Every time we turn onto our northeastern Vermont road, Wood Warblers Way, after being away for a few weeks, my body relaxes, my mind calms, and tentacles of connection radiate to this most familiar of places. I have been coming to this rural 120-acre property regularly to visit my parents since 1975. Bob and I inherited the property after my mother’s death in 2021, and we now spend at least half the year continuing to nurture the property in the same spirit as my parents.

Through my years of visiting the property, I built a foundation of familiarity with the woods, the land, the animals, the nearby mountains and lakes, and the people. As I grew older, my connection to this part of the world intensified, as I reveled year after year in the annual cycles of all things nature and of my parents’ lifestyle. The harsh winter gives way to the renewal of spring, the hunt for fiddleheads, the budding trees, and migratory arrivals. We seamlessly move into tilling the gardens, plant seeds swiping at black flies, and revel in the surround-sound songs of our breeding birds. Later in the summer, we harvest our gardens, freeze what we can, and lament the shortening days and avian silence. We put the gardens to bed as autumn approaches, and we rake the fallen leaves to compost in the raspberry patch. As the temperatures fall, we gather the balsam and make holiday wreaths. And then the long winter returns and the cycle begins all over again.