Yankee Magazine July/August 2021 by Yankee Magazine

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July / August 2021

CONTENTS

Cape Cod Baseball League fans gather in Chatham, Massachusetts, for a game between the Orleans Firebirds and the Chatham Anglers. Story, p. 80

72 /// Wild Blue Wonder Two Maine-bred winemakers have found inspiration for a fizzy new product—and just maybe a way to help save the state’s wild blueberry industry. By Rowan Jacobsen 80 /// Chasing the Dream For the best college baseball players in the country, summer on Cape Cod is no vacation; it’s an audition that could change their life. Photos by Alex Gagne ON THE COVER

Wild Maine blueberries photo by Stacey Cramp

90 /// The World of Sy Montgomery The best-selling New Hampshire author of How to Be a Good Creature dives deep into the animal realm to tell stories that shed light on our own. By Annie Graves 94 /// Build It and They Will Come For 30-plus years, Kingdom Trails has been attracting mountain bikers—and their money—to rural Vermont. But now is it too much of a good thing? By Jonathan Green 104 /// Conversations: Varshini Prakash Environmental author and activist Bill McKibben talks with the Sunrise Movement founder and leading light of the next generation of climate warriors.

Yankee (ISSN 0044-0191). Bimonthly, Vol. 85 No. 4. Publication Office, Dublin, NH 03444-0520. Periodicals postage paid at Dublin, NH, and additional offices. Copyright 2021 by Yankee Publishing Incorporated; all rights reserved. Postmaster: Send address changes to Yankee, P.O. Box 37128, Boone, IA 50037-0128.

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ALEX GAGNE

features

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More Contents

departments

home

10 DEAR YANKEE, CONTRIBUTORS & POETRY BY D.A.W.

26 /// Before-and-After Life

DIY decor expert Joanne Palmisano on how she transforms old into showstoppingly new. By Mel Allen

INSIDE YANKEE

32 /// Open Studio

Jill Rosenwald has made her name with pottery true to her personality: bold, colorful, irrepressible. By Annie Graves

36 /// House for Sale The views seal the deal at this spectacular seaside estate in Maine. By Joe Bills

40 /// The Joy of Summer Berries These desserts make the most of the sweetest, most vibrant fruits of the year. By Jessica Battilana

22 WEEKENDS WITH YANKEE Q&A We catch up with farmer Chris Kurth and chef Ana Sortun, two local-food leaders and featured guests on Weekends with Yankee. By Amy Traverso

46 /// Yankee Classic As Weekends with Yankee pays homage to Julia Child in its new season, we revisit a timeless profile of the queen of cooking.

25 UP CLOSE One of New England’s most beloved wooden boats, the Beetle Cat, gets ready to sail into its second century. By Jenn Johnson

128

travel

LIFE IN THE KINGDOM Lessons from conducting the business of a small town. By Ben Hewitt

56 /// Weekend Away An insider’s guide to exploring Portland, Maine. By Sara Anne Donnelly

ADV ERTISING RESOURCES

66 /// The Best 5 New England’s most scenic spots for a caffeine fix. By Kim Knox Beckius

Weekends with Yankee.........23 My New England..............54 Things to Do in New England....................61 Best of New England........70 Retirement Living.......... 119 Marketplace....................122

68 /// Summer Adventures Family day-trip inspiration from the pages of Yankee’s travel guide. 4 |

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MICHAEL PIA Z Z A (PORTR AIT); KRISTIN TEIG (DESSERT); MICHAEL D. WILSON (COAST)

52 /// Recipe Remake Just the thing for warm-weather dining: creamy lemon-basil pasta salad. By Katherine Keenan

18 FIRST LIGHT Traveling back into summertime memories on the bridges of Cape Cod. By Kate Whouley

food

50 /// In Season Savor Mediterranean flavor with grilled tomato flatbreads. By Amy Traverso

FIRST PERSON Cleaning out his storage shed, Yankee editor Mel Allen unearths a quandary: What do we do with things that hold special meaning only for us?

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EDITORIAL Editor Mel Allen Managing Editor Jenn Johnson Senior Features Editor Ian Aldrich Senior Food Editor Amy Traverso Home & Garden Editor Annie Graves Associate Editor Joe Bills Senior Digital Editor Aimee Tucker Associate Digital Editor Katherine Keenan Contributing Editors Kim Knox Beckius, Sara Anne Donnelly, Ben Hewitt, Rowan Jacobsen, Nina MacLaughlin, Julia Shipley ART Art Director Katharine Van Itallie Photo Editor Heather Marcus Contributing Photographers Adam DeTour, Megan Haley, Corey Hendrickson, Michael Piazza, Greta Rybus PRODUCTION Director David Ziarnowski Manager Brian Johnson Senior Artists Jennifer Freeman, Rachel Kipka

Publisher Brook Holmberg ADVERTISING Vice President Judson D. Hale Jr. Media Account Managers Kelly Moores, Dean DeLuca, Steven Hall Canada Account Manager Cynthia Fleming Senior Production Coordinator Janet Selle For advertising rates and information, call 800-736-1100, ext. 204, or email NewEngland.com/adinfo. MARKETING ADVERTISING

Director Kate Hathaway Weeks Manager Valerie Lithgow Associate Holly Sloane PUBLIC RELATIONS

Roslan & Associates Public Relations LLC 212-966-4600 NEWSSTAND Vice President Sherin Pierce

DIGITAL Vice President Paul Belliveau Jr. Designer Amy O’Brien Ecommerce Director Alan Henning Marketing Specialist Holly Sanderson Email Marketing Specialist Samantha Caveny — YANKEE PUBLISHING INC. ESTABLISHED 1935 | AN EMPLOYEE-OWNED COMPANY

President Jamie Trowbridge Vice Presidents Paul Belliveau Jr., Ernesto Burden, Judson D. Hale Jr., Brook Holmberg, Jennie Meister, Sherin Pierce Editor Emeritus Judson D. Hale Sr.

NEWSSTAND CONSULTING

Linda Ruth, PSCS Consulting 603-924-4407 SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe, give a gift, or change your mailing address, or for any other questions, please contact our customer service department: Mail Yankee Magazine Customer Service P.O. Box 37900 Boone, IA 50037-0900 Online NewEngland.com/contact Email customerservice@yankeemagazine.com

CORPORATE STAFF

Human Resources Manager Beth Parenteau Credit Manager Bill Price Staff Accountant Nancy Pfuntner Accounting Coordinator Meg Hart-Smith Executive Assistant Christine Tourgee Maintenance Supervisor Mike Caron Facilities Attendant Paul Langille

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BOARD OF DIRECTORS

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Connect with Yankee

@ YA N K EE M AG A Z I N E

SEEING GREEN A curated look at New England featuring standout shots from our Instagram community.

Abby Lalor (@vermont.vibe) Manchester, Vermont

Claire Wiley (@byclairewiley) Essex, Connecticut

Samantha Lynch (@_samanthalynch) Salem, Massachusetts

Monica Rogers (@neclassicbeauty) Newfields, New Hampshire

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Use our Instagram hashtag #mynewengland for a chance to be featured in an upcoming issue!

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A BERRY GOOD SUMMER Berry season is back, and we’ve got you covered with the best pick-your-own spots, classic sweet berry recipes from our archives, an ode to wild Maine blueberries (yes, they are better), and more! Get started at: newengland.com/berries FO L L OW US O N S O C I A L M E D I A @YA N K E E M AGA Z IN E

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LE T TERS TO THE EDITOR

CONTRIBUTORS R O WA N J A C O B S E N Reporting a story on Maine wild blueberry wine [“Wild Blue Wonder,” p. 72] was the only assignment for which this Vermont journalist left his native state last summer. “It was an easy drive to Maine, and then all the social distancing you could want in the vast, airy blueberry barrens,” says Jacobsen, whose latest nonfiction book, Truffle Hound, will be published in October. J O A N N E PA L M I S A N O A native Vermonter and award-winning interior designer, Palmisano saw teaming up with Yankee as a natural fit [“Before-and-After Life,” p. 26]. “The magazine represents what I try to do in design, which is to tell a story while letting the soul of the space speak for itself, and add character and charm along the way,” says Palmisano, whose most recent design book, Rock Your Rental, was published in 2020. BILL MCKIBBEN When a 19-year-old Varshini Prakash led a successful fossil-fuels divestment effort at UMass Amherst, her accomplishment caught the eye of fellow New Englander Bill McKibben. As part of Yankee’s “Conversations” series [p. 104], the famed author, environmentalist, and activist interviews Prakash about “her remarkable career, which from that start has taken her to the center of American politics.” ALEX GAGNE A freelance photographer who has shot for the likes of The Wall Street Journal and Popular Science, Gagne spent the summer of 2019 driving between his home in Franklin, Massachusetts, to ballparks around Cape Cod nearly every day. “I got to see firsthand the dedication and passion these athletes bring to their craft,” he says—and thanks to his stunning photos [“Chasing the Dream,” p. 80], so can Yankee readers. BIJOU KARMAN The personal and the professional came together for this illustrator’s first Yankee assignment [“Conversations,” p. 104]. As a fan and supporter of Varshini Prakash’s Sunrise Movement, “I really enjoyed creating a serene portrait of Varshini in the New England nature she grew up with,” says Karman, whose work has also appeared in such publications as The New Yorker and Time. J O N AT H A N G R E E N Green’s career has taken him from the high Arctic to the jungles of Colombia, but he faced a new challenge in rural Vermont: doing an “epic” mountain bike ride with two pros for his Kingdom Trails story [“Build It and They Will Come,” p. 94]. “They were chatting amiably on vertiginous ascents while I, heaving for air, could barely say my name,” recalls Green, who nonetheless can’t wait to return with his kids. 10 |

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A Role Model for Every Body Thank you for the wonderful article on Mirna Valerio [“Conversations,” May/June]. As a curvy girl too, who loves the outdoors, I found her incredible positivity and boundless energy transcend the pages of Yankee. She is such an inspiration, and I am a new fan. Thank you again for publishing her story! Erin Reinhart Lake in the Hills, Illinois

Movie Memories As a college student in the mid-’60s, I would frequently travel between my home in Riverside, Connecticut, to Nichols College in Massachusetts. We would take Route 15, stopping for a bite to eat along the Berlin Strip and then on through Hartford and the Windsor area. Noted for its huge fields of tobacco, at times draped with white cloth, it was truly an impressive sight and one to look forward to on each trip over those four years. The movie that brought those fields to life for me was 1961’s Parrish. I looked with anticipation to see if it made it into your tribute to movies made in New England [“Making a Scene,” May/June], but sadly it was missing. Just felt it was worth mentioning. Bob Fossum Southbury, Connecticut

Hit Parade I just put down the March/April issue after an hour of peaceful, fascinated, emotional immersion. Cover to cover, the articles were one five-star experience after another, from cozy and comforting (Martha’s Vineyard, backyard birding) to educational and aspirational (“Zen cooking”) to beautiful (ocean photos) to thought-provoking and compassionate (Covid essay). I was raised in Seekonk, Massachusetts, and nearby Rhode Island. Although I haven’t lived there for

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LE T TERS TO THE EDITOR

decades, I have subscribed to Yankee on and off because New England is still my heart’s home. There’s always something of interest to peruse in Yankee—but this particular issue just was one marvel after another. Gail Povar Bethesda, Maryland

Blooming Wonder So, you did almost an entire issue about Martha’s Vineyard [March/ April], and the Polly Hill Arboretum was not mentioned in the article about the island, or in the resource info about the Vineyard, or in the “Green Thumb Go-Tos” article. What gives? Karin Stanley West Tisbury, Massachusetts Perhaps we were too zealous in pruning back our text? As one of our Vineyardsavvy staffers has long avowed, West Tisbury’s own Polly Hill Arboretum is indeed a magical place worth visiting: pollyhillarboretum.org. —The Editors

SUMMER HARVEST Roadside wagons, farmyard-worn, Sell bushel-loads of fresh-picked corn: A dinner’s worth of golden sweetness, Coaxing summer toward completeness. —D.A.W.

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Weighing In on ‘From Away’ In the wake of Rachel Slade’s essay about being an outsider in a small, close-knit Maine community during Covid [“From Away,” March/ April], a number of readers wrote in or visited our socialmedia channels to offer their own takes, some of which are excerpted here. Join the conversation at newengland.com/from-away. I can’t help but wonder if Rachel Slade’s family’s home was on the same “island halfway up the coast” as the one my husband and I chose to move to from the D.C. area. A couple of small-town kids, we had endured city life for years and were ready to retire to a slower-paced area; we had visited Maine in all seasons (including blackf ly and mud!) and loved it. We tried to get involved in local volunteer life; Yankees know how nearly everything is run by volunteers in places like that island, which was so much a part of our lives for about 30 years. Shortly before he died, one of the world’s best neighbors told us that, much as we tried to get involved and regardless of the respect we might have earned, we would always be “from away.” He was right. I will always love that island and will never forget those years we spent there, but it’s sad that we were destined to always be “from away.” Andrea M., via newengland.com I am a resident of a very aff luent and sparsely populated (in winter) resort town. We felt helpless as the very well-to-do summer residents raced from hot spots of Covid infection to our small winter community. The hospital is down-staffed in winter. Police are down-staffed. We basically hunker down and reboot all winter.

It was difficult not to feel that our perceived “island” was being inundated by those possibly infected. We didn’t go so far as to chain [anyone’s driveway], but we sure did feel that those folks from away put us at risk without thought of our well-being. Matthew Harlow, via Facebook A sad and disappointing story. Sad because the family had to deal with illness, yet disappointing because of the way they were treated by locals. True Mainers are friendly, welcoming, caring, and kind. Nancy Frothingham, via Facebook My family reads Yankee to learn about, appreciate, and enjoy the best that New England has to offer. I found the article “From Away” to be disappointing in that it hints at a stereotype of Mainers being unwelcoming, and includes a particularly harsh response to one unfortunate situation. I believe it was in poor taste to include this type of article in an otherwise nonjudgmental publication. Please keep it positive, Yankee, especially in a time where there is so much negativity, divisiveness, and strife in this world. Lisa Rost, via email

D. A .W. (C O R N I L LUS T R AT I O N )

Dear Yankee

We want to hear from you! Write us at editor@yankeemagazine.com. Please include where you live, and note that letters are edited for length and clarity.

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Inside Yankee |

MEL ALLEN

Dreams Unfolding

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this issue I felt them percolating in nearly every story, even the ones set far from a playing field. Michael Terrien and Eric Martin, childhood friends from Maine, are bringing to life their improbable idea that Bluet, their sparkling blueberry wine, just might revitalize Maine’s struggling blueberry industry, with vast blueberry barrens transforming into Maine’s own Napa Valley [p. 72]. Massachusetts native Varshini Prakash, the 28-year-old founder of the Sunrise Movement, embraces the vision that her generation, born under the cloud of climate-change disasters, will now lead the fight to preserve the world’s fragile ecosystems [p. 104]. And when John Worth came to East Burke, Vermont, to open a bike shop more than 30 years ago, he had the audacious idea that here, in the hardscrabble Northeast Kingdom, a mountain bike mecca could be created. Over 100 miles of trails later, Kingdom Trails is, yes, sometimes a source of local angst but also a nationally renowned destination and a regional economic boon [p. 94]. In a summer when our dreams may be as simple, and as vital, as simply being with loved ones on sun-kissed days, this issue is for all of us who can look at those who never stopped throwing their own balls against unyielding walls, who never stopped believing in the impossible, and feel the prospect of boundless hope once more.

Mel Allen editor@yankeemagazine.com

JARROD MCCABE

n a small Pennsylvania town there is a modest brick house, built at the end of the Second World War. You can see on one wall countless tiny nicks, the result of someone having thrown a hard object against it for hundreds, even thousands of hours. I know this to be true because, from early spring until fall, I spent my boyhood standing roughly 25 feet away from that wall, baseball glove on my left hand, battered baseball in my right. I would throw at the wall, as hard as I could. When the ball ricocheted back, I’d scoop it up and throw again, letting that wall hold the hope shared by so many kids that a baseball scout would one day see us play, and ask our names. Although that dream ends for nearly everyone, in summer it f ills the ball f ields of 10 Massachusetts towns, where for generations the country’s best college players play in the Cape Cod League. There is no admission fee, and fans sit on modest bleachers, or on blankets on the grass, or in lawn chairs, watching the sport’s next generation in action. Several hundred Major Leaguers this season alone can tell stories about those fields of dreams on Cape Cod. Photographer Alex Gagne has followed the Orleans Firebirds for more than a decade, looking for the intimate moments within the drama of young athletes during the most important summer of their lives [p. 80]. Maybe it is because this past year has affected so many hopes and dreams, but as I read through

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First Person

MEL ALLEN

The Storage Shed What do we do with things that hold special meaning only for us? f all the legacies I could leave my two sons, the one I never want is to make them confront the sediment of my life. When other members of my family have died, I had to decide what to keep, what to give away, what to drive to some obscure place that took things that no longer fit in a home. I pretended not to know that some of it would likely be crushed in a dumpster. I do not want that burden to be passed on. I keep things. I am not a “hoarder,” because that implies an aberration. I do not hoard. I keep things that should not be discarded. A friend once told me he gave away his mother’s furniture but kept everything that told a story: a knitted wool hat, a scarf, a miniature porcelain swan boat. I understood. 16 |

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But so many things hold stories for me. Which is why I have not opened my storage unit for months. I know now that I must trim it all back, put this locker on an austerity program. So I open the lock, lift the door, and enter a chaotic land of boxes. And immediately, I want to retreat. I need someone to take this all away when I am sleeping. Yet all this once meant something to people I cared about; I kept my own boxes, too, of notebooks and newspaper clippings and audio tapes, because they were the tools of my life’s work. Still, I cannot leave the chaos to be sorted by others. I fill the trunk of my car, the backseat too. Back home I set up plastic crates for paper, and two more for mementos—I label these “keepers.” I place a large container for discards beside a table. I begin. Inside the first box is a framed photo of my dad in his Army uniform from World War II. He is smiling, arms flung open. My sons never knew him. A keeper. In another box I find a dusty brown leather satchel filled with manila envelopes that have not been opened for decades. One envelope holds letters that my father wrote to my mother during the war. When I leave this earth, nobody will ever ask to see them. I am supposed to be thinning the herd so my sons do not need to. But these, too, go into a keeper crate. In another box I see tapes from 40 years ago of Stephen King talking to me about his early life, and tapes on which I had scrawled Alan Shepard. An hour passes, and all I have accomplished is to stack dozens of tapes into a crate, each filled with the voice of someone whose story I wanted to tell. I discover a handwritten letter from a 9-year-old named Jamie. I once coached her youth baseball team at a time when only a few girls played with the boys. I read: “You have showed me so many things that I never knew I could do. If it weren’t for you I would still be that whimpy scaredy cat I was when we started. But now I’m someone who can go up to the plate and hit, swing hard and not strike out and be upset…. Thank you for getting me to be the ballplayer that I’ve dreamed of being.” She had decorated both sides of the paper with colored stars. How do I put that in the discard pile, even if I have not seen it for over 25 years? Because now I have, again, and it fills me with the same flush of pleasure as when I first read it long ago. Maybe, one day, I will make peace with the fact that I did my best. That I sifted through all the mementos, keeping only what I could not bear to never see again. Which, as of today, many days into the project, is nearly everything. This essay was adapted from Mel Allen’s online column “Letter from Dublin,” which will begin appearing in Yankee starting with the September/October issue.

COURTESY OF MEL ALLEN

Among the “keepers” unearthed from long-forgotten storage boxes: a snapshot of the author’s father, Al, as a beaming young GI.

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First

LIGHT The Bridges of Barnstable County Three spans not only connect Cape Cod to the mainland, but also link visitors and residents with treasured memories. B Y K AT E W H O U L E Y

see the bridge!” The car is jam-packed with suitcases and coolers, def lated f loats, and five pairs of flip-flops still dusted with last summer’s sand. The bicycle wheels are spinning on the rack behind you, but you’re facing forward now, eyes on the horizon. Because the first kid who spots the bridge gets the satisfaction of being the first kid who spots the bridge. You remember.

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“I see the bridge ! ” With those words, your Cape Cod vacation begins. Crossing the water, you are squirming in the back seat, trying to get a look at the marine traffic below. Around 14,000 vessels move through the Cape Cod Canal every year. You’re hoping for a tugboat—and wouldn’t it be cool to see a barge? Or maybe the Railroad Bridge is in motion, lowering its center span to welcome a train. When you were younger, you pictured

an enchanted locomotive steaming straight up one tower, making a rightangle turn to cross the span, then rightangling again to go straight down on the other side. You know better now. Or do you? It’s true that the bridge comes down to meet the train, but it’s also true that the bridges of Barnstable County are magic. The understated elegance of the twinned Bourne and Sagamore, the arresting riveted spires of the Railroad NEWENGLAND.COM

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Bridge, the working scenic waterway below. For residents and visitors alike, traversing the canal at any age marks a passage to another place. Those of us who live on Cape Cod (215,000 at last count) feel our shoulders drop, our breath deepening, a sense of rightness to the world as we head toward home. For visitors, there is the tingle of anticipation mid-span, a movement from work to play, busyness to calm. (Or as calm as it gets with those kids in tow.) JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Some local bridge lovers never even cross; they live canal-side on the mainland, spellbound, and reveling in views. THE GRACEFUL SISTERS Wait—what about the traffic? During peak travel times, backups are notorious, particularly on the Sagamore, which carries the bulk of the traffic to and from Boston. (Travelers from the west or south tend to favor the Bourne, the longer of the two bridges, 2,384

Cape-bound traffic snakes its way over the Sagamore Bridge in July 1972. Today, Cape Cod, which has a yearround population of about 215,000, hosts an estimated 7 million residents and tourists over the course of the summer season.

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feet to the Sagamore’s 1,408.) Delays can diminish the allure of arrival, though not so much for residents, as we follow strict rules around coming and going to avoid getting stuck. But on the flip side, we endure the repairs and maintenance that are routine in the off-season. (For painting, the bridges are wrapped, Christo-like, in billowing cloth, lest you recognize year-rounders by their gunmetal-dotted vehicles.) Built in the 1930s and designed by esteemed Boston architect Ralph Adams Cram, both the Bourne and Sagamore accommodate two tight lanes each way. They replaced an older set of bridges installed before the 1914 opening of the Cape Cod Canal, the brainchild of entrepreneur August Belmont Jr., who also f inanced and constructed the original New York City subway. And in case you’re wondering why someone would stake his fortune on a remote canal, it was all about commerce—saving time—and also keeping sailors alive. Traders and merchants had wanted to merge two tidal rivers since the 1600s. On the route around the Cape, shipwrecks were routine (bet ween 20 and 30 20 |

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annually in the late 1800s). But things didn’t work out exactly as planned on that first attempt. At 25 feet deep and just 100 feet wide, the original canal shaved 62 dangerous miles off the trip. But the high tolls, sharp turns, and tight navigation put off mariners, and the private project was a commercial failure. In 1928, the federal government purchased the canal and the Army Corps of Engineers took over, dredging and reconfiguring, straightening its course, making it deeper (32 feet) and wider (480 feet) and installing giant rocks as riprap along the banks to minimize erosion. Someday, the Bourne and Sagamore bridges will be retired. Last year the federal government allocated funding and an agreement was forged that will enable the state to take over two new bridges once they are built. The design process will take a while, and there’s engineering, highway planning, and all the figuring out that will be required to build modern six-lane spans with bike paths and sidewalks that connect the Cape and the mainland. For the next decade or so? Let’s cherish the sisters’ sunset silhouettes.

THE STATELY SENTINEL Presiding over the western end of the canal, the Cape Cod Canal Railroad Bridge is a world wonder of ironwork, design, and engineering. Most often seen in its raised position, the center span is 135 feet above the high-water level and punctuated by two trussed towers capped with ironwork cones and spheric finials. If you could climb to the very top and hang on to one of those giant balls, you’d be 271 feet from the water below. The Art Deco style of the c. 1935 bridge can be credited to McKim, Mead & White, architectural superstars of their day, whose New England projects include the Boston Public Library and the Rhode Island state capitol. Visible from the Bourne Bridge and the canal-side trails, the Railroad Bridge can be seen up close from Buzzards Bay Park. You can also cross it yourself on a scenic excursion with the Cape Cod Central Railroad or on the MBTA’s Cape Flyer service from Boston. And here’s a secret: The Railroad Bridge whistles. When canal-side residents hear that distinctive sound, they know the 544-foot center span will soon be lowered. That span weighs 2,200 tons; two 1,100ton counterweights (one in each tower) facilitate its movement, using minimal electricity. In just two and a half minutes, the bridge is down, rails ready for the oncoming train. Function—yes, for sure—but form. Oh, form. The bridges of Barnstable County. Three love stories spanning a single canal, a romance that never ends. I see the bridge.

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Hailed at the time as “the biggest Federal Public Works job ever undertaken in New England,” the Bourne and Sagamore bridges opened to traffic in June 1935.

