The cow that started one of America's oldest Highland cattle stories had another name.
Around the farm, she was known simply as Scottie.
But the brands hidden beneath that long Highland coat eventually revealed something remarkable.
There are some Vermont towns you understand from Main Street.
Plainfield makes you work a little harder.
My suggestion?
Start above it.
A little outside the village, a trail climbs through the woods toward the 3,037-foot summit of Spruce Mountain. At the top stands an old steel fire tower.
Climb it.
Drive through Moretown Village and there's a building you could pass without realizing what is happening inside.
Wood is still being turned into traditional clapboards here.
Not as a demonstration.
Not for a historical exhibit.
As a business.
The story reaches back more than a century, to a time when the Mad River wasn't merely scenery running through [...]
There's an easy mistake to make in Moretown.
Keep driving.
Route 100B makes it tempting. Waitsfield and Warren are south. Waterbury and Interstate 89 are north. Montpelier isn't far away.
Moretown can become the place between places.
It shouldn't.
Turn off [...]
There is a particular kind of September morning in Vermont.
The nights have started getting colder.
A little fog sits in the valleys.
Someone, somewhere, has already turned on the heat even though they swore they wouldn't do it until October.
And in Tunbridge, the fairgrounds are coming [...]
There are faster roads through Central Vermont.
Route 110 isn't one of them.
That's precisely why I'd take it.
Follow the First Branch of the White River north from South Royalton and the road leads you through Tunbridge, a town of roughly 1,000 people, [...]
Chelsea's North Common has been a gathering place for more than two centuries.
In 2018, a group of local women decided it needed something new.
Not another monument.
Not another historic marker.
A place where [...]
Most classic Vermont villages have a town green.
Chelsea has two.
That small detail tells you a surprising amount about this Orange County community.
One common grew around church, school, public gatherings, and militia training. The other became the home of county [...]
Before American Flatbread became a name recognized well beyond Vermont, there was an experiment.
George Schenk wanted to cook with wood.
In 1985, he built an outdoor oven at his home and started working through an idea that would eventually become American [...]
If you want to understand Waitsfield, don't start at the ski mountain.
Start at the bridge.
The Great Eddy Covered Bridge crosses the Mad River right in Waitsfield Village, at a river crossing that has connected this community since the late 1700s. The bridge standing there today is [...]
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