GLORIOUS VERMONT ROCKS
A visitor to Vermont, driving along during the spring during the days before much pavement, saw a farmer out in one of his fields, using a team of oxen and a stone boat to carry rocks to where the edge of the field was marked by a stone wall. He stopped and watched for a while, then called out, “Where did all these rocks come from?”
“Glacier brought ‘em,” yelled back the farmer.
“Where’d the glacier go?”
“I think it went back to get more rocks.”
In a geological sense, this is only partly true. Ice a mile or two thick does a pretty good job of grinding mountaintops into rocks and carrying them along to be deposited later as gravel, but other forces thrust those parts of the earth’s congealed crust upward to be ground down. Vermont has had quite a history, in its time, of continental collisions, and I’m not talking about Continental soldiers in the Revolutionary War clashing with British, Hessians and Iroquois. What is now Africa banged against what is now North Africa twice, and the Connecticut River, as I understand it, at one time was at the collision point.
Look at geological maps of what’s underneath America, and you will see colored zones denoting different types of bedrock. The Vermont map has them packed together like pages in a big scrapbook, looked at on end. This particolored piece of cartography is one indication of how colorful the geological history has been; another is an abundance of pretty rocks.
I became aware of this in the mid-1970’s, when my wife and I took a Cambridge, Massachusetts poet up to Johnson, Vermont to see Hayden Carruth, who was then living with his family at Crow’s Nest. While the Important Poet talked about Important Literary Things with Carruth, this young poet headed outdoors with Johnson’s son, so he could show me the path he and friends had cut to take hellacious bike rides through the forest (“So you have to duck,” he explained, pointing to one big limb). I wonder sometimes what he’s doing now.
A brook ran through the woods, and in that brook were remarkable rocks. Not long before, I had invented a form of folk art sculpture by putting some interesting rocks into a pint jar, filling it with water, and putting on the lid. Rock jars do what rain and polarizing sunglasses do for the appearance of many things: they change the light in a way that brings out colors. Looking at these Johnson, Vermont mixtures of quartz, granite, and more sedimentary materials, I realized these would be prime rock jar material, and set about gathering a canful—before going back to Crow’s Nest and talking a bit with Carruth, who would make a good Vermont Poet Laureate were it not that an upstate New York college decided to give him shelter from the storms and he went west.
Fast-forward to today, and both my wife and I are big fans of cute Vermont rocks. No journey to northern Vermont is complete without bringing back at least one.
Recently, I had personal business to do in the Burlington area, and went on up to Fairfax when it was done, because I knew there were good rocks near the covered bridge there. This time, I was on a mission: the last cat had died, and I wanted memorial stones for the grave that holds her and her half-sister, both from the same amazing four-color mother (orange, black, white and patches of gray tabby) and two great rival fathers, Granite (who was agile enough to run headfirst down a tree and leap sideways to break his fall) and Black Beauty (to fight with whom Granite was in such a hurry to get down the tree).
It’s impossible right now to describe with any adequacy how close to me these two female cats were. The people who say furry-purries have no affection for people are dead wrong. As long as they are raised with other kittens (TWO KITTENS ARE EASIER THAN ONE!) and know they are cats rather than people, their relationships with people are clear and uncomplicated and, with time, rich.
For years, Mohawk and Lyle (my son, now 27, originated those names) didn’t have an indoor catbox, because they never used one: they knew my schedule, I knew their schedule, and they went outdoors. To the end of her life, Lyle, the last cat, wanted first thing in the morning to go to her cat condo, jump on top, then have a nose-nuzz, then a pet-and-purr with me—before seeking any food.
But my wife and I agreed that at our age and in our circumstances, Lyle would be the last. We would make them a good memorial rock garden and remember them with love, but, as a Mark Twain character put it, “Overreachin’ don’t pay.”
So if you have any pretty rocks you don’t want any more, mail them to….
Not really. Vermont has plenty to go around. The Slate Belt has interesting pieces in waste rock piles, Lake Champlain has places along the shoreline that are worth prowling, some marble quarries have places where other minerals have joined the calcium carbonate, and if you want to see the ultimate, go to the Burlington Gem & Mineral Show, that area having the only active mineral collectors’ club in the state that I know.
And never forget: there’s no rock like a pet rock.
Stonings, moanings and digital phonings can be sent to [email protected]
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