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W I T H YA N K E E Q & A Boston chef Ana Sortun and her husband, Chris Kurth, harvest some Swiss chard at his CSA vegetable farm in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

at press time the wait list numbered 500 hopefuls. We explore Sortun and Kurth’s unique partnership in episode 2 of the new season of Weekends with Yankee. —Amy Traverso Q. So how did a chef and a farmer meet and fall in love? Ana Sortun: Chris was introduced

to me when he was working at the Farm School in Athol, Massachusetts. They were looking for restaurants that would buy some of their vegetables, and Chris walked in one day with a bunch of spinach at a really, really bad time—right before [restaurant] “show time,” at 5 o’clock. But I’ve always had a soft spot for farmers, so I stopped what I was doing and looked at his spinach. It didn’t take long after that.

Catching up with these two local-food leaders and featured guests on Weekends with Yankee.

ew couples have careers as sublimely synchronized as Ana Sortun and Chris Kurth. She’s a chef; he’s a farmer. They live just a stone’s throw from Siena Farms, Kurth’s vegetable-growing operation in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Those veggies anchor the menus of Sortun’s Boston-area restaurants Oleana, Sofra, and Sarma. Her work, in turn, influences the 100-plus varieties of vegetables grown at Siena. Over the past year, as the pandemic disrupted national food-supply chains and the entire restaurant industry, 22 |

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their mutual cooperation proved even more critical. Kurth saw local subscriptions quadruple for his seasonal CSA program. And as winter weather shut down outdoor dining and threatened Sortun’s businesses, her team came up with an idea: Why not sell prepared food the way Kurth sells raw ingredients? Thus the community-supported restaurant, or CSR, model was born. Customers of Oleana and Sofra could pay for weekly subscriptions and receive a generous box of heat-and-eat foods. The 175 shares sold out almost instantly, and

percent of our veggies went to retail, 40 percent to our CSA, and 20 percent to restaurants. Now, 75 percent of our crop goes out to our CSA subscribers. One of our best experiences of the past year was feeling so appreciated by our customers. People cared really deeply about what was happening to farms and restaurants and other local businesses. I’m confident that a general concern for our neighbors will be one of the long-term lessons of this pandemic. I’m hoping it is. Q. How did you come up with the CSR model? Sortun: It started with Maura

Kilpatrick, my business partner at Sofra, trying to get some pies attached to the distribution system of the Siena Farms “Gobble Box,” which is this enormous box of produce you can order with everything you’d need for Thanksgiving. As they worked on

CHRISTOPHER CHURCHILL

Ana Sortun & Chris Kurth

Q. How did the pandemic change your businesses? Chris Kurth: Pre-2020, about 40

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| Q&A

that, Chris and Rachel Orchard, his CSA manager, thought, Wow, we could really help the restaurants out. We live and breathe the CSA model through Siena Farms, so it wasn’t a stretch. The challenge was developing a production system, but we handed distribution over to the farm. It brought us a lot of stability and we didn’t have to lay anybody off. It also gave us a sense of purpose. It demanded good, creative energy. Without it, I would’ve been laserfocused on how much money we were losing and all the negatives that every restaurant was experiencing in the last few months. Q. Are you optimistic about the future of food? Kurth: I think it’s going to be hard for

anyone to take anything for granted after this crazy year, including understanding the need to shorten the supply chains for food. We hope the “Buy Local” campaign has a lot more importance now for all of us. Sortun: On the restaurant side, I think that takeout is going to be a really bad word soon. A lot of fine-dining restaurants did takeout because they had to, but food just doesn’t taste as good. It’s not the same experience. When all this is over, people are going to be out again. Maybe food will be more casual for a while. But I also think that people want food that they’re not making at home. I look at restaurants like Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York or Alinea in Chicago, and those are places where magic happens. I think people need that magic more than they ever have. Season 5 of Weekends with Yankee, which includes a visit with Ana Sortun and Chris Kurth at Siena Farms, is now airing on public television stations nationwide. To find your local listings—plus recipes and highlights from past seasons—go to weekendswithyankee.com. NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 9:24 AM

Sail of the Century A salute to Cape Cod’s unsinkable Beetle Cat.

B I L LY B L A C K

ailors love to argue, so it’s no surprise they can’t agree on what cats have to do with catboats. Some say there’s a feline agility in how these broad-beamed, single-masted sailboats can dart in and out of shallow coastal waters; others claim that when first used by New England f ishermen in the mid-19th century, the boats were magnets for hungry local cats. Bill Womack isn’t ready to settle that argument. But when it comes to the classic Cape Cod catboat known as the Beetle Cat, he does see a definite “nine lives” connection. “There are so many times in the past 100 years where if certain people hadn’t stepped in or had a real love for this boat,” he says, “the Beetle Cat wouldn’t be here today.” JULY | AUGUST 2021

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As the current owner of Beetle Inc. in Wareham, Massachusetts, which still builds the little wooden sailboat that John Beetle of New Bedford first launched in 1921, Womack is one of those people. Another is Leo J. Telesmanick, who started as a 15-year-old apprentice in the original Beetle family shop and went on to oversee the construction of virtually every Beetle Cat made before he passed away in 2001. Womack’s shop still uses the mold that Telesmanick built in 1946, among other vintage tools and equipment. And why not? Little about the 12-foot, 4-inch Beetle Cat has changed in a century’s time: It’s entirely made from wood, and it’s entirely built by hand. A lso unchanged is the Beetle Cat’s appeal. The oldest wooden boat

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design actively raced today, it’s nimble enough to have inspired Beetle Cat f leets up and down the New England coast—including at the Chatham Yacht Club, which this summer hosts the annual Leo J. Telesmanick Beetle Cat Championship Regatta (July 31– August 1). But it’s also roomy, sturdy, and easy to sail, making it a favorite for families. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought one for her kids; so did author Nathaniel Philbrick. Families, in fact, are a big part of what may ultimately keep the Beetle Cat from using up that fabled ninth life. There’s a devotion to this boat that builds from generation to generation, says Womack, whose shop stores and refurbishes many, many more old Beetle Cats than it makes new ones. “The kids start out in it, then they get grown and put their kids in it, who put their kids in it,” he says. “And Granny can still sail it with the grandkids. In the end, it’s like a member of the family.” —Jenn Johnson

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D I Y I N S P I R AT I O N

BEFORE-AND-AFTER BY MEL ALLEN WITH JOANNE PALMISANO

CO U R T E S Y O F J OA N N E PA L M IS A N O (B EF O R E ); L I N DS AY SEL I N P H OTO GR A P H Y (A F T ER)

LIFE

With the motto “something discarded is simply something not yet found,” designer Joanne Palmisano revitalizes interiors by blending new and old.

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before ( opposite ): The owners of an 1800s barn in southern Vermont had already been using it as a rustic cabin when they approached Joanne Palmisano for help in turning it into their family vacation home. after (this page ): The beams of the historic barn take center stage against paneling newly painted bright white. The original floors have been sanded and sealed, while the addition of a modern door and windows and a bold light fixture helps complete the transformation.

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o understand how Joanne Palmisano, one of America’s best-known DIY interior designers, goes about her work, walk with her into an architectural salvage shop, or a flea market, or a Goodwill in her home state of Vermont. These are her hunting grounds. “I can see right away how I can use something,” she says. “When I walk through a salvage place with people, I’ll say, ‘Pick out one item. What four things could you do with that?’ It is a wonderful way to train yourself to look at things differently. A ladder is not just a ladder— it can be a light fixture, a magazine rack, a towel holder. Just start one object at a time.” And you don’t have to have a purpose for it right away, she adds. Once she fell in love with a 400-pound butcher block no longer needed by a butcher shop. “It sat in my shed for two years. I am willing to wait for the right place, the right time.” Palmisano tells me that the day before we talked, she found another unlikely future trea-

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sure. “I saw these amazing sawhorses. I immediately realized you could make a gorgeous table by laying glass on top.” Her voice takes on the lilt of the thrill of the find, even after years of using these scouting missions to find ways to transform houses, inns, B&Bs, rental properties, and even restaurants and brewpubs, no matter how tight or generous a budget she has to work with. Through her blog, DIY Network videos, and books—Salvage Secrets, Salvage Secrets Design & Décor, Styling with Salvage, and the recent Rock Your Rental (written with her twin sister, Rosanne, another designer)—Palmisano’s talent for transforming worn, shabby interiors into bright, welcoming, and downright stunning spaces has resonated with a growing audience eager to follow her dictums: “Something discarded is simply something not yet found” and “Less is more.” Learning to see with the eye of a master DIY designer does not happen overnight, though. It

C O U R T E S Y O F J OA N N E PA L M I S A N O ( P O R T R A I T; “ B E F O R E ” P H OTO S) ; O R C H A R D C O V E P H OTO G R A P H Y ( L I V I N G R O O M ) ; L I N D S AY SE L I N P H OTO G R A P H Y ( B AT H R O O M )

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far left :

Joanne Palmisano in the kitchen of her rehabbed cottage on Lake Champlain, which features a repurposed 19th-century laundry sink.

left and inset :

Before-and-after views of a cottage at the Vermont resort Basin Harbor, where simple changes— fresh paint, extra windows looking onto the lake, updated furnishings—yielded drastic results. Hanging over the fireplace is artwork Palmisano created by painting over a canvas found in a secondhand shop.

below and inset : The key to making over a dated, worn bathroom? Mixing salvaged elements (reclaimed barn wood, an antique dresser) with sleek new lighting, a reimagined shower, and a floor of local slate.

has taken Palmisano a lifetime, one that started in Barre, Vermont, where her father owned a tomato-packing plant. “I was always looking for old stuff,” she says. “Behind our house were acres of fields and woods. We’d dig up old bottles. My parents had a storage closet we called the junk room. I was always in there making things. That’s just who I was.” She left Vermont for college in Connecticut, worked for nonprofits, started a wedding resource business, worked for a Burlington builder as a designer. But her career began with JULY | AUGUST 2021

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For the kitchen of the vacation house in southern Vermont (p. 27), Palmisano again highlighted the old barn beams, this time by surrounding them with white tile. She also added gorgeous stone counters, painted cabinets, and extra windows. Of the overall decor, she says, “I love to mix metals, coppers, brass, vintage pieces—it gives a space instant charm and an oldworld feel.”

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her own home. “When I met my husband, he’d already started building a cabin on the back side of Camel’s Hump State Park with salvage and recycled materials. I thought, He is a keeper,” she says. Together they shared a passion for fixing up places with what they could find. Twenty years ago they found a cottage, 700 square feet, on the shore of Lake Champlain. “It was one story, one bedroom, only room for a twin bed on the floor,” she recalls. They asked a local nonprofit to strip it bare—even the wood on the walls—and to recycle everything. Then they built the cottage back up from the subfloor, adding a second f loor, using their love for old, long-neglected stuff and a hands-on willingness to get dirty. “When we rebuilt,” Palmisano says, “we added a kitchen island top from an 1880s railroad building from St. Albans. Even our refrigerator is a huge commercial refrigerator that I found in a rebuild center. Old doors became kitchen cabinets. Our sink was once used in the 1800s to wash laundry.”

CO U R T E S Y O F J OA N N E PA L M IS A N O (B EF O R E ); L I N DS AY SEL I N P H OTO GR A P H Y (A F T ER)

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COURT ESY OF JOANNE PAL MISANO (BEFORE); SUSAN T E ARE PHOTOGR APHY (AF T ER)

When they f inished, they had not only made a new home from much that had been tossed out by others, but also made it strikingly warm and lovely. A national magazine featured it, and the editor suggested that Palmisano write a book about what she loved and what she had learned over the years. That book, Salvage Secrets, got the attention of the DIY Network, and soon she was sharing with a nationwide audience what she calls her “addiction.” Today Palmisano keeps up an almost breathless schedule of meetings with prospective clients—homeowners, people who want to open an Airbnb rental, proprietors of inns

and restaurants, anyone who wants to see one space be entirely reimagined so that when it is finished, “it looks both new and also that it has always been there, and it has gotten that way with local, reused pieces.” In her hands, discarded lumber becomes a headboard that anchors a bedroom setting. Salvaged barn wood is remade into sliding doors; an old dresser becomes a bathroom vanity. Textiles and blankets and quilts become wall hangings that catch the eye. For one vacation rental on a Vermont lake, she bought a stock image of a birch forest and had it blown up at the local photo shop. Backed with adhesive paper and placed on a bedroom wall, it changed the feel of the room dramatically— and for just a few hundred dollars. But even as Palmisano’s reach and inf luence grow, she knows that what she does takes more than a practiced eye. The heart also plays a role. She tells me about how she can feel the spirit of a place, and how she is always aware of not destroying that. “You must listen to the house,” Palmisano says. “Listen to its history. What were people thinking when it was designed? How much care went into it? You want to understand what it is.”

Another example of Palmisano’s work at Basin Harbor shows the transformative power of basic cosmetic changes. Thanks to fresh carpeting and wallpaper, some paneling, and classic brass lantern–style lights, this guest room in the main lodge looks completely new while staying true to the feel of the historic resort.

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| Home

The Art of Adapting

With a personality as bold as her pottery, Boston’s Jill Rosenwald forges ahead. BY ANNIE GR AVES PHOTOS BY MICHAEL PIAZZA

here were police involved. Samples taken. Incriminating jewelry. “You really want to go there?” Jill Rosenwald challenges me, laughing, as we rewind to the first glimmers of what would become her upscale pottery business—one that has survived the ebb and flow of economics, shifting design aesthetics, and, most recently, a pandemic. Rosenwald’s handiwork is instantly recognizable in stores from Cape Cod to California. It straddles an almost impossible divide, managing to be both bold and noncombative. While these are ceramics with big personalities, opposite , clockwise from top right :

Jill Rosenwald in her Boston studio; “Bali Toile” pattern detail; potter John Papin crafting a bowl; a sampling of the studio’s custom colors. above : Bisqueware waiting to be brought to life with Rosenwald’s design flair.

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they play well with others too—not just each other, but also a client’s decor. Here are ikat-patterned bowls shaped like beehives, tapas trays that relax in a Delft-blue haze, vases splashed with pink diamonds or chartreuse plaid. They embody positivity, a feeling of visual happiness. It seems Rosenwald, keenly tuned to the zeitgeist, can’t quite keep her own vivacity out of the mix. Of course I want to go there. “I was 21,” she says. “It was the ’80s. I made ceramic jewelry and sold it on

the sidewalk in New York City. I was a great success, because I was a little hustler. ‘Get your red-hot earrings!’” She pauses, practically gleeful. “Then we got stopped by the cops! They took samples for evidence. That was a big thing—they took evidence samples!” Today Rosenwald sits over the sidewalk, in a 6,000-square-foot, secondstory studio in Boston’s Fort Point Channel neighborhood, with glimpses of the water. She inhabits a world of patterns, templates, and shapes, with names like Versailles, West Palm, Swoosh. A color chart on the wall twinkles with shades of New Moss, Tidepool, and Pinkie Swear. The sunny space rambles away into smaller rooms, where a small crew has spread out during Covid. Here is the kiln room; over there, designer and studio production manager Ichiko Kato, who’s been with Rosenwald for 20 years, is painting intently; John Papin, a potter, occupies yet another distanced spot. Rosenwald’s husband, Lawrence McRae, has | 33

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his pottery studio here too. In “normal” times, there’s a public showroom that pulses with her vibrant pieces and his ceramic bowls and lamps. After that auspicious sidewalk debut, Rosenwald got serious, sort of. She began making colorful patterned bowls, did a trade show, got picked up by Neiman Marcus. She was off and running, a hit with retailers. “Superwhimsical,” she says, ruefully, of that early work. In the ensuing years, there were a “zillion” iterations, including a “space alien” phase, then Emilio Pucci, Matisse, Frida Kahlo. “My work was like 400 colors, decorated within an inch of its life.” But when the economy tanked in 2008, orders dried up. “Suddenly everyone went out of business,” Rosenwald remembers. To survive, she returned to the streets. She did a thousand trunk shows, and she started selling directly to consumers, paying attention to what they wanted. “That was eye-opening,” she says. “I had to ask myself, What am I really in the business of? Is it for the customers, or me? ” The answer? “I’m here to make something beautiful for other people,” she says, emphatically. “Before, I wasn’t that connected to what customers wanted. But by going directly to them, I got to hear what they were saying.” Her designs became simpler, more textural. She dialed back the colors, paring them down to just two. “In the beginning, I wanted my work to be shouted,” she says. “Like the insecure person who’s really in your face. And now, I don’t need that at all. I want to be quieter, less intrusive. I want it to be about them. So there’s an effort to make my pieces interesting without being overwhelming.” When the pandemic hit and retail accounts dried up, Rosenwald scrambled once again to adapt. And once again, she went directly to customers, this time via Instagram. “We had well over 100 pieces” when the shutdown came, she says. “We took photos of everything in the studio and made it

WIN A PIECE OF JILL ROSENWALD POTTERY Want to brighten up a corner of your home with one of Jill Rosenwald’s handcrafted creations? Thanks to Yankee’s Summer Pottery Giveaway, you could win a Le Bird Cache Pot in Delft Blue. To enter, go to: newengland.com/ summerpotterygiveaway Giveaway runs July 18–August 1, 2021

all available online that weekend. We told people, ‘Look, this is what we’re doing to survive.’” Customers bought everything. In an hour and a half. It was a revelation—that she could hop onto Instagram and announce “a sale on things that are pink, on Saturday,” and people would show up online. One more survival tool. In our last moments of conversation, we talk about colors for 2021. Pantone has made its yearly prediction, calling for medium gray and bright yellow. “I don’t see that happening,” says Rosenwald. “I think, post-Covid, people will be ready to see things that are more exciting, happy, and positive. Maybe a bright green, for renewal—I have this color called Lagoon, it’s very happy. And this other called Bright Kiwi….” She drifts off for a second, then snaps back. “You know, my work is never going to be silent,” she admits. “No matter how quiet I am in my work, it’s still noisy, cause I’m noisy. I’m like a noisy, loud Jewish broad. Like, you know, that should be the title of your story: Noisy, Loud Jewish Broad Who Makes Pots.” She pauses. “You’ll make it sound nice. It’s so true.” jillrosenwald.com

SOMERBY JONES

WILL MOSES

NEWENGLAND.COM

5/17/21 11:32 AM

HOUSE FOR SALE

| Home

A View ‘Almost Too Spectacular’ Rising like a lighthouse from a cliff on Maine’s Eggemoggin Reach, High Head lives up to its name.

A L L P H O TO S C O U R T E S Y O F T H E B E M I S FA M I LY

BY JOE BILLS

lan Bemis was a lover of Ma ine stor y tel ling, so perhaps it’s no surprise that the summer house (or rather, t wo houses—but we’ ll get to that) he built on a coastal cliff in Brooklin, Maine, is like something out of one of his tall tales. An MIT physicist whose research contributed to the development of radar and heat-seeking bombs during World War II, he was proud of his work, if not always how it was used. On campus he was known for being both brilliant and humorous. Bemis’s JULY | AUGUST 2021

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achievements let him pursue his passions: yachts, planes, and automobiles, including a 1913 Rolls Royce that once belonged to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s daughter. Bemis fell in love with Maine in the ’20s, when a Harvard classmate brought him on a cruise. Bemis and his wife, Mar y, looked at several properties, including the Brooklin house that is now home to WoodenBoat magazine and its boatbuilding school. “They didn’t buy it because it was too formal,” says John Macone, Bemis’s grandson. “ They wanted

Sitting 50 feet up on the granite shores of Eggemoggin Reach, High Head’s “owner’s house” has windows facing due south, east, and west, yielding views of sunrises and sunsets alike.

something casual and fun.” Instead they opted to build their own summer place just up the road, on a 40-acre property overlooking Eggemoggin Reach, the narrow stretch of water that separates Deer Isle from the mainland. “They told the architect they wanted something whimsical,” Macone says. The resulting design was of such scope and size that most of the | 35

5/19/21 1:57 PM

Home

HOUSE FOR SALE

TOP :

With six bedrooms and a spacious dining room with fireplace ( INSET), the ”children’s house” is actually the property’s larger structure. BELOW : A view of the famed sailing waters of Eggemoggin Reach from High Head’s all-tides deepwater-access dock.

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workers in town were employed in its construction, and both a forge and a sawmill had to be built on-site. High Head’s seaside cliffs offer a view that encompasses most of the reach’s 10-mile length, a vista that Bemis once described as “almost too spectacular.” And when choosing a name for his coastal escape, he demonstrated both his Yankee practicality and his droll humor. “On old coastal

navigation charts,” Macone explains, “you can usually find a spot marked ‘high head,’ a prominent bluff that serves as a landmark for sailors. I guess he figured why come up with a cute name like Sun-Kissed for your summer cottage when it is already on the map as High Head?” A collector of Maine lore, Bemis would go to the town barbershop every week to hang around and hear the locals tell stories, which he then sought to preserve on his Droll Yankees record label. He also had an interest in early film cameras, so when High Head was constructed in the mid-1930s, he captured snippets of the process on 16mm; the footage is now preserved online as part of Northeast Historic Film’s Alan Bemis Collection. High Head actually comprises two buildings, which the original blueprints dubbed “the owners’ house” and “the children’s house,” with the latter looking like something out of a Nordic fairy tale. “The concept was that the NEWENGLAND.COM

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HOUSE FOR SALE

parents lived in one house and their five daughters lived in the other with a nanny,” Macone says. “And [the children’s house] had the big kitchen and the big dining room with a fireplace, so my grandparents would go up there and take meals with their kids, then they could just go back to their own place”—a smaller house with a master bedroom, a screened sleeping porch, a dressing room, a guest room, and a 670-square-foot party room. “It is really bizarre,” Macone adds with a laugh. “I guess it speaks to their parenting style.” Bemis also had an unusual mode of transport to High Head: a float plane, which he would use to f ly up from Massachusetts. “He’d pack up the wife and kids in the car, say ‘See ya later,’ then 10 hours later hop in his plane and beat them there,” Macone says. “When I was young, living in Vermont, he would come get my brother

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and me and f ly us to Brooklin. We’d come in low across the water, headed straight for that castle. Then at the last second, he’d pull straight up. It was always just a fantasy world, this magical place that was so much fun.” But despite having spent so much time at High Head, Macone didn’t fully realize how unique it was until he took over its caretaking and brought contractors in to look at the property. “These are people that work all over the coast, who are used to the Bar Harbor cottages and all these beautiful places,” he says. “They come here, and they are blown away.” After Bemis died in 1991, Macone initially dreaded the prospect of selling High Head. “It was sad to think of my kids never really knowing this place that had been my family’s touchstone. Everything else has come and gone, but this place has been a constant. Now we’ve managed to stretch

it out another generation, which has been great. My oldest got married here a couple summers ago.” During the 30 years since Bemis passed, however, the elements have taken a toll—it’s tough for any house to stand up to decades of coastal pounding—and the time has come for someone else to tend to High Head. The estate comes with a healthy to-do list, for sure, but what it really needs is new enthusiasm, Macone says. “Hopefully, there is someone out there who has a vision, who sees this property and says, ‘What a great place to do x, y, or z,’” he says. “It deserves to become something iconic again.” Spanning 42.5 acres with 350 feet of waterfront, High Head is listed at $3.8 million. For more information, contact Jill Knowles at the Christopher Real Estate Group, 207-248-2048, or email jillsonknowles@gmail.com.

