, almost falsetto, most animated voice.  He was laughing.  “We not test the mushrooms!”  I could tell he thought this was the funniest thing he had ever said.  He put his head on the table and banged his fist next to his plate.  “We not test,” he cried and laughed and rolled his head back and forth.

Our dear friend Kristina – Swedish, proper, elegant – dropped her fork and gasped.  Her husband Dean, the judge, tossed his napkin down in disgust with a harrumph.  We all looked at each other.  Ignazio was the only one laughing.  But then, what the hell, the food was so good.  Someone made a joke.  We calmed down. We all laughed and ate. 

Late that night I woke up with crippling psychosomatic leg cramps.  I tried to walk to the bathroom.  The cramps dropped me to the floor.  At least I think the cramps were psychosomatic.  Kristina said she did not sleep a wink.  We all had similar stories.  I wonder to this day if Ignazio made up the whole thing.  We survived.

Italy, another meal, sometime in the 1990’s.  This time Tina, Ignazio, Marzia and Fabio and I traveled to a house owned by Marzia’s family in the mountains near Bologna.  She apologized, “It is very old, very rustic, not very nice.”  The drive to the mountains was fantastic.  We drove along dry roads under a bright sun and then, in an instant, would submerge into fog so thick we would need to stop the cars, get out and walk away from the highway, so sure were my friends a Lamborghini driven by a madman, or a truck, or a van full of nuns would drive into the back of one of the cars, causing a calamity.  And then the fog would lift and we’d drive on until we hit another patch of deep mist.

We arrived late in the day.  The old, rustic, ‘not very nice’ house was in fact a four hundred year old farmhouse.  It had no heat but did have three-foot thick stone walls, a fireplace as big as a garage, candelabras and deep, tall medieval windows.  We made a roaring fire; we lit candles throughout the house.  This was the place and the time Ignazio taught me to make the garlic bread in an open fire.  Ignazio and Fabio somehow roasted whole eggs in the coals.  To this day I don’t know how they did it so the eggs did not blow up.  As we breathed thick wood smoke we played cards, ate eggs and garlic bread, drank wine.

Vermont, November 11, 1994.  When Jackie turned thirty, shortly after we were married, we drove to a restaurant on the other side of our mountain.  We live in Stowe, Vermont, on the eastern side of Mt. Mansfield and to the south of the village of Jeffersonville.  Jeffersonville sits at the northern hem of our mountain, the State’s largest.  Another peak, Madonna, works with Mansfield to all but hem us in.  A narrow notch between the two mountains is the only direct way from Stowe to Jeff.  In the winter, once there is any snow on the ground, the road is closed.

The restaurant, ‘Le Cheval D’Or,’ was stuck in a small front on a quiet street in the compact village of Jeff.  Inside, the walls were dark.  In the hall there was an autographed photograph of an Apollo Astronaut, who had found and loved the restaurant.  This was a fancy, romantic and mysterious place.  So on a cold, snowy November night we drove the long way, literally around the mountain, to have dinner at Le Cheval D’Or.

I don’t remember everything we ate but I remember we talked non-stop.  I remember I ordered quail for my main course.  It was stuffed with wild rice and mushrooms.  It was delicious but very hard to eat.  I picked the meat off the tiny bones with my fingers.  I remember my desert – it was a maple crème brulee with a maple crust.  It had a thin maple cookie resting on top.  We drank good, dark coffee and sat by the fire. 

It had been quiet in the restaurant when we arrived and then got quite busy.  It was empty when we finished.  The meal cost an arm and a leg but nothing had ever been better.  When we left the restaurant, drunk, content, full, happy, young, married, in love, I turned toward the Notch Road, feeling empowered to navigate the slippery turns up and over our mountain despite the snow.  I careened up and down that closed road, sliding on the ice, repeatedly nearly losing control. We survived it.  Crazy.  It was thrilling and stupid.  We laughed at it.

Five hours in a restaurant and not noticing the time, not caring when the food might come; feeling when the meal ends it has ended to soon; watching the staff lean against the bar, staring at their hands, bored and wanting to go home; leaving the empty room still talking and laughing.

Ontario, Canada, 1993.  The best diner breakfast ever, somewhere between Niagara Falls, Ontario and Detroit.  We were on a secondary road facing Lake Erie.  The diner was in the narrowest building I’ve ever seen – a trailer wedged between a motel and a house.  The lot must have been a driveway at one point.  There was a counter with stools and behind the counter, along the far wall, was a row of hooks for coats and hats.  With barely enough room to walk between the coats and the people it was an awkward place. 

The only decoration was a framed map of wrecks on Lake Erie.  It hung on the back wall, by the coats.  The people were dour and cold.  No one said hello.  I ordered bacon and eggs with potatoes.  The eggs were fried perfectly with ample salt; the bacon was thick and meaty, well smoked and served half way from raw to crispy; the potatoes were fresh made and crisp, with onion and hot sauce and bits of sausage mixed in.  The coffee was excellent.  Five Canadian dollars passed hands and we were back on the road.  I could not find the place again if I spent a week looking.  I will remember the breakfast my entire life.  I would love to go back there.

            Each place, each time, each memory is nothing less than life.  I will try to write down some of the recipes.  Share life.  But just not right now.

David Rocchio lives, works and writes in Stowe, Vermont. (c) 2012 David Rocchio