Empty Chair

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

Ski With Dog

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

Pushing Boulders Up Hills

Our high school ski team dragged an old truck engine to the top of a hill.

The idea came from our coach, George Woodard, who did not ski but knew how to farm and tinker.  We hauled the engine up the hill to build a rope tow.  The rope tow was George’s idea to improve access to the top of our ski jump.  This was back when Vermont high schools allowed teenagers to jump, and maybe George couldn’t ski but he knew less walking meant more practice. 

Harwood Union has a small hill behind the school.  At the time, it’d been converted into a jump; a short, steep pitch with a huge dirt headwall carved into the middle of the slope.  The headwall had a kicker.  We’d sail off it. 

Walking up that hill to practice was hard work.  The long wood skis, built like barrel staves, wide as floorboards, were mounted with old steel telemark cable bindings.  Industrial.  The skis weighed a ton.  The ancient leather boots weighed, oh, one hundred pounds dry, one-fifty wet.  Throwing skis as long as small trees onto teenaged shoulders and walking up a hill wearing wet moon boots.  As I say, hard work.  So we all thought George was onto something.  Moving a rusted, ancient, gigantic, iron Ford Model A engine to the top of the hill seemed a small price to pay to avoid the hike. 

George mounted the engine on a wooden timber frame.  The frame probably weighed more than the motor.  Angled at the front with two big ropes attached, the frame was really a massive, heavy sled.  The plan was to haul the motor on the sled to the top of the jump.

The sled and engine sat on the grass behind the school while we waited for winter.  When it did finally snow, big wet flakes laying down a foot of base, we were excited for the job.  Like Egyptian slaves we grabbed the harnesses.  We dragged the sled to the base of the hill.  Dragging across flat ground itself was near impossible.  Exhausted from this small effort, and we hadn’t really done anything yet.  The hill was incredibly steep.  What we were doing was insane.

Which was perfect.  It was perfect because letting us jump with little instruction and old gear was insane.  And not only the jumping was crazy.  Landing was crazy.  The outrun to one jump we competed on took us across a small road.  A teacher was stationed at the road both to pile some snow on the dirt track and to shout when cars came, although there was no stopping so I don’t know what the teacher would have done if a car roared up when a kid came screaming down.  The base of another jump crossed a stream by way of a narrow wooden bridge.  Thread the needle over the bridge or end up in the water. 

Getting to the top of some jumps was also crazy.  The depression-era trellises, stacked high on hills, were coming to the end of their lives.  The trellis jump in Lyndonville leaned like Pisa and moved measurably in the wind.  There was no stair, just a steep incline with small, worn wooden slats for toeholds.  Dead of winter, wearing moon boots, carrying the weight of a cross and climbing in a wind with the whole thing swaying under foot, getting to the summit of the Lyndonville jump was a sport of its own. 

And then there was the jumping.  None of us were very good.  We were unschooled.  Our gear was from the Great War.  If success was overcoming sheer terror we were Olympians.  

But sometimes it went just right.  Point the skis, hurtle like an arrow toward the headwall; leap forward when you hit the lip; skis come up, body leans forward into the sky, and for one or two beats of the heart the skis lift, you lift.  You fly.  The rope tow was a chance to fly.

Hard work, dragging a truck engine to the top of a hill.  We tugged and slipped and fell.  We were soon soaked and covered in mud, exhausted.

Near the top someone noticed frozen rotting apples hanging from gnarled trees. Between the wet snow and the apples we abandoned the sled and launched an epic snowball and apple fight.  As it always is, one team member almost lost an eye, taking an apple right in the glasses.  Another I think broke his nose.  There was blood in the snow.

After the apple fight we finished the job, putting the sled in position.  We stood there, soaked, cold, battered, maybe a bit proud.  We stood in the gloam of a late-fall afternoon.  George pulled a key out of his overall pocket, wrapped cold fingers around the key, put it in the ignition, turned it.

I was brought back to all this a few days ago.  I was reading an article by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker about Albert Camus.  Camus - philosopher, writer, resistance hero - wrote about Sisyphus, a man who defied the Gods and was condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it perpetually fall back down. 

Camus argues Sisyphus was condemned to nothing worse than life; we all spend a lifetime rolling rocks up hills only to have them tumble back down.  Gopnik sums it up this way: “learning to roll the boulder while keeping at least a half smile on your face is the only way to act decently while accepting that acts are always essentially absurd.” 

As Jonah Hill’s character says in Moneyball, ‘it’s a metaphor.’ 

We probably should have tested the engine before we dragged it up the hill.  It would not run.  The block was cracked.  Back down the hill we walked. I bet the engine sits there still.

What a day, the day we sledged a truck engine to the top of a hill.  It is the trying, I guess, which makes us smile.  

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

March Into Summer: An Atypical Spring In Vermont

            March is usually a predictable month.  Here, in the North it is usually still winter; only a faint harbinger of Spring.  Usually it comes in with fields of cold snow, bright blue skies, lengthening days.  As this photo shows, March typically starts with piles of snow above the windows, like massive waves on a white sea.  But this photo is from last winter.  It is not this March.  
           Typically March brings big storms and worries about barn roofs collapsing and never ending winter; typically March leaves with slight warmth and a big snow pack to make April just miserable.  But not this year.