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5/14/21 3:53 PM

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Food

KEY INGREDIENT

Joy

THE

Summer Berries OF

t s t h a t m a ke t h e m o s t o r e s f the s D e s t ha t n ow f i l l o u r ga r d e we e t , t a r t , b e a u t i f u l s n t s i and m fr u a r ke t s . AT T I L A N A | P H O ICA B T BY

JES

OS B Y KR IS

E E K TIN T RIN EIG | ST T A C YLING BY

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5/13/21 10:46 AM

hen the first berries of summer start rolling in, t he on ly thing to do is eat them greedily, by the handful. I purchase punnets of strawberries at the market that never make it home, stain my fingertips and lips purple upon the discovery of a fat thicket of blackberries along the trail, plunk myself directly in the center of a scrubby field of wild blueberries and make like little Sal in Robert McCloskey’s famous children’s book. Last year I moved cross-country from San Francisco, where I’d lived for 16 years, to Maine, where my wife grew up. It was midsummer by the time our family settled into our old farmhouse and tentatively began to get our bearings. We delighted in finding a secret cove for swimming, the best ice cream cones (at Bresca & the Honeybee, in New Gloucester), and someone to repair the aging push mower we’d found in the barn, so that we could attempt to restore order to the lawn. But no discovery was as thrilling as the gift from our new neighbor. “If you want,” he mentioned offhandedly one day, “you’re welcome to go pick some of the raspberries out back. I don’t care for them.” I wandered behind his house, a modest bowl in hand, expecting to find some scrubby bushes. Instead, I was greeted with thorn-free canes standing six feet high, laden with fat rubies, their f lavor concentrated by Maine’s dry summer. I went home and fetched a bigger bowl. To those spoils, I added buckets of blueberries I picked on a hot August morning and precious containers of black currants from the local farm stand, which I separated from their stems carefully, using the tines of a fork. We New Englanders might try to tide ourselves over with out-of-season berries in winter, but they are mere facsimiles, and we know it. The real thing is worth waiting for, and once raspberries, currants, blackberries, blueberries, and black raspberries become abundant in late summer (and after we’ve eaten as many out of hand as possible), it’s time to start cooking. | 41

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5/13/21 10:46 AM

Food |

KEY INGREDIENT

This summer, in addition to the requisite pies and jams, maybe you’ll want to try a new recipe. A blueberrylime snack cake is like a muffin writ large, ideal for breakfast. Raspberry bars with cocoa streusel are a f ine afternoon treat. Maple tart, its sweetness offset by crème fraîche and blueberry compote, is an elegant dessert for any summer meal. And for those humid dog days, we’re offering an extra recipe online: raspberry semifreddo, a fancy yet simple riff on an ice cream cake, to provide sweet relief. BLUEBERRY-LIME SNACK CAKE

Almost like a muffin baked in a 9-inch round, this cake makes a great breakfast when cut into wedges and served with

coffee. Cake flour gives it a particularly delicate crumb, but you can substitute an equal amount of all-purpose flour if that’s what you have on hand. 2 cups plus 1 tablespoon cake flour 1½ teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon baking soda 12 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature 1¼ cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar ½ teaspoon kosher salt 3 large eggs, at room temperature 1 cup milk, at room temperature ¼ cup freshly squeezed lime juice 2 tablespoons lime zest 1½ cups blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350°. Lightly grease a 9-inch cake pan and line with Blueberry-Lime Snack Cake

parchment paper; grease that, too. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or in a large bowl with a handheld mixer), beat the butter, 1¼ cups sugar, and salt on high speed until light and fluffy, 4 to 5 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and beat in the eggs one at a time. Combine the milk and lime juice (it will curdle, and this is OK) in a measuring cup. With the mixer still on low, add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating each with the milk mixture. Mix in the lime zest. Remove the bowl from the stand mixer and use a rubber spatula to scrape the bottom and sides. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spread it evenly with the spatula, and scatter the blueberries over the top. Sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon of sugar. Bake until the cake is golden brown on top (the blueberries will sink into the batter) and the cake is beginning to pull away from the sides, 50 to 55 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack, then turn out, peel the parchment from the bottom of the cake, and invert onto a serving platter. Cut into wedges and serve warm or at room temperature. Yields 8 to 10 servings. MAPLE SYRUP TART WITH BLUEBERRY COMPOTE AND CRÈME FRAÎCHE

If this tart tastes familiar, it’s probably because the combination of silky maple custard, crust, and berries evokes a blueberry pancake breakfast, which is the intended effect. The crust can be made in advance, but it’s best to bake the tart on the same day you plan to serve it; otherwise, it can get soggy. FOR THE CRUST

2–3 tablespoons heavy cream 1 large egg yolk 1 cup plus 7 tablespoons all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons granulated sugar 42 |

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NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 10:48 AM

ONLINE EXTRA! Get the recipe for this refreshing Raspberry-Chocolate Semifreddo at newengland.com/ berry-bonus

Handmade pottery from Mimi Olins, SOFTSET ceramics, Portland, Maine

YK0721_Food_Opener_Berries.indd 43

5/13/21 11:07 AM

Food

KEY INGREDIENT

1 generous pinch kosher salt 8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes FOR THE FILLING

1 cup maple syrup, preferably dark amber ½ cup heavy cream 2 large eggs 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour 1 generous pinch kosher salt FOR THE TOPPING

2 teaspoons cornstarch ¼ cup granulated sugar, divided 2 cups fresh blueberries 8 ounces crème fraîche

Maple Syrup Tart with Blueberry Compote and Crème Fraîche

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First, make the crust: In a small bowl, whisk together 2 tablespoons heavy cream and the egg yolk. In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, sugar, and salt, and pulse to mix. Add the butter and pulse until the butter pieces are the size of small pebbles. Pour in the cream mixture and pulse to combine. If you grab a small handful and squeeze, it should hold together. If it doesn’t, add the remaining cream and pulse again to incorporate. Turn the dough out onto a sheet of plastic wrap, and use the wrap to gather the dough into a ball and then flatten it into a disk. Refrigerate for at least 20 minutes and up to overnight.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll between two sheets of parchment paper into a 10-inch circle. Peel off the top parchment, transfer the dough, unpeeled side down, to a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Remove remaining parchment and press the dough into the corners of the pan. Roll the pin over the top of the tart pan to cut off excess dough, then prick the bottom with a fork. Freeze for at least 30 minutes and up to overnight. Preheat the oven to 375°. Line the pastry shell with a sheet of parchment paper and fill with pie weights. Set the tart pan on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes, then remove the paper and pie weights. Return to the oven and bake until the crust is golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes longer. Remove and reduce oven temperature to 350°. Next, make the filling: In a bowl, whisk together the syrup, cream, eggs, flour, and salt. Pour the filling into the crust (still set on the baking pan), then return the tart to the oven and bake until the custard is puffed and set, 25 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack, then unmold. While the tart bakes, make the blueberry compote. In a small bowl, stir together the cornstarch and 1 tablespoon sugar. Put the remaining 3 tablespoons sugar in a small saucepan over medium heat. Let the sugar cook, without stirring, until it has melted and is a pale golden color. Add 1 cup blueberries. The sugar will seize, but as the blueberries release their juices it will melt again. When the sugar has melted and the mixture looks juicy, stir in the cornstarch mixture and let come to a boil. Remove from the heat and immediately stir in the remaining 1 cup blueberries. Let cool. To assemble the tart: Put the crème fraîche in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (or in a bowl with a hand mixer). Beat for 1 to 2 minutes, just until it looks creamy and holds peaks. With a small offset NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 11:04 AM

Raspberry Bars with Cocoa Streusel

spatula or the back of a spoon, spread the crème fraîche over the surface of the cooled tart. Spoon the blueberry compote onto the center and gently spread it outward, leaving a border of crème fraîche exposed. Chill for at least 30 minutes before serving. To serve, cut into wedges. Yields 8 servings. RASPBERRY BARS WITH COCOA STREUSEL

These bars are made with a layer of shortbread and a layer of cocoa streusel, with a ribbon of fresh berries running through the center. The technique of grating the shortbread dough comes courtesy of pastry chef Gale Gand, who shared it with Julia Child on their show, Baking with Julia. FOR THE SHORTBREAD

1 cup all-purpose flour ½ teaspoon baking powder 1 pinch kosher salt JULY | AUGUST 2021

YK0721_Food_Opener_Berries.indd 45

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature 1 large egg yolk ½ cup granulated sugar FOR THE TOPPING

9 tablespoons all-purpose flour ¼ cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar 6 tablespoons almond flour 2 tablespoons cocoa powder ¹⁄ 8 teaspoon kosher salt 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature 2 pints (12 ounces) fresh raspberries 2 teaspoons cornstarch

First, make the shortbread: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt, and set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer (or in a large bowl with a handheld mixer), beat the butter on high speed until pale and fluffy, then add the egg yolk and sugar and beat until the sugar has

dissolved, about 4 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and add the dry ingredients and continue mixing until the dough comes together in a ball. Wrap the dough in a sheet of plastic wrap and freeze for at least 15 minutes while you prepare the streusel. (The shortbread dough can be made up to a month ahead, wrapped tightly and frozen until ready to use; let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes before using.) Next, make the streusel: In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the flour, ¼ cup sugar, almond flour, cocoa powder, and salt, and mix on low speed until combined. Add the butter and continue to mix on low until the mixture looks like crumbly wet sand. If it appears very fine, grab a small amount in your hand and squeeze; it should hold together in a clump. Set aside. Lightly grease an 8-inch square pan and line with parchment, leaving an overhang on all sides (this will make removing the baked bars from the pan easier). Preheat the oven to 350°. In a medium bowl, combine the raspberries, cornstarch, and 1 tablespoon sugar and toss gently to coat. Remove the shortbread dough from the freezer and coarsely grate on the large holes of a box grater directly into the prepared pan. Scatter the grated dough so it covers the bottom of the pan, but don’t press down on the dough; as it bakes, it will meld together. Scatter the berries over the dough in an even layer, then top with the cocoa streusel, distributing it evenly over the raspberries. Transfer to the oven and bake until the shortbread layer is deep golden brown (look at the edges and any exposed shortbread peeking through the streusel and berries), 45 to 50 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely. Once cool, use the parchment to help lift the bars out of the pan. Set on a cutting board, then use a sharp knife to cut into 12 (2-by-2-inch) bars. Yields 12 bars. | 45

5/13/21 11:04 AM

YAN KEE CL A SSIC

Julia Child’s signature joie de vivre shines through as she prepares lobster thermidor on an episode of The French Chef.

Remembering Julia A gem from the Yankee archives finds the queen of cooking pondering her next steps. ixty years ago, Julia Child first made her mark with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which helped revolutionize the American culinary scene—as did her many books and TV shows that followed, including the Emmywinning The French Chef. In honor of the late New England icon, whose wide-ranging influence is also explored on the new season of Weekends with Yankee, we present an abridged version of Richard Bacon’s “Still Cooking with a Flair” from the November 1979 issue of Yankee. To read the full article, go to newengland.com/remembering-julia.

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“When we were first married,” Paul Child says, “Julia was always hungry, but she didn’t know enough about cooking to do anything about it.” With him as her incentive, she took a crash program in learning French, and then immersed herself in cooking lessons in Paris where they were living. Since then she has been doing her own culinary thing with steadily increasing confidence and command. Some say she could coat the most abysmal meal with a layer of cheese, put it under the broiler for a few minutes, and present it as if it were ambrosia fit for the gods. Likely as not, it would be. In popularizing the art of good eating, Julia Child has demonstrated to

millions of stay-at-home cooks that a devil-may-care attitude and a dram of humor are nearly as essential as the raw materials all cooks deal with regularly. As with her traditional TV signoff—a raised glass and a jaunty “Bon appétit”—Julia inspires conf idence, even among those who have never felt an urge for culinary derring-do. Julia Child has perfected the art of good teaching as well. She captures the attention with her energy and her somehow outrageous naturalness. Her husband calls her a clown, a ham even, and Julia doesn’t deny the charge. “When one is a teacher,” she says, smiling, “haven’t you found it so?” In surely what must be an all-time f ilm classic—as understated as the best of Charlie Chaplin—in the mid1960s millions watched her show, fascinated, while she absently fondled a suckling pig under one arm as if it were some strange house pet, cleaning its snout and ears with a towel, brushing its teeth. And all the time, straight on camera without the glimmer of a smile,

J U L I A C H I L D I M A G E , P H O T O G R A P H & R E L A T E D R I G H T S ™ / © 2 0 21 T H E J U L I A C H I L D F O U N DAT I O N F O R G A S T R O N O M Y A N D T H E C U L I N A R Y A R T S

Food

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5/12/21 7:49 PM

Food

YAN KEE CL A SSIC

she talked about the steps it takes to prepare a whole pig for the oven. Her performance convinced us it is a common thing to do for a special occasion, that the satisfaction to be had from eating roast suckling pig will be staggering if one is only willing to follow her simple lead. Ruth Lockwood, her producer for the past 12 years, says, “Julia wants to show you how to do things properly. And if something goes wrong—which it does from time to time with all of us—she wants to make you feel confident enough to correct it. She wants to help other cooks eliminate the worry and fear of failure.” One result of this demystifying process and of exposing the art of good cooking to a mass audience is that Julia Child has put fun and satisfaction back into the American kitchen. “The kitchen should be the core of the home with a lot going on in it all the time,” she says. “The way to get people involved with each other is to involve them over food. Good eating and good company are marks of civilized living, don’t you agree? Without them we’d all be savages.” For her work and pleasure Julia Child collects kitchen tools: a wall of heavy copper pots and pans, pegboards where each artifact hangs in its assigned place handy to an appropriate work area, drawers and cabinets organized with gadgets old and new. A mixer and a food processor stand at strategic points near electrical outlets behind the counter. She is a professional cook who has the right tool for the right job, but she is also an unselfconscious performer who never seems to be at a loss when the unexpected happens. In fact, she is so well fortified with technical skills that she seems to welcome the unusual, and always turns it to her own advantage, as if saying to her audience, “This is part of it. It happens to everyone. Now let’s see what we can do about it.” Born in Pasadena, California, the eldest of three children, Julia Child 48 |

YK0721_Food_JuliaChild.v2.indd 48

DISCOVER MORE STORIES FROM WEEKENDS WITH YANKEE Yankee’s classic profile of Julia Child is among the many stories and behind-the-scenes extras you’ll find in Weekends BUCKET-LIST with Yankee: TRAVEL DESTINATIONS Insiders’ Guide, NEW SEASON, the companion NEW ADVENTURES publication to urs prene Entre & rs make Taste Yankee’s travel and lifestyle public television series made in partnership with GBH in Boston. The newly updated Insiders’ Guide—spanning all five seasons of Weekends with Yankee—is available for free at weekendswithyankee.com. I N S I D E R S ’

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Outdoor Escapes for All Ages

admits she came to cooking relatively late. She grew up in a house similar to the one the Childs live in now. Her mother was originally from western Massachusetts, so it seemed natural for Julia to come east for her education. After graduating from Smith College, she was soon drawn to Manhattan. She dreamed then of writing for a national magazine, but took a job instead with a large department store. She says now it trained her to be a stickler for observed detail that was later reinforced when World War II broke out and she worked for the OSS in Ceylon and China. It was there she met Paul. They were married after the war was over, and Paul Child accepted a State Department assignment in Paris. After six months of lessons at the Cordon Bleu to learn the fundamentals of cooking French style, Julia continued private lessons with several French chefs. Her original success was coauthoring the first volume of Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle. The massive book took 10 years to prepare. When it was initially sent out to publishers, the manuscript was turned down. It was too long and did not follow a traditional pattern of presentation. Eventually, in 1961 Alfred A. Knopf was farsighted

enough to take it on. It has been a cook’s bible ever since. Then came television. And more cookbooks. She collaborated again with Simone Beck on Volume Two of Mastering. Since then on her own she has written The French Chef ’s Cookbook, From Julia Child ’s Kitchen, and Julia Child and Company. Her latest series of 13 PBS programs, rehearsed and taped at Boston’s Channel 2, is Julia Child and More Company. But even as it was being filmed, another phase of Julia’s work began. Her latest book, of the same title, will be published by Knopf before the release of the television series and in time for the Christmas trade. Now she divides herself between her kitchen and her typewriter, between Cambridge and New York. In some respects her 15 years of being work-oriented have taken their toll. They have not diminished her standards or enthusiasm, but they have affected her stamina. Now, after 250 televised cooking lessons since 1963, when The French Chef was first aired in the Boston area and then went on to become a national passion, the French Chef says she needs a rest. “I’m 66 years old. I want more uninterrupted time to spend with Paul. We enjoy each other’s company. I need to further my own interests and my knowledge.” She wants to take pastry lessons from a chef in France. She wants to have more time to experiment, to travel, to work up new ideas. One of her dreams is to inspire her producers to continue cooking lessons on TV but with a series of notable and different cooks. It would continue what she’s started. “Maybe there will be more professionally trained chefs because of me,” she says. “More and more women are getting into the business. In the United States there seems to be more interest in professional cookery among the young than anywhere else in the world. “Taste is such an important—and neglected—part of living, don’t you agree?” NEWENGLAND.COM

5/19/21 10:00 AM

y. a i wom a re o t s e s nd rs.c Th o ele c w seossJe 5 4 Cr ly

n so

House and Home F8312 & F8318

Triple Goddess of the Crescent Moon F9397

People have asked... “Was this real?”

Hunting Season F8908

I’ve had people ask, “Did you move things around? Did you set this shot up?” I saw this gem pocket the morning after it was first opened. Almost everything was covered with several inches of white kaolin clay. I watched Jeff

(the mine owner), with a mine hose wash it down. I saw green Maine tourmaline crystals begin to emerge into the light after 200 million years of total darkness. I watched, Jeff never touched anything. When he finished hosing, he reached into his pocket, pulled out a 1924 silver dollar he won years before in a poker game. He placed the

silver dollar against the back wall. He stood back so everyone could see. He left the pocket intact for over an hour. I had five minutes with it alone. This is an iphone photo taken from an angle, no one could have seen.I scooted

deep into the pocket, I reached to the far right side, balancing the phone and with one finger on the trigger caught this shot. No one saw the crystals from this angle not even me, we saw everything from the far left.

To read the deeper story of the Silver Dollar Pocket at the SparHawk tourmaline mine visit our website.

Cross Jewelers

The Cross Gallery of Fine Jewelry Y78212

Over one hundred pieces of Maine SparHawk Tourmaline jewelry on our website.

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SparHawk Silver Dollar Tourmaline Pocket. World’s best gem photo ever.

5/11/21 5:35 PM

Food

IN SEASON

Easy Grilled Tomato Flatbreads A delicious taste of the Mediterranean, right in your backyard. BY A MY TR AVER SO ST YLED AND PHOTOGR APHED BY

L I Z N E I LY

Amy Traverso is Yankee’s senior food editor and cohost of our TV show, Weekends with Yankee (weekendswithyankee.com).

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have a single raised bed in my little backyard that produces just enough vegetables to remind me that I’m not a serious gardener. Every spring, I put in a few cherry tomato plants, some basil, a bit of kale, and a zucchini plant that inevitably withers before the first bloom. It’s not really my passion. But the tomatoes always make me feel good and undeservedly competent, so I created this dish to celebrate the small harvest. The dough for the f latbreads is a revelation. It has just two ingredients, a bit of sorcery that was revealed to me on the Internet via Weight Watchers (or “WW,” as it’s now called). You mix equal parts Greek yogurt and self-rising flour, divide it into four portions, and roll each piece out into a disk. It’s quite delicious. The diet version uses fat-free yogurt and no oil. Here, I use full-fat

yogurt and brush the dough with olive oil to keep it from sticking to the grill. The yogurt then becomes a creamy base for a quick tomato sauté (enriched with butter and a hint of sugar, an added touch that renowned Italian cookbook writer Marcella Hazan made famous), herbs, and some chili flakes. The whole dish can be prepared on the grill, provided you have an ovenproof skillet. And the heat stays out of the kitchen. It’s the perfect midweek, midsummer meal. EASY GRILLED TOMATO FLATBREADS WITH HERBS & GREEK YOGURT F O R T H E F L AT B R E A D S

1 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt 1 cup self-rising flour, plus more for dusting the counter Olive oil, for brushing NEWENGLAND.COM

5/20/21 11:25 AM

FOR THE TOPPING

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling 2 cups halved cherry tomatoes ¼ teaspoon sugar ¼ teaspoon table salt 1 tablespoon salted butter 3 garlic cloves, very thinly sliced ¾ cup whole-milk Greek yogurt ¼ cup minced fresh basil leaves ¼ cup minced fresh mint leaves Chili flakes, for garnish

Set a small, oven-safe skillet on the grate of your grill over a medium direct fire (but turn the handle of the skillet away from you so that you’re not tempted to grab it when it’s hot). Close the grill and let the heat come up to 375° to 400°. Nex t, make the dough : In a medium bowl, stir together the yogurt and flour, then knead the dough a few times in the bowl until smooth. Divide into four equal portions, generously dust the counter with f lour, and roll out each portion to a 7-inch circle. Be sure to have all the topping ingredients prepped before you open the grill. Brush one side of each piece of dough with olive oil, then lay the dough, oiled side down, on the grate. Now brush the top sides with oil as well. Grill until browned on both sides, 3 to 4 minutes per side (depending on the size of your grill, you may need to do this in two batches). Meanwhile, add 1 tablespoon oil to the skillet, then add the tomatoes. Sauté the tomatoes for 1 minute, then add the sugar, salt, and butter and sauté for an additional minute. Finally, add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds, then remove the pan from the heat (watch that handle!). To serve the f latbreads, spread about 3 tablespoons of yogurt on each f latbread, then top each with equal portions of the tomatoes (with some of the juices), the herbs, and a sprinkle of chili f lakes. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil, if desired, and serve. Yields 4 servings. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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ELECTRIC GRILLS Since 1931

Add Matlaw’s to your shopping list.

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Food

RECIPE REMAKE

Creamy LemonBasil Pasta Salad A vintage Yankee recipe reinvented for today’s kitchens. STORY AND PHOTO BY

K AT HER INE K EEN AN

asta sa lads get a bad rap. Too often, they make us think of overcooked noodles and gobs of mayo. But this humble dish remains a picnic classic for a reason: It’s quick to make, easy to travel with, and when it’s good, it’s good. Our creamy, zesty rigatoni salad hits all the right notes. It’s an updated take on a 1990 Yankee recipe for lobster pasta salad with basil cream dressing. As a nod to home cooks looking to save on time or cost these days, I opted to eliminate the lobster, but feel free to add it back in if you’d like to dress up your dish (grilled shrimp, chicken, or white beans would also be welcome additions). I also replaced the heavy cream in the dressing with a blend of Greek yogurt and mayo, then threw in some lemon zest for brightness. And adding peas and arugula kept things fresh. Finally, I topped the salad with a shower of crunchy, buttery bread crumbs for textural contrast. To maintain the salad’s freshness, wait until you’re ready to serve the dish before adding the dressing and the bread crumb topping. The result will be a pasta salad that feels both simple and indulgent at the same time—and one that’s undeniably ready for its moment in the sun. A lobster pasta salad with basil cream dressing from Yankee’s February 1990 issue (TOP) provided the inspiration for our lighter, summer-ready update (LEFT).

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2 cloves crushed garlic 1 cup sliced fresh basil, plus more for garnish 1 tablespoon honey Juice of 1 lemon Zest of 1 lemon ¾ cup mayonnaise 1 cup plain full-fat Greek yogurt 1 teaspoon kosher salt ¹⁄3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper FOR THE SALAD

1 pound rigatoni pasta 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 cup chopped roasted red peppers (fresh or from a jar) 1 cup sliced sugar snap peas 1 cup baby arugula leaves

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- OLIVES - CHEESE - SALAMI - ITALIAN SAUSAGE - PASTA - SAUCES - SOPRESSATA - ASIAGO - PROVOLONE - OLIVES - CHEESE - SALAMI -

FOR THE TOPPING

½ cup panko bread crumbs 2 tablespoons salted butter

First, make the dressing: Combine the garlic, basil, honey, lemon juice, lemon zest, mayonnaise, and yogurt in a food processor. Pulse until well combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Then, cook the pasta: Put the rigatoni into a large pot of boiling salted water and cook, stirring occasionally, until al dente. Drain and transfer to a large bowl. Toss with olive oil and refrigerate until cool. Meanwhile, make the bread crumb topping: Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the bread crumbs and reduce heat to medium. Toast the bread crumbs, stirring often, until golden brown, approximately 3 minutes. To assemble the salad, add the roasted red peppers, sugar snap peas, and arugula to the chilled pasta. Just before serving, drizzle with dressing and toss to combine. Top with toasted bread crumbs and garnish with basil. Yields 6 to 8 servings. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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New England DOWNTOWN DESTINATIONS

BLIND TIGER 163 DANFORTH ST | PORTLAND, ME Experience Portland like a native at Blind Tiger, a one-of-a-kind guesthouse and social gathering space in an updated 19th-century home. A short walk from everything Portland has to offer and designed for optimum comfort with a lounge, a speakeasy turned billiard room, and expertly designed guest rooms inspired by the culture of Portland itself, Blind Tiger is the perfect home base for a cozy night in or an exploration of Maine’s hippest city. B LI N DTI G E R P O RTL AN D.CO M Photo Credit: Read McKendree

INN AT HASTINGS PARK

HOTEL VERMONT

2027 MASSACHUSETTS AVE | LEXINGTON, MA

41 CHERRY ST | BURLINGTON, VT

The only Relais & Châteaux property in the Greater Boston area, the Inn at Hastings Park combines the historic heritage of the Lexington and Concord area with culinary education and luxury accommodations. Enjoy the Whispering Angel Culinary Garden, savor a seasonal menu at Town Meeting Bistro, partake in outdoor cooking classes, and explore the birthplace of American liberty just outside your doorstep.

Located on the shores of Lake Champlain in downtown Burlington, Hotel Vermont provides airy accommodations that allow you to focus, relax, and be yourself. Have a biking adventure, walk down Church Street for shopping and dining options, or catch live music at one of the local venues, with Hotel Vermont as your home away from home. HotelVT.com

InnAtHastingsPark.com

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NEWENGLAND.COM

5/19/21 3:48 PM

Follow along @YANKEEMAGAZINE #MYNEWENGLAND

FAIRMONT COPLEY PLAZA 138 ST. JAMES AVE | BOSTON, MA A landmark destination in Boston, Fairmont Copley Plaza offers luxurious accommodations steps away from all of the attractions, restaurants, and shops that make this city unique. Explore the historic Back Bay, shop on Newbury Street, and return for dinner and drinks at OAK Long Bar + Kitchen, where chef Zaid Khan and team are serving up craft cocktails and refreshed menus, as well as patio seating. With individually designed guestrooms and Boston at your doorstep, Fairmont Copley Plaza is an ideal spot for your next adventure. FAI R M O NT- CO P LE Y- P L A Z A .CO M

HOTEL CONCORD

THE WHALER’S INN

11 SOUTH MAIN ST | CONCORD, NH

20 EAST MAIN ST | MYSTIC, CT

Less than a mile from the New Hampshire State House in Concord’s historic downtown district, the small and stylish AAA Four Diamond Hotel Concord offers a superb setting for your next Granite State adventure. Choose a Terrace Room for sweeping views and a private outdoor balcony, take a walk to local restaurants, explore shops, and enjoy all that this capital city has to offer.

Nestled in the heart of Mystic, the buildings that now make up the Whaler’s Inn have been fixtures of hospitality and commerce for over 125 years. Around each corner, modern spaces and historical details provide the perfect backdrop to a visit to this quintessential coastal downtown, with countless restaurants and attractions just a short walk away. WhalersInnMystic.com

HotelConcordNH.com Use Code YankeeMag2021 for 10% Off

JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Travel

W EEK EN D AWAY

PORTLAND , MAINE REDISCOVER THE JOYS OF SUMMER TRAVEL WITH AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO THIS “CITY BY THE SEA.” B Y S A R A A N N E D O N N E L LY • P H O T O S B Y M I C H A E L D . W I L S O N

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NEWENGLAND.COM

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opposite , clockwise from top left : Soaking up sun on Peaks Island; Munjoy Hill knife shop Strata; a view of the Custom House’s twin cupolas; food truck fare on the Eastern Prom; Kazeem Lawal, owner of Portland Trading Co.; a morning fuel-up at Tandem Coffee & Bakery. this page : The Portland Schooner Co.’s Timberwind at its berth on the Maine Wharf.

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Slug here Travel | W|E E TKKE TNKDT KA TWKATYK T K

For the past few years, I’ve hosted summer travelers in the guest room of my house in Portland’s West End. It’s pretty much the perfect side hustle for a writer— pandemic notwithstanding—because I can stay in my natural state, i.e., my pajamas, while using my guests to vicariously explore my beloved hometown, which is also the hometown of my mother and my grandmother before her. My favorite part of the whole thing is scribbling down a few quick sightseeing suggestions based on what I’ve learned about my guests during check-in. My partner rolls his eyes at my excitement, but he’s from away, so he just doesn’t get it. Portland’s special. Of course I want to share it. It’s creative, walkable, socially conscious, and immortal.

Portland’s seal portrays the mythic phoenix rising from the ashes, a reference to the fact that Portland has been burned to the ground no fewer than four times—most notably in 1866, in an epic July 4 conf lagration known as the Great Fire, which probably began with a f irecracker or a cigar tossed carelessly in a waterfront warehouse and ended with 1,800 homes and businesses leveled from Commercial Street to Back Cove. (Walk around and you’ll see the aftermath: Victo-

rian buildings built of fireproof brick or stone, per a post-f ire town ordinance.) We rebuilt. Our motto, after all, is “Resurgam.” Some orientation: Think of the topography of Portland’s peninsula as a saddle—a hill on either side with the Bayside, Downtown, and Old Port lowlands in the middle. The peninsula is about three miles long and includes the West End, Parkside, East and West Bayside, the Arts District and Downtown, the Old Port, and the East End. This city center is bookended by the Western Promenade and Eastern Promenade parks, both laid out by famed landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmsted, designer of New York’s Central Park. I’ve focused my suggestions on the peninsula not because there aren’t wonderful things to check out off-peninsula (Portland Head Light, I see you), but because the area is Portland’s historic, walkable, bikeable, Uber-able locus of activity, and if you have just 48 hours here, it’s small enough to really get to know. If I had one weekend in my beloved “city by the sea,” here is where I’d go, and what I would want to do.

FRIDAY

The West End & the Arts District The West End features some of the city’s grandest mansions, built in the 19th century by a wealthy merchant class that wanted to settle the peninsula as far away as possible from what back then was a fish-fumed Old Port f illed with rowdy sailors. Experience a piece of that elite exodus with 58 |

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opposite : Spanning 78 waterfront acres, the Eastern Promenade is a summertime magnet for food truck fans in the summer. this page : The art-filled parlor at The Francis.

JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Travel

W EEK EN D AWAY

a stay at The Francis, a boutique hotel located in an 1881 mansion designed by one of Portland ’s most prolif ic architects, Francis Fassett, for the dry-goods merchant with the awesome Victorian moniker Mellen E. Bolster. (Rather be centrally located? Try the Press Hotel, a sleek Old Port spot dressed up like the set of Mad Men and located in the historic brickand-stone former home of the city’s daily newspaper, the Portland Press Herald. For a hip, contemporary take on Victorian-era lodging, check out the West End’s Blind Tiger or Parkside’s The Mercury.) A f ter check ing in, strol l east down Congress Street past Longfellow Square (tip your hat to the statue here of Portland’s beloved bard Henry Wadswor th Long fel low) towa rd the shops and galleries in the Arts District, anchored by the Portland 60 |

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Museum of Art. Grab a boost if you need it at the hole-in-the-wall with the best brew in town, the awardwinning Speckled Ax (if you’re up for a bit more of a trek, Speckled Ax’s airy new second location on the east end of Commercial Street has what might be the best breakfast sandwich in town/on the planet), before meandering around Portland Flea-for-All, a sprawling vintage furniture, clothing, and local crafts shop that is a favorite among local aesthetes. For dinner, head back to the West End haunt Chaval. With just enough mirrored wall mosaics to add a boozy Golden Girls vibe to the distressedwood interior, Chaval is known for its delicious farm-to-table Spanish and French food and its array of vermouths and sherries, the latter of which can be sipped, per tradition, via the Sherry Luge: a halved length

clockwise from left :

Spanish and French flavors shine in Chaval’s squid ink fideos and crème brûlée with roasted plums; working lobster boats tied up at the Custom House Wharf and the Portland Pier; an homage to typography at the Press Hotel.

of roasted bone served with Chaval’s bone marrow appetizer.

SATURDAY

Peaks Island, East Bayside & the Old Port Morning! Time to roll out of bed at The Francis and stagger across the street to f lop face down into a sticky bun at famed Tandem Coffee & Bakery on Congress Street. Everything here is delicious and the coffee ranks among the best on the East Coast, so yeah, the long line is worth it. After fueling up, head across town to the far end of Commercial Street to hop the Casco Bay Ferry to Peaks NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 11:42 AM

TNE HINGS W ENGL TO ADO ND’S IN NE M AW RKENGL E T PLAACE ND

DISCOVER NEW ENGLAND’S GREAT RIVER

River Cruises ~ Exhibits Programs ~ Events & More!

Connecticut River Museum

Essex CT | 860.767.8269 | ctrivermuseum.org

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EXPLORE NEW ENGLAND!

74 Battell Dr. • Weybridge, VT 05753

NEED MORE IDEAS FOR THINGS TO DO IN NEW ENGLAND? LOOK NO FURTHER THAN NEWENGLAND.COM JULY | AUGUST 2021

Art Mending The

PHOTO © TRACEY BUYCE

When was the last time you touched the soft coat of a baby horse? Experience living history at this National Historic Site. Open May-October for guided tours and special events.

The Brick Store Museum 117 Main Street, Kennebunk, Maine

www.brickstoremuseum.org

THE SEA IN AMERICAN PAINTING MAY 29–OCTOBER 3, 2021

161 ESSEX ST. | SALEM, MASS. | PEM.ORG

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Travel

W EEK EN D AWAY

clockwise from top left :

One block off busy Commercial Street, Boothbay Square provides a laid-back spot for people-watching; a view from the Portland Observatory, the only remaining historic maritime signal station in the United States; chef Akberet Bahta with a hearty platter of her cooking at Red Sea Restaurant in East Bayside.

Island, the closest of the city’s yearround island neighborhoods. The 20-minute ferry ride is a nice on-thecheap cruise of the bay. (Another option is the ferry’s mail boat run, which hopscotches four other islands farther out in the bay.) Once on Peaks, swing by Hannigan’s market for snacks and travel tips from owner Bob Hannigan before you rent a bike or golf cart from one of the handful of merchants close to the landing. Spend a couple of hours exploring the century-old neighborhood and its beaches, forts, and lookouts, plus that eccentric homage to the mundane, the Umbrella Cover Museum. Then hop on the ferry and come back to one of the most acclaimed foodie towns in the country. Head to the east side of town and Washington Avenue at the base of Munjoy Hill (between Cumberland 62 |

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Avenue and the highway). Start with lunch at Red Sea Restaurant, a nofrills Ethiopian and Eritrean eatery with delicious made-from-scratch fare, and for dessert, check out the charmingly conscientious vegan ice cream shop Sticky Sweet around the corner, or mosey down the street to other delicious nosh spots like Forage Market (y ummy sandw iches and wood-f ired bagels), Ramona’s sandwich shop, and the Shop raw bar. Along the way, peruse the artful locally owned shops you’ll find on this stretch of Washington Avenue, including Venn + Maker, with its elegant selection of Maine crafts and home goods, and Strata, a top-notch kitchen knife sharpener and supplier whose international selection includes a few gorgeous Maine-made offerings. If you hit the shopping wall, hike a couple of blocks up Congress Street

to one of my favorite historical spots, the Portland Observatory. Built in 1807 by entrepreneur Captain Lemuel Moody, the 86-foot-tall building was used as a communication tower for a port that at the time was the largest on the eastern seaboard. A tour of the observatory will whisk you back to the maritime heyday of Port City, with a bonus view on a clear day all the way to New Hampshire’s White Mountains. You have had a full day and now it’s time for dinner. Head to the Old Port, where a Saturday evening in summer is always a scene. Leave time before your meal to swing by the meticulously curated Portland Trading Co., which bills itself as a modern general store. Check out the handmade household items that have been sourced (and in the case of the clothing, designed) by owner and local fashion plate Kazeem Lawal. NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 11:48 AM

“SUMMER MOORING”

A Summer Day on Buzzards Bay Forrest Pirovano’s painting “Summer Mooring” shows a Herreshoff 12½ at its mooring In the afternoon, the winds and currents pick up and the waters can get kind of rough on Buzzards Bay. The Herreshoff 12½ was designed by Nat Herreshoff to sail in these conditions. She could be sailed singlehanded easily or crewed by three or four, both young or old. Over time, the class grew, not just around Buzzards Bay, but also Narragansett Bay and Long Island Sound. Today these sailboats, originally referred to as The Buzzard Bay Boys’ Boat, can be spotted almost anywhere in the world. Our Herreshoff is moored waiting for the afternoon sailors to have some fun. This beautiful limited-edition print of an original oil painting, is individually numbered and signed by the artist.

This exquisite print is bordered by a museum-quality white-on-white double mat, measuring 11x14 inches. Framed in either a black or white 1½ inch deep wood frame, this limited-edition print measures 12¼ X 15¼ inches and is priced at only $149. Matted but unframed the price for this print is $109. Prices include shipping and packaging. Forrest Pirovano is a Cape Cod artist. His paintings capture the picturesque landscape and seascapes of the Cape which have a universal appeal. His paintings often include the many antique wooden sailboats and picturesque lighthouses that are home to Cape Cod.

FORREST PIROVANO, artist P.O. Box 1011 • Mashpee, MA 02649 Visit our studio in Mashpee Commons, Cape Cod All major credit cards are welcome. Please send card name, card number, expiration date, code number & billing ZIP code. Checks are also accepted.…Or you can call Forrest at 781-858-3691.…Or you can pay through our website www.forrestcapecodpaintings.com

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Travel

W EEK EN D AWAY

Then snuggle into a spot at the cozy fine-dining lobster-and-fish stalwart Street & Co., but make sure you save room for dessert around the corner at the sarcastically named Gross Confection Bar, where accomplished pastry chef Brant Dadaleares creates inspired, Instagram-worthy, and altogether un-gross masterpieces. By the time the sugar rush hits you, the Old Port should be buzzing, too, with live music in every bar and on every patio, so wander the streets and see what intrigues you. For an iconic nightcap, stop at the Top of the East at the Westin Portland Harborview, on High Street. In 2013, the Westin finished its renovation of the city’s oldest hotel, the Eastland, which was opened in 1927. The Top of the East has been the hotel’s rooftop bar since 1963 and features one of the best views of the city via f loor-to64 |

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ceiling windows. Head there via the elevator in the main lobby, “R” f loor, and end the night with the sight of Portland twinkling below.

clockwise from left :

SUNDAY

trucks, including Falafel Maf ia and Mr. Tuna (yes, sushi from a truck can be delicious), but who are we kidding—most of us are here for the melt-in-your-mouth mini doughnuts of Eighty 8 Donut Café. Picnic on the sprawling lawn, chase the kiddos around the playground, or gaze at the bay and Fort Gorges. You might see kayakers and paddle boarders cruising the water; if you’re motivated, rent the necessary gear at Portland Paddle, next to the beach at the base of the hill. Otherwise, just take the opportunity to chill and ref lect on all you’ve seen, done, and tasted, east, west, and ever ything in bet ween. That’s what I’d do.

The East End Follow the morning sun to the Eastern Promenade, the Western Promenade’s prettier sibling (even this West Ender has to cop to that fact) thanks to its stunning view of Casco Bay and the islands. To get there, head across town via Congress Street to Munjoy Hill. En route, consider popping into the Belleville to sample the buttery croissants by couple Amy Fuller and Chris Deutsch, who learned to bake in Paris. You’ll want to leave some room, though, because there’s plent y of great grub to be had on the Eastern Prom. Sunday brunch brings out the crowds for some of the city’s best food

Classic red brick and cobblestones in the heart of the Old Port; treasures from times gone by at the Arts District market Portland Flea-for-All; sugar bombs from Eighty 8 Donut Café.

NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 11:50 AM

Our whimsical mermaid necklace in sterling silver Crafted in textured and polished sterling silver, our free-spirited mermaid pendant holds a special treasure: a luminous 8.5-9mm cultured freshwater button pearl. Wear our sea-inspired necklace in celebration of your own unique and playful personality.

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Travel

THE BEST 5

Coffee with a View BY KIM KNOX BECKIUS

from top : A sweet sip by the seaside at Rhode Island’s Coffee Grinder; a postcard-perfect view at the Po Café in Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills.

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et out on a java-inspired journey to one of these New England cafés where the view is as buzz-worthy as the brews, and turn your coffee run into a day trip to remember. The Po Café Washington, CT If your coffee cravings are as powerful as Lorelai Gilmore’s, a double dose of exhilaration is in store at this petite bakery and café on the green in Washington, the Connecticut town that inspired Gilmore G irls’ St a r s Hol low. You’ll be looking at its historic architecture— not a TV set—as you sip one of chef-owner Maggie Colangelo’s playful beverages, like a latte swirled with her own Flirtation Farms lavender syrup. But whether you’ve settled at an outdoor table or on a stool at the old-time soda fountain, you’ll

love sampling farm-fresh comfort food and binge-watching the goingson at the hub of this small Litchfield Hills community. meetyouatthepo.com Coffee Grinder Newport, RI In the early morning or pre-sunset hours, when golden light rests on the bay, there’s no better spot to put down your phone, pick up a dirty chai or frozen cappuccino, and feel swept up in the life of New por t Harbor. Hidden at the end of Bannister’s Wharf, Alyssa Gladchun’s coffee shack attracts caffeine af icionados to its handful of tables, benches, and Adirondack chairs. Join them in savoring hand-brewed Italian espresso beverages, which start with beans that are small-batchroasted in a historic Massachusetts gristmill. Add a pastry, sandwich, or chowder to your order, and you’ll have cause to linger as sails are raised, lobsters are unloaded, and this classic seaport adheres to its heritage. coffeegrindernewport.com

ERIN MCGINN (COF F EE GRINDER); MW PHOTOGR APHY- C T (PO C AF É)

New England’s most scenic spots for a caffeine fix.

NEWENGLAND.COM

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Wigwam Western Summit North Adams, MA It’s like coffee theater when Lea King works behind the pouring station that her partner, Wayne Gelinas, built from wood that once supported the building’s first pump. Kettle in each hand, she can craft up to six cups of flavor-rich, pourover coffee at once. On summer days, though, curious motorists who pull over at this resurrected Mohawk Trail landmark often opt for the refreshingly smooth cold brew: It’s become a local legend—along with monster-size maple-bourbon whoopie pies—since these creative owners transformed a long-abandoned gift shop into a café and cabin resort. Take your coffee out to the deck, where show-stealing, panoramic views encompass mountains in three states. In a heartbeat, you’ll understand why this scene has been called “America’s Switzerland” for a century. wigwamwesternsummit.com

Trapp Family Lodge Kaffeehaus Stowe, VT You don’t have to be a resort guest to kick back on the Kaffeehaus deck with cappuccino and strudel and the same stunning mountain view that reminded the von Trapp family—those famed singers turned hospitality entrepreneurs—of their Austrian homeland. If the high hills of the Worcester Range don’t make you come alive, the Austrian-style coffee, roasted locally by Vermont Artisan Coffee & Tea Co., certainly will. Sweet pastries and chocolate-glazed Sacher torte are balanced by savories like wurst sandwiches, hand-twisted pretzels, and fresh-gathered eggs on homemade English muffins. When shaggy Highland cattle graze just below, as they often do, claim a pasture-side picnic table and enjoy your favorite things in the company of these adorably friendly beasts. trappfamily.com/bakery.htm

ERIN MCGINN (COF F EE GRINDER); MW PHOTOGR APHY- C T (PO C AF É)

Salt Cod Café Orr’s Island, ME Venture 14 miles south of Brunswick to the southern tip of Orr’s Island for breakfast or lunch at Alison Prince’s seasonal takeaway café, and the briny air will perk you up even before your first sip of Maine-roasted Carrabassett Coffee. Nab an outdoor table or angle your own chair to watch boats bobbing in Harpswell Sound or cars crossing the world’s only granite cribstone bridge on their way to Bailey Island. Prince, whose great-great-grandfather opened a general store here in 1845, showcases local ingredients like the wild blueberries and other Maine-harvested fruits she bakes into scones and muffins. The Wicked Big iced coffee, a summertime favorite, was an accidental invention, though: Customers demanded their own 32-ounce cold jolts when they saw an employee chugging from a quartsize chowder container. saltcodcafe.com

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5/13/21 11:55 AM

Travel

RESOURCES

Both expert and novice surfers delight in the long, rolling waves of Narragansett Town Beach in Rhode Island.

Summer Adventures Family day-trip inspiration abounds in the pages of Yankee’s travel guide.

OVER 400 ESSENT IAL THINGS TO SEE AND DO

BACK-IN-TIME TRIPS CANTERBURY SHAKER VILLAGE,

Canterbury, NH. Here you will not only learn history but also experience its living endurance. The Shaker sect believed in simplicity, equality of sexes, communal living, pacifism, celibacy, and respect for

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nature, and the 300 people who lived and worked here two centuries ago would still feel at home all these years later. Decades after the last Shaker sister at Canterbury passed away, the village remains a tribute to a way of life that inf luenced generations to appreciate the beauty in simplicity. shakers.org

MYSTIC SEAPORT, Mystic, CT. With its

collection of vintage buildings and a veritable f leet of wooden ships anchored in its harbor, Mystic Seaport looks like an old port town, albeit one with high-end dining and interior plumbing. In this 19-acre historical wonderland you can hop onto a ship and someone will demonstrate how to climb the rigging. Poke your head into a shack and a talkative blacksmith will stress the importance of properly crafted gaff hooks. Some days there’s even a band singing sea chanteys. mysticseaport.org PLIMOTH PATUXET MUSEUMS, Plymouth, MA. Upward of a million visitors f lood into Plymouth every year to experience firsthand what life was like in one of America’s first colonies, and for good reason. The living history museum formerly known as Plimoth Plantation provides an immersive, 360-degree view of a bygone era, thanks to its re-creation of a 17th-century English village filled

(Continued on p. 111)

ALEX GAGNE

e all have an innate need to explore, to strike out for new destinations or to simply connect more deeply w ith places we’ve a lways known and loved.” Those words, from the introduction to Yankee’s New England Adventures: Over 400 Essential Things to See and Do (Globe Pequot, 2018), have never felt truer than this summer. For many, it’s finally time to get out and fully enjoy this storied region, whose six states are home to beaches and mountains, picturesque villages and world-class museums, all within a few hours of one another. With that in mind, we put together the following excerpt from our travel guide, which spans four season but in which the summer adventures shine particularly bright right now.

NEWENGLAND.COM

5/20/21 11:40 AM

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PRO M OTIO N

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BEST OF NEW ENGLAND

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BEST LAKEFRONT CABINS AMES FARM INN GILFORD, NH

Enjoy a quarter mile of sandy beach and docks on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee. Lakeside cottages, apartments, and rooms available. Great location for fishing, hiking, kayaking, boating, and more. Family owned and operated since 1890. 603-293-4321 AmesFarmInn.com

BEST CASTLE CASTLE IN THE CLOUDS MOULTONBOROUGH, NH Experience this stunning historic estate with unmatched views of Lake Winnipesaukee and the surrounding mountains. Tour the 1914 mansion, dine on the lake-view terrace at the Carriage House, explore the estate’s 28 miles of trails and waterfalls, and more. 603-476-5900 CastleInTheClouds.org

BEST FAMILY RETREAT BY A POND LOCH LYME LODGE LYME, NH

A scenic lakeside family resort on Post Pond, near Dartmouth College, offering one- to threebedroom B&B or efficiency cabins. Easy access to lots of outdoor activities, area attractions, sightseeing and antiquing—or just relax at our sandy beach. Our Lodge Restaurant serves delicious, fresh local fare. Pet-friendly! 800-423-2141 LochLymeLodge.com

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BEST BEACH TOWN HAMPTON BEACH VILLAGE DISTRICT HAMPTON, NH

Rediscover Hampton Beach, rated #1 in United States for water quality. FREE activities: Fireworks, Concerts, Sand Competition, Country Music, Soccer on the Beach, Volleyball Tournaments, Children’s Activities, Talent Show, Circus Show, Fire Show. Subject to change due to COVID. 603-926-8717 HamptonBeach.org

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BEST GIFT STORE GALLERY GIFTS AT 136 DAMARISCOTTA, ME

Reconnect with past Editors’ Choice Winners here then check out the 2021 winners at: NewEngland.com/ Bestof2021 RS’ CH IT

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802-253-5725 TrappFamily.com

207-563-1011 GiftsAt136.com

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800-852-1166 BedfordVillageInn.com

Enjoy outdoor adventures, sip von Trapp beer, and enjoy Austrian-inspired food, 25 miles of mountain biking trails, and an 18-hole disc golf course. Book your stay and see why we’ve received worldwide recognition as the perfect Vermont destination that is “A Little of Austria...A Lot of Vermont”®!

603-878-1151 PickityPlace.com

Nestled in the beautiful green hills of New England, the Bedford Village Inn & Grand is a four-diamond property that perfectly blends historical character with a luxury boutique ambiance. Its 64 gorgeously designed rooms retain the rustic charm of days gone by, while simultaneously offering everyday modern comfort and amenities.

BEST MOUNTAIN BIKING TRAPP FAMILY LODGE STOWE, VT

Experience the enchanting cottage that inspired Elizabeth Orton Jones’s Little Golden Books version of “Little Red Riding Hood.” Untouched by time, this is a mecca for gardeners, epicureans, and anyone looking for inspiration and relaxation. Have a Pickity day!

BEST LUXURY INN BEDFORD VILLAGE INN BEDFORD, NH

BEST FAIRYTALE LUNCH PICKITY PLACE MASON, NH

Gifts at 136 offers a large selection of fine crafts and art from Maine, including furniture, paintings, sculpture, jewelry, pottery, glassware, lighting, and more. Gifts at 136 has won multiple awards for its wellcurated collection of accessible art. Open all year.

2019 2021 Z EE A M AG

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Reconnect with past Editors’ Choice winners and see for yourself why they received Yankee Magazine’s highest accolade.

2019 2021 Z EE A M AG

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BEST LIVING HISTORY EXPERIENCE PLIMOTH PATUXET MUSEUMS PLYMOUTH, MA

A must-see New England destination that tells the story of early Plymouth Colony and its shared history with the Pilgrims and Native people. Visit the 17th-Century English Village, Plimoth Patuxet Homesite, Plimoth Grist Mill, and Mayflower. This promotion produced in cooperation with See Plymouth and Plymouth County Commissioners. 508-746-1622 Plimoth.org

BEST KID-FRIENDLY FARM STAND RUSSELL ORCHARDS FARM & WINERY IPSWICH, MA

BEST SPECIALITY COLLECTION SPRINGFIELD MUSEUMS SPRINGFIELD, MA

Family-owned farm and store featuring their own produce, bakery, wine shop, and local gourmet goods. Animals, u-pick fruits in season. Acclaimed fruit wines and hard ciders made from the farm’s own fruits, cider donuts, fruit pies, and more. A beloved tradition for families and a must-see destination.

The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum is an interactive, bilingual experience that explores the childhood and stories of Springfield, MA, native Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Five museums and a sculpture park offer Seuss, science, art, and history—something for everyone!

978-356-5366 RussellOrchards.com

800-625-7738 SpringfieldMuseums.org

866-736-6343 RhodeIslandRedFoodTours.com

BEST OCEAN VIEW BAR HARBOR INN BAR HARBOR, ME

BEST WATERSIDE ESCAPE SAYBROOK POINT RESORT & MARINA OLD SAYBROOK, CT

BEST WATERFRONT DINING COAST GUARD HOUSE RESTAURANT NARRAGANSETT, RI

BEST WALKING TOUR RHODE ISLAND RED FOOD TOURS PROVIDENCE/NEWPORT, RI

Discover big eats in the smallest state while walking, sipping, and eating your way through historic neighborhoods in Providence and Newport. If you like seeing architectural gems and listening to historic tales, this fun food experience is for you or your private group. April– November.

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BEST WILDERNESS LODGE ATTEAN LAKE LODGE JACKMAN, ME

Attean Lake Lodge is a remote island resort fixed on a quiet lake in the breathtaking Maine woods. Escape the busy world to immerse yourself in nature and enjoy the tranquility of kayaking, hiking, or relaxing on our mountain-view beach. 207-668-3792 AtteanLodge.com

Steps from downtown Bar Harbor, along majestic Frenchman Bay, this iconic property has been welcoming guests since 1887 with genuine hospitality, signature service, and timeless charm. Enjoy the area’s finest waterfront dining, accommodations, and spa services on this stunning eight-acre property. 844-249-3584 BarHarborInn.com

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The idyllic seaside town of Old Saybrook is located on the Connecticut shoreline overlooking the Long Island Sound. Enjoy water-view rooms (most with private balconies), two luxurious guesthouses, and a spectacular Lighthouse Suite, voted “Most Romantic Place to Stay” by Connecticut Magazine. 860-395-2000 Saybrook.com

A Rhode Island treasure in an unparalleled location. Come dine in an extraordinary location of endless views, and experience warm hospitality, with New England spirit. 40 Ocean Road, Narragansett. Sea Food, Sea Friends, Sea View, Sea Spirit 401-789-0700 TheCoastGuardHouse.com

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Wild

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NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 12:55 PM

Winemaker Michael Terrien with a bottle of Bluet, a sparkling wine made from wild Maine blueberries using the same time-honored techniques as Champagne and Prosecco.

Could Maine’s blueberry barrens be the next Napa Valley? By Rowan Jacobsen PHOTOS BY GRETA RYBUS JULY | AUGUST 2021

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ichael Terrien squats in the field and picks a handful of fruit. He crushes it, squeezing the shockingly purple juice into a plastic beaker. He pours a few drops into one end of a refractometer, a pipe-size device that measures sugar levels. As he waits for the result, he picks another berry and pops it into his mouth, chewing pensively as he stares at the distant hills. Terrien is a winemaker who lives in Napa Valley. He makes an acclaimed Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and consults for some of Napa’s most prestigious labels. And he is doing what he’s done every August for most of his adult life: visiting the fields, tasting the fruit, deciding when to pick and how to turn this fragrant abundance into the best possible wine. “How do we tell the story of this fruit?” he asks his winemaking partner, Eric Martin, who is sampling his own berries a few feet away. “How do we learn from it and make a wine we respect?” Martin laughs. “I remember being 26 and working the harvest with you in Napa back in the ’90s, and you were saying, ‘How am I going to honor this fruit? How am I going to honor this farmer?’ And it’s the same now.” He pops some fruit into his mouth and exclaims, “This is delicious. I really like the balance of sweet and tart.” “I agree,” Terrien replies. “Just shockingly beautiful. It smells woodsy and mineral-y, like granite.” He runs his hand over a seam of bedrock breaching the surface, as if to make the connection. “It’s amazing how different it can be,” says Jeremy Howard, the grower of this fruit. “The flavor profile from patch to patch and year to year can change tremendously.” It’s the kind of conversation that growers and winemakers have always had, and in so many ways this scene could be anywhere in Napa: slopes stippled with fruit, pickers in the distance filling bins. But this isn’t California. And these aren’t grapes. We’re at Appleton Ridge, Maine, standing in a field of wild blueberries, Maine’s second-most-famous food. Unlike the “highbush” blueberries cultivated worldwide, wild blueberry bushes rise less than a foot off the ground and produce tiny berries with intense flavor. They thrive in cold climates on thin, acidic soils, especially the glacier-scoured reaches of Down East Maine, where 36,000 acres of fields are maintained, a heathlike region known as the blueberry barrens. Martin and Terrien, who grew up in Maine and still return each summer with their families, began making wine out of their favorite fruit nine years ago. At first it was on

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a lark, but they liked the results so much they kept experimenting, and in 2014 they launched Bluet, an all-natural wine made entirely from wild blueberries, or “bluets,” as Thoreau called them, borrowing the old word used by the French settlers who first encountered the fruit. To Thoreau, they were “little blue sacks of swampy nectar and ambrosia commingled,” which certainly sounds like the kind of thing one should turn into wine. Bluet was not the first blueberry wine, but most earlier efforts were the kind of syrupy funk that has given generations of country fruit wines a bad name. Terrien was the first person with serious winemaking chops to tackle the fruit, and he was not fooled by its sugar. Wine grapes like Pinot Noir have twice the sugar content of blueberries, for instance, “but you don’t make pie out of Pinot Noir.” He went straight to méthode champenoise, the technique employed in Champagne to produce a dry, sparkling, extraordinarily aromatic wine. The result turned heads, in Maine and beyond. I’d tasted my first bottle of Bluet the day before meeting Martin and Terrien in the barrens, and it was a revelation. The mind has no idea what to make of a champagne glass of midnight-purple juice topped with a frothy pink head. The darkness and density suggest extreme red wine. The word blueberry inclines one to expect sweetness. And so that first delicate, bracingly tart sip comes as a shock. But at least then you know what to expect. On the second sip you start to appreciate the clean snap of it, and by the third the nuances are coming through, the ethereal notes of citrus and rose petal that Terrien talks about. And by the fourth you’re hooked. (I immediately wanted to try it with Maine’s other iconic food, and Terrien approved: “What grows together goes together. Roasting a lobster over a charcoal fire and drinking a bottle of Bluet is a very lovely combination.”) “It’s like the blueberry had this f lavor that hadn’t been unlocked,” Martin says as we pick our way through the field, sampling from different plants. “Once you strip away the sugar by converting it into alcohol, you reveal its essence, and it’s this really beautiful expression that no one’s tasted before, even though it’s been hiding in plain sight.” Bluet’s production has doubled each year, but at 3,000 cases per year it’s still tiny. Now the state and its blueberry growers would very much like Martin and Terrien to go big. Crushed by a global tsunami of highbush blueberries, more and more of Maine’s 485 remaining blueberry growers are giving up, despite having the most flavorful blueberries on the planet. “We started doing this just for fun,” says Martin. “We thought it would taste good and would speak to the place. NEWENGLAND.COM

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But once we started working with growers and discovered how desperate they are, that changed. Blueberries grow on land that’s otherwise agriculturally worthless. You can’t grow corn or potatoes on it. The only other thing you can do with it is condos and cul-de-sacs.” The industry has tried to expand its options with dozens of value-added products, but only wine has a market that puts tremendous value on flavor and place, says Martin. “When we started explaining that we wanted to take the unique character of their fruit and put it into a bottle so people could experience it, their eyes lit up, and they said, ‘That’s the story that we’ve been trying to tell!’ This is what wine is set up to do.” That story can’t come a moment too soon for family operations like Brodis Blueberries, where we are standing, which has been growing blueberries in this spot since the Civil War. “We were talking with Grandmother Brodis,” Martin says, “and she just looked at us and said, ‘I don’t want to be the one.’ And we knew exactly what she meant. This tradition could be lost very quickly.” As they wrestle with the implications, Martin and Terrien gaze across the Wyeth-like vista of yellowing greens rolling like waves up and over the glacier-smoothed hills, breaking against old stone walls. Both men are in their 50s, with graying temples and teenage kids. Terrien is tall and thin, with a sumptuous head of hair that gives him a John Kerry–esque mien. Martin has curly hair and would look thin next to anyone other than Terrien. Both have built successful careers away. And both are now feeling the magnetic tug of Maine. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Bluet cofounders Michael Terrien, left, and Eric Martin hike through the glacially carved landscape of Maine’s blueberry barrens, where the state’s signature lowbush fruit thrives.

It’s that week of August when everything starts to turn. The sun is still strong, but something about the way it angles across the burnished fields reminds you that it’s not high summer anymore. There’s an urgency to the crickets. There are berries to be picked. Time is shorter than you think. WHEN YOU ASK MARTIN AND TERRIEN HOW BLUET began, they will tell you about the bachelor party a decade ago on a Maine island where the group of friends drank everything they’d brought until they were left with one bottle of homemade blueberry wine, and they drank that and Terrien said, “There’s gotta be a better way to make blueberry wine.” But then they will stop and back up and talk about how the Civil War turned Maine’s delectable yet inaccessible specialty into a national obsession. And then they will stop again and back way up and talk about the glaciers. About 35,000 years ago, the last in a series of ice ages gripped New England. Glaciers a mile high pushed down from Canada, bulldozing Maine’s topsoil deep into the Atlantic Ocean. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, about 12,000 years ago, they left a raw landscape of granite till, molded into rolling hills. One of the first colonizers of this harsh terrain was a little plant called Vaccinium angustifolium, the wild blueberry. By partnering with | 75

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a fungus that was adept at mining nutrients from rock, the blueberry was able to get a toehold in those infertile, acidic environments where little else could grow. And for more than 10,000 years, it has persisted, forming low mats that stay blanketed by protective snow in winter. In May it sends up tubular white f lowers, followed by juicy blue fruits in August, and in fall the barrens blush crimson. It is one of the most distinctively Down East of landscapes, a palette of colors washing across the naked hills. Native Americans managed their own fields for thousands of years, and colonists followed suit, but blueberries were little more than a local celebration each August. With thin skins and abundant juice, they fall apart within days. It wasn’t until the Civil War, when the sardine canneries of coastal Maine lost their southern markets and began canning blueberries for Union soldiers, that the means to share the bounty with out-of-staters was at hand. Soon canneries were being built throughout the barrens. With no competition—the fruit grew almost nowhere except Maine and the Maritimes—blueberries boomed in the late 1800s, with 150,000 acres in production. Cans featuring Maine’s iconic fruit became ubiquitous throughout the country, allowing people to make pies year-round. But the seed of the wild blueberry’s downfall was planted in the early 1900s, when the USDA began crossbreed76 |

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from left: Martin and Terrien sample the harvest with Linda Nash, co-owner of Nash Farms in Appleton; bottles of Bluet, ready to be uncorked by a growing fan base.

ing plants with the tallest stems and largest berries. It was successful, though the berry lost its woodsy intensity in the process. By the 1930s, highbush blueberries with huge fruit were being widely grown. The larger berries looked more impressive and had thicker skins that allowed them to withstand shipping. In the 1950s, freezer technology arrived and bought the wild blueberry some time. While highbush berries dominated the produce aisle, the f lavorful wild berry was the go-to for frozen. (It got a boost in the early 2000s, when it was found to have the highest antioxidant content of any fruit. Cranberries and cultivated blueberries are a distant second and third.) Today, 99 percent of the crop is frozen, usually the day it comes out of the fields. But the past decade has brought Maine’s industry to its knees. Highbush blueberry production has exploded worldwide, much of it in countries with alarmingly low costs of labor. Maine’s annual 50-million-plus pounds of berries amounts to just 3 percent of the global blueberry crop. As this blue glut has exceeded the demand for fresh berries, the excess is dumped on the frozen market at fire-sale prices. From an NEWENGLAND.COM

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all-time-high price of $1.07 per pound in 2007, the price for frozen berries cratered to about 25 cents per pound in 2016 and 2017 before settling in the past few years at 46 to 60 cents per pound—right around the break-even point, according to Lily Calderwood, the wild blueberry specialist for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. With economics like that, says Calderwood, it’s no wonder many of Maine’s blueberry farmers are looking to get out. “We’re in a big transition,” she told me. “A significant percentage of the growers are more than 75 years old and want to retire. There’s a critical need for new farmers. But they aren’t coming.” ERIC MARTIN AND MICHAEL TERRIEN DIDN’T KNOW about the travails of the industry when they drank that first syrupy bottle of blueberry wine at that bachelor party a decade ago. They just knew there had to be a better way to honor the berry they’d both grown up adoring. The two had been tight as kids, running around the Portland area playing capture the flag, building snow forts, and picking berries every August. “The best picking was always under the power lines,” Martin remembers. “But you had to be fast, because everyone knew where they were.” He became hooked on the unique joy of popping a handful at once. “It wasn’t just one flavor, but six or seven at once. Some sweet, some tart, some waxy.” They both ran off to California. Terrien became known for his minimal-intervention winemaking, letting the fruit and the land speak for itself at a time when most winemakers were embracing technology to control flavor as predictably as possible. Martin worked the crush with him for fun. Martin wound up in North Carolina with a career as a novelist, but the two friends stayed tight, reuniting in Maine every summer. After the bachelor party, they had blueberries on the brain. A year later, they were both at a wedding where all the food was sourced locally, Martin remembers. “The corn, the lobsters, the honey. Everything except the wine. We were drinking Michael’s wine from California. And Michael said, ‘Why aren’t we drinking Maine wine? Where’s the Maine wine?’” Maine’s climate is not conducive to classic wine grapes, but wine is just fermented fruit, and Maine had plenty of that. Fresh blueberry juice is deep purple, a color so saturated it makes the most potent red wines look wan. Previous blueberry pioneers had been tricked into trying to emulate big red wines, adding sugar to raise the alcohol content and aging in oak barrels to give the wine a vanilla richness. But Terrien saw through the color. If you closed your eyes, you tasted juice that was light in body, low in sugar, and high in acid, with tons of minerality. And that all reminded him of a wine he knew well: Champagne. For centuries, the winemakers of Champagne—France’s northernmost wine region, where grapes struggle to ripen—made a poorly received still JULY | AUGUST 2021

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wine that was a little too tart and thin in the mouth, until their eureka moment: Bubbles! Carbonation adds a sense of body and mouthfeel and helps lift the aromas to the nose. Terrien needed to make the Champagne of Maine. And with that revelation, Bluet’s course was set. Martin and Terrien commandeered the basement of an old barn on Damariscotta Lake owned by Terrien’s uncle, lowering the racks of bottles through a hole in the floor using a block and tackle they rigged up. The crush was done with the help (and feet) of friends and family. The wine was amazing, just 7 percent alcohol, with flavors unlike any grape wine. “It has this beautiful complexity,” says Terrien. “Citrusy, floral, deep forest. It’s almost like the early earth, very primordial.” Part of that complexity comes from the wild blueberry’s genetic diversity. Never domesticated, it still reproduces from seed. So while all highbush blueberries are clones of the same few varieties, propagated as cuttings, every wild blueberry plant is unique. A typical field will have 1,500 different varieties. Some plants are just a few feet across, while others can be the size of football fields. This gives every blueberry field a beautiful patchwork quality. At first, Martin and Terrien kept their day jobs in California and North Carolina, aware that the whole endeavor had a whiff of midlife crisis. (“Instead of sports cars and girlfriends,” says Martin, “we ran off together to make blueberry wine.”) But Bluet soon developed a cult following at Maine’s top restaurants and wine stores. “People dug it,” says Coco O’Neill, the wine buyer at Portland’s Central Provisions [who has since joined Bluet as sales and marketing lead]. “People come to us to try new things, and Bluet’s high acidity works really well with food. I drink quite a bit of it.” Not that there weren’t some kinks to work out. Originally they filtered the wine lightly, hoping to preserve as much flavor as possible, but the particles acted as nucleation points for carbonation—as they discovered when bottles of the 2014 vintage began exploding, including a case in the Blue Hill Wine Shop. “It was painted all over the ceiling,” says Martin. “We got a photo.” They solved that problem by filtering completely, but they introduced another in 2015 by including blueberry leaves with the fruit in the fermentation. Grape skins are high in tannins, the astringent compounds that give red wine its tealike texture and body. Blueberry skins aren’t, but the leaves are, so Terrien included leaves to add dimension. “It tasted like a copper penny,” he says. “It was just flat-out bitter,” Martin concedes. “But now when we open those bottles, it’s mellowed out.” In fact, the wine ages beautifully. Those antioxidants protect it without the need for the sulfites used in grape wine. That 2015 was one of my favorite vintages, with a leathery depth that invited slowly savoring each sip. “File that in your head,” Terrien told me. “Now what will it be like in 20 years? | 77

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Because it’ll last. We’re still getting the balance right, but we’ve proven to ourselves that there’s a magic to this fruit. That it can tell the story of this place.” Most blueberry farmers aren’t used to buyers who want to hang out in the fields and test the fruit, so Martin and Terrien sought out a handful of small growers who wanted to partner with them long-term, paying double the going rate—still a bargain compared with grapes, which go for $3 a pound in Napa Valley—and making it clear that the goal was to show off the fruit. That approach paid off, says Calderwood. “They did a great job of building relationships. This is an industry with a lot of history and tradition. The farmers are very proud of their crop, and they are extremely concerned that it gets valued as a commodity crop rather than for its unique qualities. They love to see the words ‘Maine Wild Blueberries’ together on a label. They need that story to be told. So they are very excited about what Bluet has done.” “That’s what we realized we’d stumbled into,” says Martin. “The whole industry is trying to figure out how to get people to appreciate their fruit, and they just can’t make it work. They’ve got the best blueberries in the world, but to experience that, you’ve got to go there, scoop them up, and eat them.” Or make wine out of them. If the first question was whether blueberry wine could be any good, Bluet has now settled it. But now everyone has a new question: How big could this thing be? AFTER BRODIS BLUEBERRIES, WE VISIT TWO MORE small operations, checking the fruit and putting in orders. In a few days, the berries will be harvested (tractors with giant rakes have largely replaced hand-pickers), dumped into 1,000-pound bins, and left to macerate for a week, the color and f lavor of the skins soaking into the juice. Then they’ll be pressed at a nearby cider press and the juice trucked to the Bluet winery, which is now in a South Portland industrial park—far less romantic than that barn by the lake, but way more practical. “The barn was great for playing around,” says Terrien, “but it’s not going to solve the problem.” “We’re at 3,000 cases now,” says Martin, “but we want to get up to 25,000 cases pretty soon.” And then, perhaps, 250,000. “There’s 30,000 tons of fruit out there,” says Terrien. Enough to make 30 million bottles of wine. “How do we absorb 10,000 of it, and make a product that people want to buy nationally?” The first answer to that question is the four-pack of baby-blue cans Terrien pulls out of a cooler in his truck. The cans are skinny, sexy, cold, and wicked tart, just the thing at the end of a dusty August day. While the Champagne-style bottles have been steady sellers, the cans have been flying off shelves, which doesn’t 78 |

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surprise Martin. “You want to be a part of people’s lives. And in Maine that means boats and picnics on the beach.” The cans also solve the color dilemma, Terrien points out. “You can’t see it, so you don’t have any preconceptions. All you know is that it says wild blueberries, zero sugar. I think there’s a moment now where people are eager for something that’s healthy and pure and real, and we happen to be doing exactly that.” The state of Maine seems to agree. “People are stepping up,” says Martin. “Maine is extraordinary. Everyone wants to see this succeed.” Bluet has been the beneficiary of grants for agricultural and economic development, and now investors are circling. “They’re saying, ‘Yeah, we see this as a long game, but it’s the best idea we’ve heard in a while.’ They’re telling us that we just need to raise a bunch of money and go for it.” What would that look like? Well, there’s something they want to show me. We drive up through the fields, winding along until we come out on a ridgetop with 360-degree, heart-in-yourthroat views of the surrounding forests and fields, bluish hills peeking up in the distance. Here and there, patches of berries poke up from the grass, but the weeds have taken over. “It’s for sale,” Martin says. “Wouldn’t it make an amazing spot for a tasting room? I have this dream of a Blueberry Wine Trail, with farmhouse wineries and tasting rooms dotting the barrens.” Suddenly, everything flips in my mind. I’ve been thinking about how Bluet can be a vehicle to bring the berries to the people, not how it can bring the people to the berries. Yes, I can absolutely see a tasting room. And I can easily see myself on a weekend escape, tooling through the barrens as if it were the Napa of 50 years ago, pulling up to a rustic tavern and tasting my way through a flight of Terrien’s Terroir Series on a breezy porch. “It’s about working with the same piece of ground and seeing what that tastes like year after year after year,” Terrien says with the giddiness of a pioneer. Appleton Ridge in Knox County. Jake’s Pasture in Sedgwick. The vast Down East barrens. “What would it be like to make wines from each of those places? Does it taste different from the horseback eskers in the barrens where all the granite was dumped? From western slopes versus eastern ones? Does it ripen earlier up on the rocky tops than on the slopes? These are things that matter a lot with grapes, but we’re just at the beginning of learning.” That learning will depend on an entire macrosystem of small growers and producers, says Martin. “We need more people messing around with blueberries.” To that end, they’ve produced a free how-to guide for making blueberry wine, and they’re teaching courses at community colleges. Already, a few new wineries have sprung into being. NEWENGLAND.COM

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“We’ve proven to ourselves that there’s a magic to this fruit. That it can tell the story of this place.”

Martin and Terrien at their Bluet facility south of Portland, not far from where the two friends grew up together.

As we stand there, breathing the berry-scented breeze, I wonder if anywhere else on earth has a 100-mile Zen garden of fruit just begging to be explored. A Lost World of wine. The young farmers will find it. And the young romantics will follow. And then everyone else who is young or old and aching to be immersed in a place that rises up and floods the senses in its own unmistakable flavor. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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“It’s so beautiful,” says Martin. “It just belongs here.” And as I murmur my assent, somehow another wickedtart can has found its way into my hand, so bracing, so Maine. I eye the little plants hiding beneath the weeds and think maybe I was wrong about time being short. They’ve been here 10,000 years, and they’re just getting started. Come along on our visit to Bluet on the new season of Weekends with Yankee, now airing on public television stations nationwide. To learn more, go to weekendswithyankee.com. | 79

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CHASING

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d c

PHOTO CREDITS

Fo r m o s t , s u m m e r o n t h e C a p e m e a n s b e a c h c o u n t r y, t h e C a p e C o d L e a g u e i s a n a u d i t i o n t h a t

DREA M

days. But for the be st c ol lege ba sebal l players in the c o u l d c h a n g e t h e i r l i f e . PHO T O S BY A L E X GAGN E

Infielder Tanner Murray (#41) and his fellow Orleans Firebirds run out to start the inning at Eldredge Park, their home field in Orleans, Massachusetts. A standout at UC Davis, Murray was drafted last year by the Tampa Bay Rays.

PHOTO CREDITS

h at

the

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hen Alex Gagne began hanging out with the Orleans Firebirds in 2010, he was only a few years older than the players he followed with his camera. The Massachusetts-based freelance photographer had come to Orleans that summer to produce his first folio with master printer Bob Korn, an ardent supporter of the hometown team, one of 10 in the Cape Cod Baseball League. When Korn connected Gagne with the Firebirds, it began a project to document the moments beyond hits and runs, wins and losses, in the most acclaimed amateur proving ground in the country. “I wanted to show the process of being a player,” Gagne says. They come from across the country, welcomed by host families. They live here for eight weeks, playing 44 games on pretty, small-town fields. They know the legend: More than 1,200 former Cape League players have gone to “the show” since 1960. Nearly one in every seven players in the majors has memories of twilight games in ocean-swept towns. But for many Cape hopefuls, their dreams may end in a minor-league town, far from the bright lights. Or their summer competing against the very best may reveal weaknesses in their game, and no professional team even offers them a chance. Most of the photos in these pages come from 2019, the last season before the pandemic. “I was there at the first practice [that year],” Gagne says, “to let them know I was going to be there. To build the relationship, I photographed everything. I followed them everywhere. I spent so much time with them, I might as well have been on the team.” Gagne has shot tens of thousands of images. “I’m not interested in the action. I am drawn to the details,” he says. He has found beauty in a bucket of baseballs, wooden bats against a dugout wall, the sun setting on a field of fresh grass, a child asking for her ball to be signed. He was there when players stopped into a convenience store for sunflower seeds, when they went for pizza, when they hung out with their host family, when they coached children in the basics they, too, had learned long ago. “I’m going to keep going back,” Gagne says. “In 10 or 15 years, I’ll look back at all these pictures when they were young, when the dream was alive.” —Mel Allen

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above: Orleans

players hang out in the clubhouse before the start of a home game. Cape League players and coaches take on many roles beyond the boundaries of the game—they maintain the fields, from watering the grass to raking the infield dirt, and yes, they even clean the dugouts.

left: Baseballs

bearing the unmistakable patina of batting practice.

opposite page:

Kamron Fields, a pitcher from the University of Texas (he later transferred to Texas Southern), in a quiet moment before an away game against the Brewster Whitecaps.

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Orleans Firebirds player Max Troiani, who came to the Cape League from Massachusetts’s own Bentley University, with his host family, Gary and Theresa Lane. Some Cape Cod families have been opening their homes to these young athletes for years, and it’s not uncommon to see hosts hugging their former Cape players turned major leaguers during games at Boston’s Fenway Park.

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top: Orleans residents cheer a parade float filled with Firebirds, a traditional part of the town’s annual Fourth of July celebrations. Founded in 1885,

the Cape League today gives a much-appreciated boost to the regional economy, to the tune of about $3 million in a typical year. above: Robert Emery (#22), a catcher hailing from San Francisco, ices his ankle while helping athletic trainer Kallie Hannon work out another player’s back muscle cramp.

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above: Before kicking off an away game against the Hyannis Harbor Hawks, the Firebirds line up for the playing of the national anthem. At the front is Jay Banfield, who served as assistant coach while on sabbatical from his executive career in San Francisco. below: The Firebirds’ home turf, Eldredge Park, set on the grounds of Nauset Regional Middle School, is considered one of the best town fields in the country. Its signature feature is a multi-tiered hill on the first base line, where diehards will lay out blankets and lawn chairs in the morning to ensure they’ll have a prime perch for the game.

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left: Zach Daniels, a Houston Astros draft pick in 2020, at batting practice. The Cape League was the first college league to switch to wooden bats, in 1985, which is important because major league scouts need to see how young hitters do with wood—used by pros—after growing up using aluminum. right: A young Firebirds fan gets a ball signed by catcher Robert Emery, who would go on to be signed by the San Francisco Giants. below: Zach Britton of the University of Louisville high-fives his teammates after hitting a home run; he was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in 2020.

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Orleans Firebirds pitchers sit on the stage of the Eldredge Park bullpen, out in right field. Much like the Cape League itself, it’s a place where they can study, strategize , and just soak up the experience before being called into action.

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THE WORLD OF

SY MONTGOMERY

The famed New Hampshire nature writer dives deep into the animal realm to tell stories that shed light on our own.

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bears, pink dolphins, baby hummingbirds. Chickens, dogs, and a beloved pig. A 10-pound kakapo parrot that “shagged” her head. “You haven’t felt a good purr until you’ve had a cheetah lying down next to you,” she says casually. At 63, she’s Indiana Jones with a tangle of blond curls, a deep stream of soul, a wickedly good laugh. If you stuck pins in a world map to chart her travels, you’d be jumping from Cape Cod to French Guiana to New Zealand, with sojourns in Africa, India, southeast Asia. A genuine challenge for passport control, flipping through those battered pages. Meantime, here we are, in Hancock. More than many, Sy’s travel wings have been clipped by Covid. Last August, she had planned to fly to Ecuador for a book about giant manta rays; October was blocked off for a national tour for her new picture book, Becoming a Good Creature (the children’s version of her 2018 memoir of a similar name). Instead, as airports shut down, then reopened with travel restrictions, she turned her focus to another book project closer to home: turtles. For now, she is fully immersed with the Turtle Rescue League in Massachusetts, along with other turtle projects around New England. Good adventurers find work everywhere. The evidence is here, in Sy’s first-floor studio, where she writes surrounded by mementos of past “teachers,” as she calls them. Photos of tigers, pigs, pandas. Reference books on poultry, beetles, and killer whales. Toy octopuses heaped NEWENGLAND.COM

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PHOTO CREDITS

LONG BEFORE THE 30 BOOKS and the far-f lung travels to places like Namibia and Borneo; before being stalked by man-eating tigers and courted by tarantulas; before the legions of furry, scaly, slippery friends she would make around the world, Sy Montgomery made a connection when she was 3 years old, a connection with a feeling that would infuse everything to come. “I didn’t just want to have a dog.” She leans in, for emphasis. “I wanted to be a dog.” It is 1 o’clock on a steamy July afternoon. The humidity is mounting, as thick white clouds roll across the sun, and later that day the rain will lash down in torrents, cooling the air. But for now it is as close to jungle torpor as it gets in Hancock, a small historic village in southern New Hampshire, where I, too, have lived. Our paths have crossed for years. We are sweltering in the shade of an old silver maple, so tall it dwarfs the angular white farmhouse that Sy shares with her husband, the writer Howard Mansfield, and their silky border collie, Thurber. Fifty-year-old lilacs lean in. Iced tea glasses pop with sweat, and a bowl of sweet cherries glistens on an old teak table. A spider drops languidly from the brim of my hat. “Look at how brave he is!” she exclaims. Sy Montgomery, in her natural habitat. A renowned naturalist and science writer, Sy writes with a rare blend of heart and intelligence, sharing her awe and spicing it with humor. In award-winning books for adults and children, she spins true tales of golden moon

C O U R T E S Y O F S Y M O N TG O M E R Y ( M O L LY ) ; N I C B I S H O P ( C H E E TA H ) ; S A LT P R O J E C T ( TA R A N T U L A ) ; P H E B E L E W A N ( O W L) , DAV I D S C H E E L (O C TO P US) ; M AT T PAT T E R S O N ( T U R T L E ) ; I A N R E D M O N D ( P I G)

BY ANNIE GRAVES

PHOTO CREDITS

opposite: A 3-year-old Sy Montgomery with her black Scottish terrier, Molly, who she says “showed me my destiny.” this page: Montgomery with some of the many meaningful creatures she’s encountered, including Christopher Hogwood (left), who inspired her best-seller The Good Good Pig; a curlyhaired tarantula named Bonita (top right); and, in a photo taken during her research for Chasing Cheetahs, an “ambassador animal” cheetah at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia (top left).

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beside seashells. When Sy goes in search of a hummingbird nest (“They’re woven with spider webs!”), she first has to nudge a falconer’s glove out of the way. Some faces stand out. Near Sy’s computer monitor, flanked by an old black-and-white photo of Howard taken on the day of their graduation from Syracuse University, is a framed close-up of a little black Scotty. “My beloved Molly,” she says, her voice softening. “She showed me my destiny.” Molly’s story is the first chapter in How to Be a Good Creature, Sy’s memoir told through meaningful creatures in her life. “It was hard and scary, digging into the dark stuff,” Sy tells me. While she doesn’t remember much of her early childhood, “I clearly had failure to thrive as a child. When Molly appeared, I finally started to grow. I recognized right away that Molly was finished and complete, while I was still a larva. And she showed me that there was stuff beyond what we can apprehend, an invisible world. There was information Molly could get through scent that I could not smell; information she could hear that I could not hear. It was like [Saint] Paul says, about the evidence of things unseen: You know that other world is there, and that animals are experiencing it.” Thurber sits at our feet, eyes on Sy. In the quiet of her studio, dozens of tiny jaws are munching. “Hear them?” she whispers. “I love them so much!” Neighbors have asked her to watch over two large mesh containers filled with 50 Polyphemus caterpillars—brilliant green Tootsie Rolls that need regular misting and feeding, and later that day I’ll help clean out their tents and refresh their food. Once they’ve eaten their fill of red oak leaves and undergone their metamorphosis, they will become “big, gorgeous silk moths.” Meantime, Sy unzips one of the containers so I can get a better look. “Angels,” she calls them. “Stay in there,” she admonishes. “I see your sneaky plan. Don’t want to get anyone’s little legs caught.” — A tiger swam after my boat. It could have eaten me, which doesn’t particularly bother me. But a tiger could kill and eat people whom I love…. —Spell of the Tiger (1995) We settle back under the silver maple, and the day’s steaminess drapes over us. Heat doesn’t bother Sy—“not if there’s an animal around,” she clarifies. “Someone could be nailing my head to the floor and I wouldn’t care, as long as there was an animal to watch. When you’re doing your work, when you’re looking at an animal, or for an animal, or trying to get to an animal, you don’t care that the chiggers are burrowing under your skin, you don’t care that the leeches are sucking your blood, and you don’t care that the mosquitoes are chewing your legs. You just are completely absorbed by the task.”

I nod, and try to discreetly brush away the mosquito that’s been bugging me for the past few minutes. “It’s funny, though,” she says. “When you’re in bed at home, and there’s an earwig in your nose? That’s when you freak out! I just feel like I’ve had enough bugs in my life, in my work—I don’t want them in my bed!” In that instant, a ruby-throated hummingbird whizzes by, and we hold our breath. “It’s the first one I’ve seen this year,” she says softly, although she helped raise two orphaned baby hummers while writing her 2010 book, Birdology. “The Aztecs believed they’re reincarnated warriors because they’ll kill each other. God, I love it here!” For 40 years, she and Howard have lived in this rambling 140-year-old farmhouse, with a barn and a refurbished henhouse (his studio) that fits into the land like a fallen log. Sy happily declares that she and Howard have done as little as possible to the house: “Everybody seems to want to buy an old farmhouse and put in a gigantic kitchen. But I loved it just the way it was.” And she is still incredulous that two young freelancers were able to swing it. “I never dreamed I’d have a home like this. My parents were army—we moved from Germany to Virginia, then Brooklyn, New Jersey. All I wanted to do growing up was survive.” Her eyes range over the peaceful landscape. Her parents visited once, the night before her wedding to “a tall, skinny Jewish liberal with wild, curly hair,” she has written. “They didn’t come to the wedding,” Sy tells me. “They disowned me, in a letter. But I learned so much from them. My father was an army general who survived the Bataan Death March. And my mother grew up poor, in rural Arkansas, and ended up f lying a plane and working for the FBI, so she was tough as nails, too. These were people who knew how to get stuff done. I wouldn’t have had any different parents. I just wish they’d had sense enough to realize that Howard was the best thing that ever happened to me.” It wasn’t only her parents’ toughness that took hold. When Sy first began reading, her father would search out animal stories for her in The New York Times. In the 1960s, those stories were all about extinction, overpopulation, how elephants were being killed for their ivory, she remembers. “It had a tremendous effect on me. Until then, I’d wanted to be a veterinarian, because that’s what you did if you loved animals. But I began to think I could help more animals as a writer.” For Spell of the Tiger, Sy traveled to the 3,900-square-mile mangrove swamp of Sundarbans, along the Bay of Bengal between India and Bangladesh. It is the one place in the world where wild tigers routinely attack and eat people. There are no roads, only waterways through the stillness,

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C O R E Y H E N D R I C K S O N ( P O R T R A I T ) ; D I A N N E TAY LO R -SN O W ( E X P E D I T I O N )

She is Indiana Jones with a tangle of blond curls, a deep stream of soul, a wickedly good laugh.

C O R E Y H E N D R I C K S O N ( P O R T R A I T ) ; D I A N N E TAY LO R -SN O W ( E X P E D I T I O N )

from left: Montgomery with her border collie, Thurber, at home in Harrisville, New Hampshire; listening for radio telemetry signals from tagged pink dolphins during a 1998 research expedition to the Amazon for her book Journey of the Pink Dolphins.

and the tigers swim so fast they can overtake a boat: “You feel like they’re always there.” Sy made the trip four times—she pauses—five, if you count the National Geographic documentary she wrote, narrated, and appeared in. In the fading glow of an aging videotape, a slender young woman with untamed blond hair calls out greetings to her friends in Bengali, leans in close as her translator relays questions, examines fresh tracks sunken into thick mud (their own boat has been stalked by a tiger they never saw), and clambers aboard the most fragileseeming handmade wooden boat, where she stands silhouetted against the setting sun. She, too, might seem fragile, but it’s clear, just by her very presence, that she is not. “The people in Sundarbans have tremendous natural history knowledge,” says Sy. “They understand what we have forgotten: that we need predators to keep the world whole. They believe in a forest goddess and a tiger god, and they love the tiger with their soul. It’s not hated, it’s feared.” And yet, she notes, tigers are being killed all over Asia so rapidly they might disappear altogether. “If we wipe out the tiger, we murder a god,” she says, her eyes suddenly fierce. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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— I loved travel, I loved exploring, and I loved wildness. But now, in Hancock, with a pig in the barn, I would find the other piece of my heart’s lifelong yearning: home. —The Good Good Pig (2006) “Let me show you where Chris lived,” Sy says, and we trot off down the rolling lawn to the barn, past its red sliding door to a pig stall underneath, cut into the hillside. This is where Christopher Hogwood lived and loved for 14 years, in insulated R-22 splendor. “Christopher Hogwood came home on my lap in a shoebox,” Sy begins her first memoir, The Good Good Pig, a warm-hearted best-seller about a sickly little piglet who defied the odds. The adoption was Howard’s idea—a distraction, or so he hoped, from a low point in Sy’s life. In 1990, her father, whom she’d reconciled with, was dying of cancer, and she was traveling between Hancock and Virginia, spending as much time as she could with the man she had once confessed, in Sunday school, she loved “more than (Continued on p. 118) | 93

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BUILD

AND

T H EY

Seasoned mountain biker and professional sports photographer Brooks Curran of Waitsfield, Vermont, takes a sunrise ride on Heaven’s Bench, part of the Kingdom Trails network in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. PHOTO BY DAVE TRUMPORE

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5/19/21 2:09 PM

WILL

COME

Mountain bikers from around the country have flocked to Vermont’s Kingdom Trails. But locals and cyclists alike wonder if it is too much of a good thing. BY JONATHAN GREEN

THE NORTHEAST KINGDOM

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With a powerful sweep of the cranks, John Worth bursts out of the darkened tree line into the amber sunshine bathing the shoulder of Umpire Mountain before plunging his bicycle toward a precipice, some 1,500 feet above the valley floor. The sweet scent of fresh rainfall mingles with woodsmoke rising from a house on the flank of the peak as his knurled rear tire skitters over slick oak leaves carpeting the trail. Then gravity takes over, tugging him toward the cliff. “Don’t look over the edge!” he yells. “Keep your eyes on the trail.” I blink sweat out of my eyes as I try to stay on his wheel. The suspension on my mountain bike gasps, bottoming out over granite boulders, before I realize that my increasing velocity is sending me down a chute angled to blast me off the side of the mountain as well. Too late now. Nothing for it but to hang on. Worth careens downhill and abruptly vanishes from view. I charge behind—briefly making out specks of houses hundreds of feet below—before a large, smoothly engineered berm rears up in front of me. I lurch violently to the right before I’m funneled down some single-track back into the musty darkness of the forest once more. A few hundred feet in, we come to an abrupt stop in a swirl of dust. “Man, that was fun,” grins Worth, a tall and rangy 56-year-old with a loose-limbed gait and periwinkleblue eyes. We’ve just ridden the roller coaster that is the Shonter Shuffle, one section of Kingdom Trails, a labyrinthine 100-mile system of mountain bike trails emanating from the village of East Burke (population 81). Spread like latticework over mountains and valleys, these trails have become a world-renowned center for mountain biking. For the past few years the narrow roads around East Burke have been choked with bike-laden cars bearing license plates from Canada to California. “I always knew it would become this big,” says Worth, the founder and godfather of Kingdom Trails, as he gazes down the valley at the bright dots in the far distance, bikers shuttling all over the mountainsides. “This was always my dream.” We’re deep in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, where bootleggers once smuggled whiskey along the trails that run like veins to the Canadian border just 30 miles north. The area has long since lagged behind the rest of the state in terms of prosperity, seeing high poverty levels while housing two of Vermont’s prisons. John Worth came here in 1988 to seek his fortune as a college graduate with a degree in ski area management. He opened a ski shop at the bottom of Burke Mountain, which was a struggling ski resort that would eventually bankrupt each of its four owners (it’s currently in federal receivership after the last, Ariel Quiros, pleaded guilty in 2020 to a $200 million security fraud scheme). 96 |

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Looking for a way to make money in the summer off-season, Worth invested in some Nishiki mountain bikes, crude and rugged machines that were part of the latest revolution in cycling. He sold all 20 that summer. Worth realized that people then needed somewhere to ride. On the day we biked together as we journeyed north out of the valley, he showed me the old Nordic ski center where he had f irst cleared old cross-country routes for “rake and ride” mountain bike trails. But soon those were not enough to cope with the growing numbers of riders flocking to the area as word spread. Worth upped his game and sneaked deeper into the woods, engineering trails on NEWENGLAND.COM

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ABIGAIL JOHNSTON

HERO DIRT

ABIGAIL JOHNSTON

More than 30 years ago, John Worth started building what would become Kingdom Trails, which Bike magazine once hailed as the best mountain bike trail network in North America.

other people’s property. “We were covert,” he says. “We didn’t have permission.” He eschewed power tools lest he alert the landowners what he was building on their property. Bloody and bruised, he built trails by hand, working the ground with Pulaskis, with the goal of connecting trails, uninterrupted, mile after mile. The trail known as Widowmaker, built in 1989, got its name because it went under a dead tree leaning against a live one, which couldn’t be removed because Worth could not risk the noise of a chainsaw. He dragged wooden pallets in by hand to be used as crude bridges and hauled culverts into the mountains. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Worth saw the land as a canvas—the topography, natural features, and dry topsoil—onto which he might sketch his design, create his signature “fast and flowy” trails. All this, to answer the demand from the growing numbers of mountain bikers who were part of the zeitgeist heading into the backcountry on two wheels. He discovered that Darling Hill, a north-south ridge rising abruptly to the west of town, was part of a glacial esker— the result of glacial melt that crushed rocks into stratified gravel and sand while pushing the larger boulders south, leaving soft, malleable loam that bikers crave and call “hero dirt.” Its consistency was perfect for molding berms and | 97

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opened in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Inns and hostels such as the Kingdom Farm Lodge, a barn converted for communal living for mountain bikers, sprouted over the mountainsides. The area has even seen the debut of a multimillion-dollar luxury lodging property, the Inn at Burklyn, a sign of the growing affluence of mountain bikers. Today families from all over America have moved here to live close to trails in the affordable Vermont backcountry. East Burke, once a struggling rural community, is now a boomtown, seemingly a triumph deep in the wilderness. Key to Kingdom Trails’ success was the unique cooperation between nearly 100 landowners who grant access to their property for largely altruistic reasons, something quite unlike anywhere else in America. The nearest rival is Bentonville, Arkansas, which has 140 miles of machine-built trails largely paid for by the Walton family, owners of Walmart, which is headquartered there. It’s reflective of the different American cultural paradigms: bankrolling by corporate fortune versus rural Vermonters working together for the common good. Kingdom Trails landowners receive no economic compensation for the use of their property, because if they did they could be sued under Vermont law if there were an accident. Instead, they offer their land for the benefit of the

A BIG A IL JOHNS TON (P OR T R A I T ); K E A R A K R ESSER SK I ( T R A IL)

trails without the challenge of having to remove large rocks. Darling Hill became the hub of the trail system he created. As Worth worked in secret, he was surprised at the generosity of the community. A 70-year-old local named Herb let him build a trail through his garden. Worth christened it Herb’s in his honor. Naming trails after landowners who let him use their property became a tradition. Later, Worth fell into casual conversation with some loggers who were bewildered to see him riding his bicycle down a steep skid road near a big sugarhouse. Worth told them he was trying to link up another trail but saw that his path was blocked by massive trunks. The next day he returned to discover that the loggers had used their bulldozers to clear the way. When he expanded, though, he realized he was almost certainly going to run afoul of those whose land he had used without permission. His grand plan took a major step forward in 1993 when Doug Kitchel, a local politician and former owner of Burke Mountain, saw the huge economic potential that Worth, whom he considered a visionary, was building in the area. Kitchel went door-to-door with Worth asking for landowner permission, which was almost always granted. The following year the nonprofit Kingdom Trail Association (KTA) was formed. In 1998 it sold maps for Worth’s growing system, which was also a way to get riders to pay for access; by 2000, an expansive 50 miles of handbuilt trails were in operation. Worth’s bike rental business flourished as bikers thronged the trails, riding in all weather. While word spread about Kingdom Trails, there was symmetry with the burgeoning popularity of mountain biking and its renegade culture. The bikes that Worth sold became more advanced, with disc brakes like a car’s, and carbon frames that could withstand being ridden over stumps or rocks at high speed. But since these modern mountain bikes can cost $7,000, East Burke began to fill with riders atop expensive machines and with a sense of entitlement to match. “We were starting to see a little attitude ’round here,” Worth recalls. And the number of riders coming to the trails around East Burke has kept growing. From 2016 to 2018, for instance, rider visits went from 94,000 to a staggering 137,000—a jump of 50 percent in only two years. The New England Mountain Bike Association’s annual party, NEMBAfest, a carnivalesque shindig of New England IPAs and demo bikes from leading manufacturers, takes place on Darling Hill every summer. Over 4,000 revelers attended in 2019. Winterbike, a fat-biking event that began in 2011, also flourished. Today, the trails give an estimated $10 million boost to the local economy. Seeing the potential of the sport, new businesses followed. On the site of an old gravel pit now stands Mike’s Tiki Bar, where tales of valor and derring-do on the trails run rampant. The Burke Publick House and the Foggy Goggle, both catering to appetites for beer and partying, 98 |

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Young bikers cruise down Shoots and Ladders on one of the guided KT Kids Rides offered each summer by the Kingdom Trails Association (KTA) and the Northwoods Stewardship Center. opposite: KTA executive director Abby Long.

community, helping local businesses. “It’s good for the area and good for the economy,” says Walter Norman, who owns 1,100 acres and whose land I was riding on with Worth. “Some people say we’re turning the woods into Disneyland, but I don’t want that either. People are able to get out in the woods and explore. And there’s no emissions from something like ATVs.”

A BIG A IL JOHNS TON (P OR T R A I T ); K E A R A K R ESSER SK I ( T R A IL)

THE FRACTURE

But in November 2019, the wheels began to come off one of Vermont’s greatest economic success stories. Three prominent landowners at the heart of the trail system on Darling Hill—Sue and Gary Burrington (for whom the Burrington Bench Trail is named), Sharon Dolloff, and Mary Jane Miller—abruptly withdrew permission for their properties to be used for mountain biking. They sent a letter to KTA executive director Abby Long demanding all signs be removed and the trails closed. “Immediately, I wanted to reach out to the landowners,” Long says, “but they chose not to communicate with us. I haven’t heard from the landowners what exactly caused it, but I believe it was multiple incidents. I think it was the strain that they felt from the numbers they were seeing. What we do know is that they wanted their privacy back.” The details of their complaints remain a mystery. No one in the community seems to want to talk about it for fear of JULY | AUGUST 2021

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upsetting neighbors and business owners who depend on the income generated from Kingdom Trails. One rumor is that a mountain biker had sworn at one of the landowners riding her horse on her own land. Other landowners complained of bikers being disrespectful, engaging in verbal altercations, and even trespassing to swim in private ponds. Hastily convened meetings were called as shock and fear spread through the community, heightened by a conflagration on social media. Online forums for mountain bikers lit up with furious arguments all over the country, with riders assigning blame for the behavior that led to the closure, and making personal attacks and threats against the landowners and each other. The now-forbidden land had composed the central hub of the system, on Darling Hill, where Worth first began his creation. Losing this crucial square mile containing 12½ miles of trails ripped the heart out of the system, destroying the interconnectedness that had made it unique. Worth was “surprised and devastated” when he heard the news because it was, simply, “the finest example of a trail building canvas that I had ever seen.” Moreover, at the outset, the landowners had offered Worth total access to do whatever he wanted on their land. “Many of my finest trail scouting, trail building, and certainly trail riding experiences have been on these properties,” he told me. The ramifications were seismic. “The whole thing fractured,” says CJ Scott, Worth’s former intern and protégé, | 99

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The 2020 debut of the Inn at Burklyn, which offers luxury lodging in the heart of the trails network, speaks to the growing affluence of Kingdom Trails visitors. opposite: Olympic medalist Georgia Gould, who moved to East Burke in 2018, today sits on the KTA board.

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he says. “Oh man, this is painful.” He shows me how runoff from recent rainfall has torn a trail apart. Scott knows who to blame for land permission being withdrawn. “Mountain bikers have changed,” he admits. “They feel as though they own the trails, that people should be grateful to have them here. You can tell them to respect what we built here, but if just 5 percent of 130,000 riders are idiots, well…” He pauses. “That is still an awful lot of a--holes.”

TRUE BELIEVERS

Georgia Gould, an Olympic-medalist mountain biker and one of the greatest American women cyclists of all time, steers her Specialized Epic Evo over the Black Bear Trail, a fast and aggressive descent of humpbacks and sharp turns. She gives me instruction, preventing me from vaulting over the handlebars. “Stand on your pedals on the balls of your feet! Let the bike move beneath you!” Gould has joined Worth and me on our ride. She and her husband, Dusty LaBarr, moved to East Burke in 2018 from Colorado, after she retired from her racing career. The couple were looking for an affordable place to raise a family with a more relaxed pace of life while still offering the outdoor life they craved. Gould quickly became a fixture in the town, riding while pregnant and then later, after her son, Jude, was born, while he was seated at the front of her

RODEO & CO. PHOTOGR APHY (INN); ABIGAIL JOHNSTON (PORTR AIT)

who first learned how to build trails back in 2002 and is now the KTA’s trails manager. He tells me this as we are hiking toward the closed areas on Darling Hill to see what has been lost. “When that happened, we suddenly felt that the whole thing was going to go down,” he says. “We said to each other, ‘We’re going to be in a lot of trouble.’ The landowners just pulled out. There was no warning. It damaged a lot of businesses, people’s livelihoods. I get it that the locals were complaining that they couldn’t even make it into town to get milk on the weekend because there were so many cars and bikes.” But he continues, “We lost sight of what we were doing. We focused on business success, money, more businesses coming here and opening up— people having a great time. In the end, we were victims of our own success.” We come across a makeshift cordon with a sign saying No bikes beyond this point. And just in case there’s any doubt, my cellphone erupts with a message from the mountain biking trail app that Scott designed with the manufacturer, Ondago: WARNING—You are currently on a trail that is restricted to mountain bikes. Please be respectful of our closures and our landowners. As we head deeper in, Scott points out trails that he labored over, now untended, berms collapsed, swallowed by rampaging vegetation. He becomes emotional. “It’s been a year and a half since I’ve been in here,”

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mountain bike and pedaling some of the easier trails. “My husband was like, ‘Are you kidding? That is the most dangerous thing I have seen!’” she says. “But I know the safest place for him, and where I have the most control over things in life, is on my mountain bike.” Three months after giving birth, she took part in a race. “Some of the riders were pretty aggressive, using elbows,” she says, laughing. “They were like, ‘I’m not going to get beaten by the lady breastfeeding her baby in the parking lot before the race!’” Gould and her family live north of town, on land with an apple tree and a garden where they tend chickens and bees. Trails run through the property, so they are part of the system. They love the sense of community. “People just knock on your door and walk in your house,” she says. “When my son was born, I got a card from someone I didn’t know saying, ‘To the parents of the new baby boy.’” Gould sits on the KTA board and plays a key role in the trails’ development, although news of the loss of permissions hit her hard after having just moved here. “Kingdom Trails should have been reaching out to landowners to make sure they were happy and to see what was going on,” she says. “I’m hopeful that the landowners may give the trails back, but I think when they said, ‘Take all the signs out and don’t let anyone on anymore,’ it is hard to walk that back.”

“It is amazing that landowners would open themselves up to something like this, but there is a fragility to that, and a threshold and a balance.” If Gould represents a new wave of out-of-towners looking to settle in East Burke, then there are also those like Jody Fried, a smiling, optimistic soul who grew up here, left, then returned to give his kids the type of childhood he remembered. He left a career with a multibillion-dollar corporate health-care company in Colorado and moved back to East Burke in 1999, when he bought the town’s store and gas station and became an important voice in ways to revitalize the Northeast Kingdom. He is past president of the Burke Area Chamber of Commerce, executive director of Catamount Film and Arts in St. Johnsbury, and director of the Vermont Leadership Institute. Looking back on growing up here, he remembers the economic devastation wrought on local towns in poor snow years, and how the conditions at Burke Mountain failed to attract skiers. “A whole bunch of businesses, like bedand-breakfasts, would close in the spring,” he says. But the resilience of the community in working together and sharing land and natural resources was what made the place so special, he adds. “For example, we never gave any thought to where we would go f ishing when we were growing up—even if it was someone else’s pond, that’s just what we did. It’s part of the heritage of the place. It goes back generations, when folks have granted access to their lands for everyone: cross-country skiers, hikers, hunters.” There is no better advocate for the health benefits of the trails than this avid mountain biker. In 2014 Fried was diagnosed with two very aggressive forms of cancer. After being bedridden for four months, he took to his mountain bike to ride the snow and to build up strength in his lungs. “Of all the trails, I chose Widowmaker,” he says. “The cold on my face, the glistening snow, the intense physical activity, [it] puts me in an intense meditative state. Every day I am eternally grateful to be here. “It is amazing that so many landowners would open themselves up to something like this,” he continues, “but there is a fragility to that, and a threshold and a balance, and if that gets out of whack it can get threatened. But there has to be a balance between economic growth and quality of life.” | 101

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Trust, along with 40 neighboring acres, when it heard that the land was going to be turned into a housing development on Darling Hill. “It was somewhat controversial,” says Gould, as we ride to Sidewinder, a swooping half corkscrew of a run that riders like to video themselves attacking and post to YouTube. “Some people don’t want to buy land for Kingdom Trails, as it could create a situation where people will only want to sell for mountain bike access land and the prices will inflate.” Yet so far the move has been successful. Now, special committees reach out to address landowners’ concerns every month. “Trail ambassadors” ride the trails to monitor miscreants. A “rider education” program teaches bikers about where they are riding and whom they should be grateful to. And a $100,000 feasibility study was undertaken by a Burlington engineering firm to offer suggestions on easing parking congestion both in town and near trailheads. Gould says she and her family have no regrets about their NEWENGLAND.COM

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ABIGAIL JOHNSTON

Perhaps nothing is more significant in the development of East Burke’s growing ability to re-create itself and draw aff luent clientele than the renovation of the neoclassical mansion-turned-inn Burklyn Hall, which stands proudly atop 1,400 acres at the peak of Darling Hill. The former home of Elmer Darling, a prominent 19thcentury New York businessman and hotel owner who bought land in East Burke and invested in mills and farms, it had fallen into decay after its previous use as a dormitory for Lyndon College. Then local mountain biking fans Sharon and Bob Morse brought it to the attention of Bob’s cousin, Marci, and her husband, James Crone, a successful property developer from California. Crone bought the mansion for $1.8 million in 2018, setting the stage to rehabilitate it as a luxury inn. “We wanted to bring the mansion into this century in the way Elmer would have done it,” Crone tells me, as he points out the original peacock wallpaper in the inn’s wood-paneled office. “You will find nothing in here from Home Depot.” The building was in such disrepair that one couldn’t even walk on the front porch without the risk of crashing through rotten boards. Materials were sourced from craftsmen across the country to ensure the mansion was kept as originally envisioned, only updated. No nails were used in the construction, lest the vibration damage the plaster. They took down the three acres of moribund pines that darkened the house and obscured it from sight. Finally, the renovated mansion with its restored gabled dormers again stood sentinel over East Burke. And then, just a few months before the formal opening, disaster struck: One of the greatest selling points of the new business, direct access to Kingdom Trails, was lost. The Mansion Trail, which connected to the Darling Hill network, was now in the no-ride zone, and bikers would be pushed onto busy roads to reach different parts of the trail. Sharon Morse worked with CJ Scott to come up with a solution. They designed and built the Burklyn Loop Trail—specially geared to families and children—to tie back into the network and help keep riders off the roads. And in its way, it links back to the start of Kingdom Trails three decades ago, when John Worth knew if he built it, people would come. One morning, while I am still wondering what the future holds for East Burke and Kingdom Trails, I sweep down the grand driveway of the inn and meet Georgia Gould at the bottom. We ride to Heaven’s Bench, so called because of its sweeping views from Darling Hill. It is a trail that represents just one of a number of initiatives that management is taking to preserve the trails. In 2015 the KTA paid $300,000 for 133 acres to secure the trails on that land, which were some of the first built by Worth. And the association recently bought 229 acres from Burke Mountain in conjunction with the Vermont Land

ABIGAIL JOHNSTON

The KTA’s Abby Long and CJ Scott on Heaven’s Bench, which offers 360-degree views of Kingdom Trails’ signature mix of forest, farm, and mountain.

move to Vermont; in fact, they wish they had done it earlier. “When the pandemic hit and my friends in New York were cooped up in tiny apartments, I was hitting the trails here like nothing had happened,” she says. “Actually, I think the pandemic has been good for Kingdom Trails. We needed a reset here, for things to calm down and to refocus.” When I ride again with Worth, he acknowledges the KTA did not “do the best job” respecting, hearing, and thanking the landowners. “This was an eye-opener for us, and I know we have learned from it and taken major steps to make our landowner relationships better.” He says Kingdom Trails will “rebound and continue to grow and prosper.” Worth points out that they built 12 more miles of trails in 2020, largely to the northeast of town, in the East Haven area, away from Darling Hill, and the goal is to add at least five more miles a year. These days they use machines, a far cry from Worth doing it all by hand all those years ago. JULY | AUGUST 2021

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Worth hopes one day the network will link with West Burke, about six miles to the northwest. It is a town just holding on, with a shrinking population of just 320. The One Burke initiative, started in 2017 with the Vermont Council on Rural Development, is being led by the West Burke community. The plan is to connect the trails with that town to help bring it economic prosperity while alleviating the demand on East Burke’s services and roads. Worth and I cover 17 miles of uninterrupted single-track on our ride, scaling 1,600 feet of heart-thumping ascents, a glorious journey into the unspoiled beauty of the Northeast Kingdom. For the last mile we ride through the welltended back meadow of his neighbors, a retired couple who wave as we pedal through. Back at his own house, Worth offers me a local IPA as we sit on his back deck, admiring the mountains threaded with his trails. “It’s funny how all trails begin and end at my house,” he says with a grin, “one way or another.” | 103

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CONVERSATIONS

VARSHINI PRAKASH

A NEW GENERATION’S VOICE ON CLIMATE CHANGE.

I N T E RV I E W BY BI LL M C K I BBE N

Climate policy speaks with a Bay State accent: Former Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is the global climate czar for the Biden administration, and Gina McCarthy, a Dorchester girl who once worked on Beacon Hill, is his domestic counterpart. But it can be argued that Varshini Prakash, the 28-year-old founder of the Sunrise Movement, is just as responsible for the prominence of climate policy in the new administration’s agenda. A child of the Boston suburbs, Prakash cut her teeth in organizing as a 19-year-old college junior in the successful fight to get UMass to divest from fossil fuels. She founded Sunrise with fellow recent college grads, and it took off in 2018 when newly elected Congresswoman Alexandria OcasioCortez joined them at a sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in support of a Green New Deal. Named by Bernie Sanders as part of his team to bargain with the Biden campaign as the Democratic nomination contest wound down last year, Prakash and her Sunrise colleagues also helped Ed Markey come from behind to decisively beat Joe Kennedy in the Massachusetts Senate primary. She is the co-editor of Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can, published last August. I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y B I J O U K A R M A N

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Bill McKibben: So, tell me where your

story begins. I know a part of it starts around Boston. Varshini Prakash: I was born in Waltham and I grew up in Acton, which is just a classic New England suburb. I think my story begins as a love story with the world around me. I spent so much time outside when I was younger, mucking about in the mud and rolling giant stones from one side of my parents’ yard to the other. It became this deeply sacred place, a place to sort of run away from whatever was troubling me in my family or when I was getting anxiety as a preteen and whatnot. I created this real friendship between the trees and the squirrels and myself, and it became home. McKibben: Waltham and Acton are

deep suburbs, Acton especially. Were you just in your backyard? Were you out in the parks and beaches of the Bay State? Prakash: No, literally it was like I lived in one house and my best friend lived in the house across the street. Behind her, she had this 20-foot stretch of trees. Every afternoon after school or in the summer, we would walk up to that small stretch of trees. We would link arms and we would step in as though it was some kind of ritual of entering nature. It was this really beautiful place where we got to be imaginative. We had agency to 106 |

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create and we built lakes, which were really just sort of mosquito-infested ponds. We would have gardens. We’d take each other on guided tours of the small stretch of woods. You could see the very busy road behind her house right through it, but there was something about that, this liminal space of just being transported and almost being suspended in time. McKibben: That’s an amazing story.

What seasons were your favorite parts of that? Prakash: Oh, I loved it all. I think I loved spring and summer the most. Spring, because the best smell in the world is the smell of the earth as it’s transitioning from snow to melting. Everything was mushy and starting to get green. It was just very magical. Then summer, it was like I was outside all day every day as much as possible. Winter, we would go sledding and try not to crash into the trees. I think I disliked fall the most because school would be starting and I’d always be sick. So I hated fall when I was younger. Now that I’m older, I love fall. It’s a very contemplative time of the year. McKibben: How did your family shape

your outlook on the world?

Prakash: I think the story of my

parents, who grew up in India, was such an intrinsic part of me. I was born near the home of the American Revolution, but I never lost the part of me that yearned for and loved India

with all my heart. It’s in your blood. Growing up, I was very privileged and lucky to be able to visit there every couple of years. It is where the beauty of the world is in full force, and the violence and injustice of the world is in full force as well. You see those things literally side by side. I remember one of my first experiences of realizing deep injustice was being in India when I was 4 or 5 years old and seeing little kids who were the exact same age as me on the street begging for food, and just crying to my parents after that, not understanding why we had such different lives. Then I also remember my dad telling me about growing up in this one-room house in India on the beach. A whole half mile of beach was his front yard, and he’d be playing cricket with his friends and eating mangoes on the rooftop of his house. The food that his mom made. His dad coming home on a motorcycle every night. I felt like the place was alive with so much magic, the color, the vibrancy. I loved it deeply, both for the lessons that it taught me about injustice so early on, and for just what life in its full vibrancy can look like. McKibben: Why did you decide on

UMass? And what was it like to discover your calling there? Prakash: Well, if I’m being totally honest with you, UMass had two things. One, it had an urban agriculture program that I was very excited about. Two, the food at UMass was just so much better than any other school that I was even contemplating. To this day, I think it’s like number two in the country for quality of food. And I was also going with one of my best friends. I think my adolescence was demarcated a lot by learning about and feeling this real weight of the crises that were emerging around the world: the water crisis, inequality, climate change, seeing Hurricane Katrina happen, and so on and so forth. NEWENGLAND.COM

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R ACHAEL WARRINER/SHUT TERSTOCK

For me, interviewing Prakash was a great pleasure. I was 28—and also a child of the Boston suburbs—in 1989 when I published The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience about climate change. I didn’t recognize at the time what a battle it would turn out to be. Varshini has lived in that fight her whole conscious life, and likely will continue to be when she’s my age.

R ACHAEL WARRINER/SHUT TERSTOCK

But I was mostly just frustrated by not knowing what to do, not knowing how to take action. I feel like my education at UMass was partially the academic courses that I took, but it became this experiential-growth moment for me in jumping straight into organizing and feeling for the first time that this is where our stories come together. I feel really grateful, because the divestment movement allowed me to see that it wasn’t just single consumerbased actions that we could take as individuals. It wasn’t just isolated incidents of recycling. It was about a collective effort toward systemic change that ultimately threatens the very status quo. That was what we were doing with the fossil fuel industry. That was how I felt when we were able to get 4,000 UMass students to sign a petition calling for the administration to divest. I think I learned these lessons so early by walking into meetings with the university’s board of investors and having one of them, after I shared the story of why I cared about the climate crisis, just look at me and say, “I hear what you’re saying, but all I care about is making money.” That campaign culminated in this weeklong sit-in where 34 people were arrested for civil disobedience on UMass’s campus, something that hasn’t happened since the last great divestment movement there, about South African apartheid. So it was this lesson that ordinary people can work together with each other to do really extraordinary things. Things that seemed completely politically impossible become politically probable or inevitable if we organize to make it so. McKibben: What did you learn about

organizing in the process?

Prakash: That your campaign and

your collective effort to achieve whatever your objective is basically starts at the word “no.” So when administrators say, “This is impossible, JULY | AUGUST 2021

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“I’ve always been tenacious in my life. ‘No’ has been hard for me to take as an answer in general.”

Varshini Prakash, front and center at the 2018 Green New Deal sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office in D.C.

we don’t support this, we’re not going to do it,” I’ve noticed a lot of young people just say, “Oh well, it seems like they said no. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be possible here.” Or just be caught up in committees and all of these shenanigans that they put you through in large part just to kick the can down the road and hope that you graduate and the problem goes away. What we did at UMass was refuse to take no for an answer. I know that sounds kind of cliché. If that sit-in hadn’t worked, we wouldn’t have just disbanded our campaign. We would have said what’s next, what’s the next escalation that needs to happen to keep this front and center and ensure that it becomes reality. I think that is the level of tenacity that’s required at any scale. During the civil rights movement, people could have given up and said, “Oh well, looks like slavery is just going to be a thing forever, or Jim Crow is just going to be a thing forever, or looks like persecuting undocumented students is just going to be a thing forever. I guess we just will give up and go home.” Change then

would never happen. So I’ve always been tenacious in my life. “No” has been hard for me to take as an answer in general, and it definitely was not going to be an answer in this vein. McKibben: One of the arguments

I think you were making from the beginning at UMass, and later went on to inform your work at Sunrise, was about intergenerational justice. Prakash: At the beginning of when I was getting involved in divestment, I was active in a lot of the Massachusetts climate chapters and working with young people but also elder folks as well. One time when we were trying to shut down this coal plant in southern Massachusetts, I was arrested alongside 40 other people. The vast majority of the people who were risking arrest in that moment were either under the age of 30 or over the age of 60. There was this great sense of, These are my elders. This sense of, Wow, this generation of people is deeply contemplating, “We only have a few years left on this earth—what kind of world do we want to leave behind for our | 107

5/13/21 1:18 PM

“We need the wisdom of our elders. We need their long view. Oftentimes I have young people in our movement who are like, ‘It’s been six months. Why hasn’t the world completely changed?’”

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immediate future by young people. I think we need to balance both of those things collectively. McKibben: Tell me how Sunrise

came to be.

Prakash: The idea kind of came

about a few months after I graduated in 2015. During this time, we were seeing the rise of both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, and watching this sort of right-wing populism and left-wing populism emerge all at once. There was a certain point where the movement around divestment also needed to engage with the political sphere to fundamentally pass federal legislation. We were seeing the worsening climate crisis while grappling with the fact that our existing movements were too focused on current navel-gazing and preaching to the choir and inter-squabbling. We were not really focused on building power, to be totally frank, but there was also a ripening. There was a real

hunger for a movement that was tailored for young people and really inciting young people to action. The rationale for Sunrise became: How could we create a youth movement that could reach millions of young people, and that could connect both building grassroots energy and people power with political power that could center the climate conversation in American politics? So we collected folks from across the climate movement, basically strategic planning for a movement organization for the next year and a half. We tested it with hundreds and hundreds of people and got their, at times, very intense feedback on it, and then launched in the summer of 2017 with a four-year vision for making climate justice a priority in American politics. RICK FRIEDMAN

children and our grandchildren?” I felt like I was that grandchild who was picking up the baton and thinking, What is the world that I want to grow into and what is the world that I want to leave behind? This sense of thinking generations in advance or being able to contemplate a sense of the world and its well-being far beyond your own very myopic narrow time on this earth was really meaningful to me. We need a lot more of that. We need the wisdom of our elders. We need their long view. Oftentimes I have young people in our movement who are like, “It’s been six months. Why hasn’t the world completely changed?” I’m like, “It takes longer than that. Be patient.” So it’s nice to be working with elders who have seen the tides of politics turn and change for decades and decades and are able to give us the long view and yet be balanced by this fierceness, this voracity, this hunger for action and change in the

McKibben: In a sense, the public

coming-out party for Sunrise—the moment when the political world NEWENGLAND.COM

5/13/21 1:19 PM

ArtRobtSextnPromise0108 11/19/07 10:05 AM Page 1 ArtRobtSextnPromise0108 11/19/07 10:05 AM Page 1

A Most Unusual Gift of Love A Most Unusual Gift of Love THE POEM READS: THE POEM READS:

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in when heaven, too,time you on willearth have my hand.” and our is through,

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109_YK0721_ArtRobtSexton.indd 109

5/17/21 10:21 AM

began to pay attention, really—was that day, November 13, 2018, when you sat down in Nancy Pelosi’s office and were joined by AOC. That doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you could have completely planned out in advance and understood exactly how it was all going to work. Prakash: We absolutely did not know that [AOC] was going to join. I actually remember three days prior asking her to tweet in support of us. She said, “Actually, I’m going to show up.” We had no idea that she was going to do that, so all of a sudden we knew it was going to become something bigger than what we had anticipated. I think our expectations at the time were, if we get a line in a New York Times article about this, that is going to be huge. That will change everything. That will be a determinant of success for this action. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stood on that table and gave that rousing speech, when all that started, I began getting an inkling that, OK, maybe this might be bigger than what we thought it was going to be. In the days following, we just saw thousands and thousands and thousands of articles about the Green New Deal emerge overnight. McKibben: When you meet someone

who hasn’t heard anything more than the phrase “Green New Deal” or maybe seen Fox describe it as getting rid of hamburgers or something, how do you describe what it is, and why is enunciating that vision important? Prakash: The way I talk about it is essentially it’s a plan that tackles three of the greatest crises we face as a society all at once: economic inequality, racial inequality, and climate change. It’s a plan for addressing the climate crisis that is also a massive investment in the public good and in Americans, and in building a green jobs and manufacturing infrastructure plan that this country hasn’t seen in 100 years. For me, it’s also about connecting with the issue that people care about. 110 |

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Sometimes, before I even talk about the vision of what the Green New Deal is, I’ll ask people, “What do you care about?” Whenever I tell people what I do for work, it always starts up an interesting conversation. I remember this awesome conversation with a Republican on a flight to Dallas. He was repeating a lot of points that I’ve heard on Fox News about the Green New Deal. We dug into his past a little bit and he said, “Well, I really care about the environment. My parents were dairy farmers. I’m from Idaho. Nature really matters to me.” We were able to get to a place where I was able to actually share what the Green New Deal was through the vantage point of this is about making sure that everyone has rights to clean air and clean water, and this is about making sure everyone has rights to access green spaces and that we can serve our land. This is a way we can ensure that we create tens of millions of good jobs and actually boost the economy, not destroy it. McKibben: Do you think it’s radical?

Does it strike you as a radical thing?

Prakash: Not at all. To me, the

Green New Deal is ultimately just the bare minimum that we need to do to preserve this planet for future generations. It is the bare minimum that we need to do to prevent quite literally humanitarian and ecological breakdown. Maybe the planet will be here for years to come, but we’re in the midst of a sixth mass extinction. We’re in the midst of a climate crisis.

McKibben: The presidential

candidate that you all had backed hard for president, Bernie, a fellow New Englander, eventually lost his campaign. The guy that you’d given an F for his climate plan, Joe Biden, emerged as the candidate. Yet, as of the moment he became the candidate last summer, his team was very much in dialogue with you guys in figuring

out what his climate agenda was going to look like. Prakash: I felt surprisingly heard during that task force process. We were coming in having played a significant role in the primary, and that helped us. But also, to their credit, Gina McCarthy and John Kerry were very clear, I think, that they wanted to improve Joe Biden’s climate plan and knew that it wasn’t enough. There was a fair bit of wanting to meet not even in the middle but beyond where Joe Biden wanted to be. McKibben: Well, it’s an interesting

moment now. You got your start with civil disobedience in the office of the Speaker of the House. But you’re also now very much on the inside. You’re seeing the things that you’ve called for be made into law right away. Are you able to explain to your own crew that there are times when calling people out isn’t the only thing to do? Prakash: Absolutely. I think we’ve been doing a fair bit of that. The key to doing good organizing is to constantly have the full vision, the full North Star, in front of you every step of the way, and to claim victory every step of the way for everything that you win. I think it’s hard for a lot of young people who felt disillusioned by Biden, or who felt frustrated with his policies on the campaign trail, to kind of come around to that, but it’s been important for our leadership to again and again and again communicate that this is a win, this is us being heard. This is our ideas that they told us were fringe becoming mainstream. Because in large part we organized for it and because they are popular good ideas. McKibben: Sensible ideas. Prakash: Exactly.

Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books on the environment, including his most recent, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?, published in 2019. NEWENGLAND.COM

5/18/21 3:07 PM

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(Continued from p. 68) with actors and the Wampanoag Homesite, populated not by actors but by Indigenous interpreters. It also boasts a full-scale reproduction of the Mayflower II, fresh off a threeyear, multimillion-dollar restoration. plimoth.org

BEACH OUTINGS CRANE BEACH, Ipswich, MA. For sheer

scenic beauty, no New England strand tops Crane Beach, another jewel in the treasure chest of properties owned by the nonprofit Trustees of Reservations. This four-mile stretch of soft, white sand is set against a backdrop of undulating dunes, piping plovers, and the grand mansion at Castle Hill. If you walk a bit, you’ll find a private spot, even in high summer. There are also plenty of shallows and tidepools for kids to explore. Locals caution that July’s greenhead f lies can be pesky—but the months before and after are heaven. thetrustees.org

HAMMONASSET BEACH STATE PARK,

Madison, CT. From 1919 to 1925, the state anted up $185,000 for 565 shorefront acres, and today its premier waterfront park covers more than 900. This two-mile golden crescent is hands down the best public beach in Connecticut, spring, summer, and fall. It’s perfect for swimming, boating, and fishing, while the acreage is ideal for playing ball, picnicking, and camping. The state—and all of us—got one great deal. ct.gov/deep POPHAM BEACH, Phippsburg, ME. There’s nothing manicured about this rare spit of sand sandwiched between rocky shores, home to pieces of driftwood, backed by dwarf pines and uprooted trees. Come at low tide, and the grooved sand leads to a tiny island where seagulls have picked over unlucky crabs, and mussels lie exposed on the kelp. When the water rolls in, kids swim in the surprisingly warm waters of the tidal pool as parents take long beach walks, watching threemasted schooners and lobstermen cruise past pine-studded islands and lighthouses. Let the cool breeze blow through your hair and breathe in the salty air. This is the raw Maine coast you’ve yearned for. maine.gov SURFING AT TOWN BEACH, Narragansett, RI. Town Beach in Narragansett is a lovely place for sitting and soaking up sun. But when there are storms over the Atlantic, the swells get gnarly, and the surfers come out in droves. You can surf this section of Narragansett

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BIKE EXCURSIONS CAPE COD RAIL TRAIL, Dennis to Wellfleet,

MA. It wasn’t so long ago that this f lat, 25-mile-long dedicated bike trail was seen as almost a hazard by the state. Now it’s practically a natural resource, with millions of dollars poured into it to rehab bridges, tunnels, and culverts, and to widen and repave the route. The trail, which starts mid-Cape at Route 134 in Dennis and extends to Wellf leet, follows the former Old Colony Railroad bed, past lakes and marshland, forests and harbors. At the Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham, don’t miss the spur trail that heads to the crashing waves of the Atlantic. Don’t have your own wheels? Outfitters along the route are happy to rent you a ride. mass.gov EAST BAY BIKE PATH, Bristol to Providence, RI. Sights, sounds, and scents of the bay accompany your walk or ride along this former railbed of the Providence/ Worcester line. Stretching 14½ miles along the shore from Independence Park in Bristol to India Point Park in Providence, this popular path is the keystone of a huge network of bike lanes and trails throughout Rhode Island. Possible stops include wildlife watching at Audubon’s Environmental Education Center and grabbing a Del’s frozen lemonade at Colt State Park. dot.ri.gov FARMINGTON RIVER TRAIL, Farmington, CT. Just a 10-minute drive from the hubbub of Hartford, cyclists can bike into some of the prettiest landscapes in Connecticut on this 18-mile recreational trail between Farmington and Simsbury. Built on the former Central New England Railroad bed, the largely paved trail runs along a stretch of the Farmington River and provides plentiful opportunities for stops and side trips, such as the beautiful old industrial village of Collinsville. Cyclists who want to keep going can connect to the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail, which when complete will sprawl all the way from the Berkshire foothills to Long Island Sound. fchtrail.org

BUCKET-LIST HIKES BOLD COAST TRAIL, Cutler, ME. Along

this 10-mile hiking loop over rugged ocean cliffs and through forests of spruce and fir, nature hasn’t been groomed or reduced to some pretty painting for

visitors to come and gaze at. This is a place to interact with the land, to pause to smell the wildf lowers, to get a little muddy, to work up some sweat, to dangle your feet atop a bluff. It’s a bold idea, but if you can slow down enough to do it, you may just discover that there are still spots for true adventure. maine.gov MOUNT MONADNOCK, Jaffrey and Dublin, NH. From the summit of Monadnock, see what Mark Twain and Henry David Thoreau saw on a clear day: all six New England states. Routes include the meandering Pumpelly Trail near the shores of sparkling Dublin Lake, or the popular White Dot Trail from Monadnock State Park in Jaffrey. This 3,165-foot peak wasn’t born bald, but early settlers denuded it when they burned out the packs of wolves inhabiting the summit. Ever since, its lovely views and 40 miles of trails have fired the imaginations of artists, writers, and more hikers than almost any other mountain in the world. nhstateparks.org

CLASSIC CRUISES ISLES OF SHOALS STEAMSHIP CO.,

Portsmouth, NH. Part of the cluster of nine scenic, rocky islands that compose the Isles of Shoals, Star Island lies some 10 miles out from Portsmouth Harbor. You’ll arrive aboard the M/V Challenger and then disembark onto a rock-strewn, sea-splashed nugget. On a hot, bluesky day, spend your time on the island exploring, or give yourself the shivers by reading Anita Shreve’s The Weight of Water, a historical novel about the real-life double murder that took place on nearby Smuttynose Island in 1873. islesofshoals.com LAKE CHAMPLAIN FERRIES, Burlington, VT. Founded in 1826, this venerable ferry is just the ticket for a scenic ride across Vermont’s “Great Lake.” There are three crossings to choose from, covering different portions of Champlain and ranging from about 15 minutes to an hour. We recommend opting for the latter, which is a seasonal offering between Burlington and Port Kent, New York, that traverses the broadest and most majestic part of Champlain. Spectacular views of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks, along with lake vistas to the north and south, elevate this ferry ride above the rest. ferries.com WINDJAMMERS, Camden and Rockland, ME. The magic of spending a few days on an authentic Maine windjammer is that you see the coast everyone hopes to see but few actually do. These independently owned and operated boats come in all shapes and sizes—from a rare three-masted schooner built in

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1900 to haul cargo, to a 1922 racing yacht, to a 1950s ship built especially for windjamming cruises—but all offer an unforgettable maritime adventure. You can help raise the sails if you have the inclination, or kick back and relax if you don’t. sailmainecoast.com; mainewindjammercruises.com

FAMILY FUN CANOBIE LAKE PARK, Salem, NH. From its

early days as a “pleasure resort” in 1902, with canoeing and a botanical garden, Canobie Lake has evolved into a classic New England amusement park with actual fear-factor ratings. Its 85 rides, games, and attractions include thrill rides, such as the Corkscrew Coaster and the Starblaster, a shuttle liftoff meets bungee jumping that demands intrepid commitment. Those of us who like a slower pulse rate can stick with family rides like Crazy Cups and Dodgem bumper cars. canobie.com DINOSAUR STATE PARK, Rocky Hill, CT. In 1966, a worker excavating this location for a new state building saw something unusual—a dinosaur track. Turns out that 200 million years ago this was the stomping ground of Dilophosaurus, an 8-foot-tall, 20-footlong dinosaur. Today this 63-acre park encompasses the largest dinosaur-track site in North America. Indoors under a giant geodesic dome, you can see a dramatic display of 500 tracks with dioramas and exhibits, while outdoors, kids whose parents call ahead and bring their own materials can make plaster casts of tracks. Afterwards, the whole family can picnic on the grounds, explore two miles of trails, and walk a timeline that brings home just what Johnny-come-latelys we humans are. dinosaurstatepark.org FLYING HORSE CAROUSEL, Watch Hill, RI. In the charming Victorian-era seaside village of Watch Hill, the Flying Horse Carousel claims to be one of the nation’s oldest carousels, built around 1867. (To claim the top spot outright would risk a battle with a carousel on Martha’s Vineyard.) However, this is probably the nation’s last surviving example of the “f lying horses” model, which means that its hand-carved wooden steeds are not attached to poles that go up and down. Instead, they hang suspended from a center frame, causing them to f ly out when the carousel turns. The ride is for kids only, but the spectacle is free for all to enjoy. merrygoroundbeach.com THE GOLDENROD, York Beach, ME. Walking or driving around York Beach, you’re sure to spot the Goldenrod.

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Look for the kids mesmerized on the sidewalk, staring through windows at the way the taffy machines twist and pull and slice and wrap millions of pieces of saltwater taffy. More than 50 tons of saltwater taffy are produced annually in the front room of this strikingly old-fashioned restaurant, which has roots back to 1896. An argument over the best f lavors can occupy a long car ride, while everyone slurps and chews on their favorite piece. thegoldenrod.com

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Mary Baker Eddy Library is home to a one-of-a-kind structure: the world’s only walk-in, stained-glass globe that allows the surface of the earth to be viewed without distortion. Three stories high and measuring 30 feet in diameter, this illuminated exhibit is composed of 206 LED fixtures, which when programmed together produce at least 16 million colors. The Mapparium also features what’s known as a “whispering gallery” because of its unique acoustics. Someone speaking quietly at one end of the Mapparium can be heard with perfect clarity by someone at the opposite end. Inside the Mapparium, every visitor’s voice can be heard—symbolizing, in a way, how we are all truly global citizens. marybakereddylibrary.org

MOUNT WASHINGTON COG RAILWAY,

Bretton Woods, NH. This jiggling, chattering antique train is a durable testament to the ingenuity and perseverance of one man. Locals derided New Hampshire native Sylvester Marsh’s “crazy” plan to go more than three miles and 3,600 feet up 6,288-foot Mount Washington, but on July 3, 1869, he proved the doubters wrong. Today, from late April through November, a little f leet of coal-fired and biodiesel locomotives still use “cog” (or toothed) gears to push as many as 70 passengers at a time at a slow crawl up America’s only mountain cog railway. On a clear day, the views are stupendous. thecog.com ROCK OF AGES, Barre, VT. In the 1920s, when the first curious road-trippers began poking around, most quarrying operations posted “Keep Out” signs. Rock of Ages took the opposite approach, building a visitor center and launching a tour program. As many as 60,000 guests a year still line up to tour the world’s largest deep-hole dimension granite quarry, where derricks hoist blocks that weigh as much as half a million pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice 114 |

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cream. At the visitor center you can watch a video about the quarrying and manufacturing processes, browse historic photos and exhibits, and shop for natural stone gifts. (Don’t worry about depleting the supply: It’s estimated that there’ll be plenty of stone to quarry for the next 4,500 years.) rockofages.com

SCENIC STROLLS CLIFF WALK, Newport, RI. In 1975

Newport’s fabled Cliff Walk was the first public path in New England to be designated a National Recreation Trail, but it had already been famous for over a century. It winds its way along Aquidneck’s cliffs past some of Newport’s most impressive and historic mansions above the rocky shore, meaning you can walk the same land that the Vanderbilts, the Astors, and Henry and William James once strolled. cliffwalk.com FLUME GORGE, Lincoln, NH. The Flume Gorge is what nature looks like in our dreams. Wooden walkways guide you through an 800-foot-long series of waterfalls that crash through this narrow crack in Mount Liberty, raising clouds of mist that f loat up to the forest f loor 90 feet above. It’s easily the most enchanted spot in the already enchanted Franconia Notch, which features several magical lakes, the Old Man of the Mountain Historic Site, and innumerable waterfalls tumbling down the steep sides of Cannon and Lafayette mountains. nhstateparks.org MARGINAL WAY, Ogunquit, ME. Ogunquit gets its name from the Algonquin word for “beautiful place by the sea,” which is how native people described this f lat, sandy 3½-mile stretch along the southern Maine coast. First, walk the beach to your heart’s content, inhaling therapeutic breaths of salty air. But leave some energy for the Marginal Way, a paved 1¼-mile path that leads from the main beach up the rugged cliffs to the shops and seafood restaurants in Perkins Cove. Be sure to take frequent breaks and soak in the views by taking a seat on any of the 30 memorial benches along the way. Out to sea you’ll spot sailboats, yachts, and lobster boats bobbing in the water. marginalwayfund.org ’SCONSET BLUFF WALK, Nantucket, MA. The village of ’Sconset is both a part of Nantucket and not. A mere eight miles from the hustle and bustle of the island’s center, this former fishing community retains most of Nantucket’s older, sleepier charm. One of the prettiest strolls on the eastern seaboard is here,

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too, a bluff walk that takes visitors behind grand homes and alongside towering beach cliffs. When it concludes, you can retrace your steps back to the village center or follow Baxter Road for a postcard-perfect ending at Sankaty Head Lighthouse. nantucket-ma.gov

SEAFOOD FEASTS ABBOTT’S LOBSTER IN THE ROUGH, Noank,

CT. In Noank’s fishing community, full of backyard gardens and harbor views at every turn, Abbott’s is a bona fide institution. Founded in 1947, it has just about anything a shellfish lover could desire, but it’s best known for a steamed lobster or Connecticut-style hot lobster roll. Abbott’s offers a quarter pound of warm, succulent lobster drizzled with butter and served on a toasted hamburger bun; those with heartier appetites are welcome to upsize to the seven-ounce “OMG” version or the full-pound “LOL.” abbottslobster.com CLAM SHACKS, Essex, MA. The Essex River Basin is known for having the sweetest clams in New England, and if you drive into town after a day at the beach, you’ll no doubt find a line out the door at seafood specialist Woodman’s. Join the queue and you’ll soon smell the fryer; it’s here that the first fried clam is said to have been invented over a century ago. An alternative to Woodman’s is J.T. Farnham’s, a cozy seafood shack with views of the Essex River and sweet and briny clams harvested fresh from the cold Ipswich waters. Here, though, the clams are dipped in an egg wash and cornmeal before getting their hot oil bath, whereas at Woodman’s they’re coated with milk and corn f lour. Either choice will make you reevaluate your relationship to bivalves. woodmans.com; jtfarnhams.com MCLOONS LOBSTER, South Thomaston, ME. Imagine the lobster shack of your dreams, and you’ll have a good picture of the family-run McLoons: a tiny red hut perched over the water with a tented patio and picnic tables. Across a small cove, another red building serves as the drop-off point for day boats. You couldn’t ask for a more perfect setting to enjoy homemade peach pie, coleslaw, burgers, and hot dogs. But the one thing you absolutely must have is the lobster roll, which is the best you’ll find in Maine. mcloonslobster.com

VILLAGE LANDMARKS HARRISVILLE DESIGNS, Harrisville, NH.

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family that had operated the mills for generations helped convert the brick structures into shops, offices, and lodgings. As one of the best-preserved textile mill villages in the United States, this site by a peaceful millpond is now a National Historic Landmark. Housed in a former 1850s wool storehouse, Harrisville Designs attracts visitors for its fine, handmade weaving accessories and crafts workshops. While you’re here, don’t miss the gourmet goodies at the Harrisville General Store. harrisville.com RED LION INN, Stockbridge, MA. While the world is full of verandas and breezeways and front stoops, there’s hardly a front porch comparable to that of the Red Lion Inn. Dating back to 1773, the sprawling Main Street structure is known for its authentic historic character, with a working birdcage elevator, converted telephone “booths” off the main lobby, period furnishings, and long list of high-profile guests, including five U.S. presidents. But the wicker-strewn front porch is inarguably its most photographed claim to fame. An army of rocking chairs stands sentinel behind columns, guaranteeing that no activity on Main Street goes unnoticed or unremarked. To sit and rock at the Red Lion is to understand precisely how longtime resident Norman Rockwell saw Stockbridge. redlioninn.com VERMONT COUNTRY STORE, Weston, VT. Looking for a f lannel nightie, a manual typewriter, old-time candies ... all in one store? That barely begins to describe the diversity of the inventory at this Vermont institution, founded in Weston in 1946; there’s also a second, newer location in Rockingham. You’ll find both the expected (maple syrup, wheels of cheddar) and the unexpected (pants stretchers, anyone?) in the aisles here. Plus, nostalgia is sold by the scoop at the shop’s sprawling penny-candy counter. From Mary Janes to Bit-OHoneys to Root Beer Barrels, there are hundreds of options, all self-serve— just open a paper bag and get to work. vermontcountrystore.com

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The World of Sy Montgomery (Continued from p. 93) Jesus.” She was also struggling to write her first book, a biography of primatologists Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and Birute Galdikas, childhood heroes, but Goodall had stood her up in Tanzania, effectively killing the book’s opening scene. Added to that, the ground was literally shifting beneath Howard and Sy’s feet: The farmhouse, which they’d been renting, was about to be sold, and “no bank wanted to give two freelancers a loan,” she recalls with a grimace. Chris, a “runt among runts,” not only survived, he thrived. Miraculously, the bank approved their loan. Sy wrote that first book—“from back to front, the last chapters first,” she tells me—and it’s still in print today. Meantime, their family grew. Eight hand-raised chickens, and then Tess, a “classically beautiful” border collie with a troubled past. “My Tess,” she says, touching her wrist. “Some of Tess’s ashes are in my bracelet, and I never take it off.” (None of the octopuses Sy has known have ever tried to take it off either, which is “like magic, because they love trying to take things off.”) But beyond all that, Christopher Hogwood was a sensation. There was Pig Spa, instituted by two little girls who lived next door, which involved bathing, polishing, and tail detangling. Votes were cast for Chris in town elections. He had fans worldwide and sent out a yearly Christmas card. And there were the inevitable questions. “Does he live in the house?” (“No, but if you saw the inside of the house you might think so.”) “What does he eat?” (“As much as he possibly can.”) “What are you going to ‘do’ with him?” (“We’re certainly not going to eat him. But we might send him abroad for university studies.”) “He’s buried right there,” Sy points to a small cement pig, half hidden by a tangle of leafy hostas, columbines, and prickers. “It was as far as we could move a 750-pound pig. And it’s why Howard and I both have to be cremated—we have to all be together.” 118 |

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Among the lessons she learned from him? “Chris showed me how much fun children are,” she says, smiling. “Kids are naturally drawn to animals. They automatically get it that animals are individuals. They automatically know that animals’ lives matter, that they love their lives just as much as we love ours.” If she has any advice for young aspiring naturalists, it is this: Find something to watch. Then make drawings, take notes. “I have written on elephantback and on camel-back. I even had a dive slate that I could write on when I was scuba diving. I’m always writing, writing, writing.” And she offers this additional tidbit for young people who want to follow more closely in her footsteps, writing and traveling. “One of the best things you can do is don’t need a lot of stuff. It is tremendously freeing if you want the writer’s life, if you want to travel and meet animals. Just don’t need a lot of shit.” She stops for a beat. “Unless it’s actual scat. That, you need to want.” — And then something magical happened. Holding her in my hand, I could literally feel a connection with this creature…. She was a unique individual, and in my hand, she was in my care. —How to Be a Good Creature (2018) Bonita is dark and exotic, and more than a bit hairy. Her cave is lined with silk, and she likes to redecorate—Sy calls her “a regular Martha Stewart,” and she’s eager to hold this burrowdwelling homemaker. It is an audition of sorts. She’s hoping that Bonita, a curly-haired tarantula native to Costa Rica, will make an appearance in the upcoming trailer for Becoming a Good Creature. “Tarantulas are good ambassadors for spiders,” she says. “They’re like the furry chipmunks of spiders.” We are inside the Caterpillar Lab, an educational nonprof it in nearby Marlborough, New Hampshire, with its founder and director, Sam Jaffe. Jaffe guides Bonita (a resident of the lab, though clearly not a caterpillar) into Sy’s willing hand. The arachnid’s dark body bristles with silvery white hairs, and she moves onto Sy’s palm with a kind of Zen deliberateness. “She

might climb to the top of your head,” Jaffe cautions. “That’s fine,” says Sy, bringing her hand closer. They are, practically speaking, eye to eye. In French Guiana, for her 2005 book The Tarantula Scientist, Sy befriended a pinktoe tarantula living wild in a potted plant at the nature center where she was staying. Although her book’s focus was the Goliath birdeater tarantula, which can weigh up to a quarter pound, it was this smaller spider, with her bright pink toes, that captured Sy’s heart. “Clarabelle was a lovely tarantula,” she says. “The first tarantula I ever held.” When I ask Sy how she makes these connections that most people wouldn’t dream of, she answers simply: “I think because most people wouldn’t think about connecting. There’s really nothing special about me. I just love animals and I’m drawn to them. As far as animals are concerned, my love is bottomless.” These words are with me at the Caterpillar Lab, where Sy is holding Bonita the entire time we’re there. At this moment, we’re absorbed in the brilliant images Jaffe is showing us on a wallmounted monitor. There, thanks to a camera contraption he has devised, we can observe a black swallowtail caterpillar, magnified to the size of a dachshund. “There are all of these animals that we don’t even see,” Sy says, her eyes on the screen. “These little things, and you blow them up so now they’re the size of a car, and you’re like, holy god! Why am I not on my knees worshiping that there is such a thing in the world, so complex and beautiful and mysterious? And man, it’s all around us!” — Sometime around 240 million years ago, about the time of the first dinosaurs, 9 million years before the first crocodile—the shell invented the turtle. —The Turtle Book (2023) It is a scorcher, a dog day of August. Parched, scrubby earth, the color of dusty gold, stretches toward the hills in the distance. Nearly 50 round mesh enclosures dot this lunar landscape, each one protecting a nest. It is turtle hatching season in Massachusetts, and we are at an unnamed location. “To thwart poachers,” Sy explains, those NEWENGLAND.COM

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who traffic in turtles for medicine, for their shells, for eating. She will cloak the identities of people and places in her work-in-progress turtle books too. The volunteers who’ve gathered today—including a naturalist and a turtle rehabber—have been watering turtle nests for the past few weeks. Often, Sy is joined on these forays by fellow turtle lover Matt Patterson, a gifted illustrator who is doing the artwork for both the adult and kids’ books she’s working on. Heidi Bell, 12, is also part of the group. A passionate advocate for sea turtles, she is an expert fund-raiser too, Sy notes. “I’ve known Sy since I was 8,” Heidi says matter-of-factly. We huddle over a bright green plastic bucket. “There’s Sy!” Someone points to a tiny spotted turtle. Another pail holds 24 baby snappers no bigger than quarters. We hoist gallon jugs of water, Sy loops the baby snapper pail over one arm, and we trek across the Massachusetts desert, stopping at each nest, splashing water onto the dried earth, as the experts among us scratch at it,

hoping to rescue hatchlings. And suddenly, there they are. Snapper hatchlings scrambling from the baked crust, like little clods of dirt come to life. We scoop them up, add them to the snapper bucket, and press on toward the cool, swampy waters of a distant forest. Seventy-one percent of Earth’s surface is covered by water, which hosts, according to many estimates, as much as 80 percent of the world’s animals. Sy has spent a fair amount of time exploring watery worlds, sharing their secrets. In 2015, she enticed us with The Soul of an Octopus, learning to scuba in order to meet these engaging creatures in the wild. In 2009’s Journey of the Pink Dolphins, she tunneled into the spiritual realm of the Amazon to pursue the essence of supremely elusive beings. And of course there was her experience writing 2016’s The Great White Shark Scientist. Earlier, when I had asked Sy if she’d ever been afraid during any of her animal encounters, she hesitated, then quipped, “Not of animals. I’m afraid of cocktail parties.”

Then, more seriously: “But there have been times when I wondered if I would be afraid, just because it seems so hardwired—like when I went cage-diving with great whites.” In the clear waters off Guadalupe, she got her answer. “I felt nothing but relief and joy,” she says. “Here was someone who knew what they were bloody doing in the ocean. We do not know what we’re doing. We are not good stewards of the sea. Thanks to us, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050. Sharks have been there since the Devonian Age. As apex predators, they keep the sea whole. So here came someone who looked to me like a knight in white satin, the most gorgeous, sleek animal you can imagine. His eye flicked to notice me, then flicked away. There was no menace in that stare, nothing scary at all.” — The cool Massachusetts forest engulfs us as we scramble toward the green water, our shoes squelching into the mud. The tiniest claws on an impossibly

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Life in the Kingdom (Continued from p. 128) vowing (as I’ve vowed so many times before) to never, ever be caught short of dry wood again. This will be my f irst town meeting as a member of the select board, a position I was offered only after our neighbor Scott moved over the hill into another town, thus vacating his seat. I’m a little suspicious that I wasn’t actually anyone’s first choice for the position, but I try not to think about it too hard. Besides, I like being on the select board. There are three of us, and we meet twice each month to decide such things as whether to authorize the purchase of tire chains for the town backhoe (approved with little debate, as everyone knows you do your best to stay in the good graces of the road crew) and what to do about the fact that our zoning administrator abruptly resigned. (If it occurs to you that the obvious solution is to find a new one, you’re right.

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The business that my small town conducts feels manageable to me. I can see and hear and feel and sometimes even smell what’s going on. mile from our house, I generally head out on foot about 10 minutes before our meeting is scheduled to begin. Sometimes I ride my bike, which means I need only about three minutes. If I’m skiing to the meeting, I split it right down the middle: Six, six and a half minutes is plenty. I haven’t driven to a meeting yet, and I’ve got this idea that I’ll never drive to a meeting, though you know what they say about best-laid plans. Whatever the case, I enjoy the fresh air, especially in winter, when I’d likely not otherwise be outside at that time of day. By the time you read this, assuming all goes to plan, we’ll have hosted our rescheduled town meeting. Maybe, if the pandemic has continued to wane and the vaccines have kept coming, we’ll have had our annual potluck, even if it was a little cool, or rainy, or if we needed to shoo away the occasional early-season blackfly. With any luck, we’ll have found a new zoning administrator. If things really went our way, it will have been a fine sugaring season, the snow will have melted from even the north-facing hollows, and the brief, take-the-morning-chill-off fires at home will have been fed with what I have saved of the good, dry wood cut the summer before. There probably would have been the usual talk about budgets and committees and new people in town, the usual laments about taxes and fees and roads that need fixing. It will have been an easy mud season, and the roads will have firmed up nicely—even the spot by the oneway bridge, the one I cross on my short walk home. NEWENGLAND.COM

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Life in the Kingdom

BEN HEWIT T

Small-Town Matters A community is stitched together by timeless rituals. ILLUSTR ATION BY

TOM H AUGOM AT

ven here in the rural northern reaches of Vermont, the pandemic has disrupted many things, not the least of them Town Meeting Day, which in these parts is typically held on the morning of the first Tuesday of March. On this day, our little town can usually muster 20 to 25 people to gather in the old town hall, which normally is open only on Wednesday mornings from 8 to noon or whenever you happen to see Connie’s or Regina’s car in the driveway. We sit in folding chairs in the hall’s main room, drinking coffee and eat128 |

YK0721_BOB_Kingdom.indd 128

ing doughnuts. The room is lined with huge, old single-pane windows that sweat buckets of condensation. I like town meeting. There’s the social aspect of it, the governance aspect of it, and of course the potluck aspect of it. It’s true I don’t much like debating the school budget (which seems to move in one direction only) or the minutiae of some minor town expense or another, but then aren’t these the messy, uninspired realities of life? And who better to tackle the messy, uninspired realities of life with than my own community?

I also like Town Meeting Day because it’s a harbinger of spring. It’s when you’re supposed to have your maple trees tapped to catch the first big run, and it’s when you can take f inal measure of your remaining woodpile and decide whether you have enough dry wood to get you through or whether it’s time to begin mixing in some fresh-cut to stretch your rations (if you haven’t been doing so already— though if you have, you’re probably a little sheepish to have been caught so shorthanded and aren’t likely to admit it). Last year’s town meeting was the final large-ish social event I attended before the lockdown. Some of you probably think it’s hilarious that I’m describing a 20-to-25-person social event as “large-ish.” Others of you know exactly where I’m coming from. This year, our town decided to hold Town Meeting Day in May, when presumably the weather will be conducive to gathering outside, though who knows. May’s not the most reliable month, weather-wise. I’ve seen my share of snow in May; I’ve gotten my share of sunburns in May, too. I’ve swatted more blackf lies than I care to talk or even think about. I’ve lived through Mays that were so cold that the conf ident measure of f irewood I took back on Town Meeting Day turned out to be woefully inaccurate, and we ended up dipping into the pile reserved for the following winter, the barely seasoned green wood popping and hissing as it burned, me cursing as I coaxed each morning fire to life, (Continued on p. 126) NEWENGLAND.COM

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